Fish & Seafood Restaurants in Denver

While it’s true that Denver is landlocked, the sea’s bounty makes a remarkably strong showing at restaurant tables across the city, and Denver chefs are obsessed with responsible sourcing, sustainability, fishery management and reeling in fresh-caught specimens that are flown in daily, often because of partnerships and connections with the nation’s best seafood suppliers.

From longstanding oyster bars to new coastal seafood sanctuaries, Denver’s fish houses are a real catch. Here are our favorite seafood spots that never need to fish for compliments. (By the way, this list doesn’t include sushi. For the city’s best sushi spots, sail on over to our Sushi in Denver page.)

Water Grill

Water Grill is Las Vegas-level flashy. We’re talking giant saltwater tanks lining the wall, tufted leather booths and a shimmering, copper-topped bar. Naturally, this is the place to go big, like with the towering iced shellfish platters loaded up with lobster, crab, shrimp, mussels, clams and scallops. Or the 15-plus varieties of oysters stocked daily in the live bar. Or if you’re there at the right time, treat yourself to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them seasonal spot prawns and spiny lobster. The behemoth LoDo restaurant is certainly special occasion-worthy, but it’s just as great on a random Tuesday night when you feel like shelling out for a glitzy seafood feast.

Jax Fish House

Founder Dave Query ignited Denver’s seafood scene with the opening of this oceanic restaurant and oyster bar in Lower Downtown that has since spawned offshoots across Colorado and beyond. From its rambunctiously energetic vibe, offset by a subtle nautical theme, to its fiercely seasonal menu of sustainable seafood sourced from passionate purveyors, it’s a fan favorite for slurping pristine oysters, although the rest of the menu — crab legs, lobster, clam chowder, charred Spanish octopus and Alaskan halibut — is every bit as crowd-pleasing, as are the spirit-forward cocktails and compelling wines and craft beers.

Toro Latin Kitchen & Lounge

Chef Richard Sandoval is a culinary superstar, with 60-plus restaurants across four continents. He blazed the trail for modern Latin cuisine more than 30 years ago, and Toro remains one of his most successful — and most exciting — expressions of it. The Cherry Creek restaurant is where tradition meets swagger, a seafood-forward menu that fuses Pan-Latin flavors with Asian influences. Think: mojo-grilled prawns, adobo octopus, a lobster quesadilla, achiote salmon and bright plates like Hamachi tiradito and ceviche. For seafood with a serious range, Toro always delivers.

Broadway 10 Bar & Chophouse

Steaks have their place, but at Broadway 10 Chophouse, the real standouts come from the sea. Coconut shrimp, jumbo crab cakes and literally flaming scallops (yes, on fire) are just the opening act. There’s also a full, made-to-order sushi menu, flown-in-fresh oysters and towering seafood towers — and we haven’t even hit the mains. It’s a hard choice among the rock lobster, Chilean seabass with grapefruit reduction and fully loaded lobster rolls served Maine or Connecticut style, but the good news is you can’t go wrong with any of them. Add in a sleek dining room and a lively horseshoe bar, and you’ve got a chophouse that makes a very strong case for skipping the steak.

Ocean Prime

Polished, indulgent and ornamented with elegant accents, this Larimer Square seafood eatery and self-described “modern supper club” is part of a Midwest chain from Ohio restaurateur Cameron Mitchell, who’s renowned for his diverse repertoire of restaurants. Here, amid a gorgeous entry with a sweeping staircase, a bustling bar scene and handsome wood-and-brick walls laddered with wines, experienced servers deliver the whole ocean spectrum: oysters on the half shell, whole Maine lobsters, crab cocktails, king crab legs and slabs of fish that zigzag from blackened Colorado bass and lemon-kissed swordfish to sesame-soy-glazed tuna and sea scallops married with Parmesan risotto. If you’re sharing a night out with a group, book the upstairs glass-enclosed room that harbors table 50. It seats eight, and the views overlooking Larimer Square — especially when the windows are open — are Instagram-worthy.

