One Denver restaurant was awarded a Michelin star Monday, joining the nine other starred restaurants in Denver, Boulder and Aspen. Milpero, in the River North neighborhood, deepens the pool of Michelin restaurants in those cities, but did not expand the map during the guide’s first year offering stars statewide.
Receiving a Michelin star is one of the highest honors in the fine dining world, but the guide doesn’t go just anywhere. In 2023, Colorado brought Michelin to the state with a three-year contract and roughly a half-million dollars pledged annually from a state fund that Denver, Boulder, Aspen and Snowmass Village, and Vail and Beaver Creek contributed to, along with $135,000 from the Colorado Tourism Office.
That meant cities with notable culinary scenes like Aurora, where chef Caroline Glover had won a James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Mountain Region in 2022, Colorado Springs and Grand Junction wouldn’t get a look. At the time, Bruce Dalton, CEO of Visit Aurora, told The Colorado Sun that making that large of an investment that would benefit a small subset of the city’s many diverse eateries didn’t seem worth it…