So much smoked meat, so little time

Some BBQ-ists unwisely overlook their meat while becoming obsessed with the sauce, ironically ensuring that they won't have a brush with greatness. For a Larimer Square stop from a vet shrewdly putting the meat first: Russell's Smokehouse

Another highlight in The Bonanno Empire's well-frosted hairdo, 84-seat Russell's is outfitted with a bartop from a "Denver '20s gin joint" & schoolhouse chairs, and plates meats cooked over smoky chips, with a focus "not on the sauce", but rather the "tenderness and flavor of the proteins". Apps include pigs in a blanket served with three mustards, a lobster cocktail with "Denver" hot sauce, and warm CO rough cheese and fried jalapenos, all of which can be tempered with Ommegang's Rare Vos or Avery's Salvation on tap, or bottled goodness like Chimay's Cinq Cents and a Stone ale named Sublimely Self-Righteous, also what you call a singer named Bradley No-it-alls. Signature mains include a house-rubbed prime rib cooked "low and slow" for 10hrs, sammies (from pulled pork, to smoky lobster, to chopped brisket) on brioche buns, and larger plates like bacon-wrapped trout, and fried local chicken, which must've gotten caught smoking, given all the time it spent in a state pen

If you're still not satisfied, Walgreens has Snickers, ingrate they're mixing specialty 'tails like the Rum Mail Life with vanilla-infused Flor de Cana/ orchard apricot/ apple, and a blackberry/ Leopold's Honey/ absinthe number called Leopold's Local Love, also the best that BBQ-ists who overly focus on their sauce can expect.