Guard and Grace

Downtown Denver is symbolic of steakhouses, but Guard and Grace isn't your typical shrine to steer. There’s the bravado of wood-fired grills, charcuterie plates and, like any great steakhouse worth its salt, a wave of seafood and fish experiences that rival its meaty counterparts: exemplary oysters, Maryland crab cakes, grilled Scottish salmon with shaved rhubarb, and the ambrosial smoke-scented octopus paired with a white bean and celery salad, Spanish chorizo and a roasted red pepper sauce. It’s a win, too, for its exhilarating wine syllabus that stretches far and deep, swanky surrounds that favor a feminine touch and a voyeuristic chef’s counter that overlooks the industrious kitchen and glistening raw bar skimmed with impeccably fresh oysters.

Smoking shellfish tower at Ocean Prime in Denver Ocean Prime's "Smoking Shellfish Tower"

Salt Water Social

True to its name, this Cherry Creek North spot is all about the seafood and the social. That means a menu loaded with oysters, crab, shrimp and even caviar pizza, all in a sleek, high-energy space meant for gathering and saying “Cheers” by clinging oyster shells. From the team behind STK Steakhouse, it gives the same glam vibes and social media-ready cocktails. Happy hour is especially popular with some great deals.

Tammen’s Fish Market at Denver Central Market

Tammen’s Fish Market, one of multiple tenants residing inside the Denver Central Market, a superb food hall in RiNo, doubles as a full-service fish counter and counter-service restaurant that turns out a swell of sea-centric dishes: po’boys, vibrant ceviches, fresh oysters, clam chowder and fried smelts. With its casual surrounds, community bar that serves beer, wine and cocktails, and clam and mussel shells that grin from the impressive display case, it’s a terrific spot for lunch, dinner or a grab-and-go fresh fish and seafood jaunt that allows you to experiment with cooking your own specimens at home.

TK's Surf & Turf Kitchen

The Cajun-style seafood at TK’s Surf & Turf Kitchen, Denver’s first Black-owned, family-operated seafood restaurant, is so picturesque that it inspired a viral TikTok video. Whether you’re doing it for the ‘gram or your taste buds, TK’s won’t disappoint. (Especially if you get your shrimp and crawfish doused in owner Tyler Kanwai’s kicky secret sauce.) For a taste of everything, order the signature “The Works” plate, which loads you up with a dozen shrimp, a couple of crab clusters, a lobster tail and for the turf, a chopped beef sausage.

Mr. Peralta Mariscos

Ceviche, raw fish or seafood marinated in fresh citrus juices, slashed with fresh chiles and cilantro and potent with raw onions, is easily one of the best culinary gifts the States inherited from Mexico. And at Mr. Peralta Mariscos, a stuccoed corner plot in Sunnyside, the ceviches are arguably Denver’s finest. The convivial dining room, humming with patrons slurping obscenely huge platters of ceviche and equally large seafood cocktail goblets plunged with shrimp floating in a tomato broth, pulsates with Mexican music. The cooks in the open kitchen add to the clamor, the thwack of their knives an indication that you’re about to embark on a delicious feast. The long syllabus of ceviches is offset by several chile-intensive aguachiles spiked with lime, shrimp dishes served every which way, seafood tacos and soups and molcajetes pointing skyward with crab legs, fried fish filets, clams and shrimp ribboned with strips of bacon.

Blue Island Oyster Bar and Seafood

In any neighborhood inked with upscale boutiques, swanky bars and martini-leaning residents, a sleek seafood shrine is never far away. And so it goes for Blue Island Oyster Bar and Seafood, a sophisticated dock-to-dish restaurant in tony Cherry Creek that struts a ritzy seafaring motif flanked by a centerpiece bar that pours stiff martinis and bubbles, the requisite libation to match with the restaurant’s proprietary East Coast oysters. You could spend all of your clams on the bivalves, but then you’d miss the creamy New England clam chowder — and that would be a travesty. The daily happy hour, which runs from 2 to 6 p.m., is a real catch.

Fish N Beer

Chef and owner Kevin Morrison of Tacos, Tequila, Whiskey offers a fresh syllabus of sea creatures at his diminutive River North Art District (RiNo) restaurant that’s usually packed like a can of sardines with diners drawn to the beer-friendly, fish-intensive menu. A triumphant wood-grilled whole Colorado bass is a state ballad bathed in butter and side kicked with roasted Brussels sprouts and Israeli couscous, while the king salmon filet with gnocchi, kale and crimini mushrooms is caressed with a cream sauce of butter and garlic. Oysters, mussels, peel-and-eat shrimp poached in Old Bay broth and terrific smelt fries round out the culinary roster, which pairs well with the rotating craft-beer lineup favoring Colorado breweries.