Dine & Dash: Seven flavors of Fort Collins 🍽
An overnight provides plenty of time to dine and drink widely; here's where we hit
My partner in culinary crime, sidedishsidekick, goes to Fort Collins at least a couple times a year to see her little brother Drew, and I tag along. Drew and his wife happen to be quite savvy on the food and drink front, and are always checking out new spots in their area. They also frequent some great breweries and tend to stay abreast of weekly happenings — so they’re the perfect tour guides when we visit.
The only trouble for us is limited time, of course, so they pack a lot into our time together and are great hosts. A couple weeks ago, we made the drive up and revisited some of our favorite spots from prior visits (that we were still thinking about) and otherwise hit places they wanted to show us for a variety of reasons. That’s the setup.
I didn’t take extensive notes or do really any interviewing of staff, etc., like I normally do around the Springs. So consider this kind of a quick-hit roundup. I just want to put the names of these establishments on your radar should you opt to visit Fort Collins soon. Create our own adventure.
Social
Pictured above, Social is the dark, moody, subterranean cocktail lounge in Old Town that Springs bartenders have always told me to go to. It’s frequented by CSU students and locals alike, and I’m told there’s typically a line around the block to get in, on weekend nights especially.
If you like Rabbit Hole and District Elleven, miss Brooklyn’s and are up for $12ish to $15ish cockails, this is your place. The atmosphere is elegant but you don’t have to be dressy, and you can also get bar bites that Drew tells us are totally quality. So, you can make a meal here too.
Lauren absolutely loves her You’re Driving Me Caprese, a Bloody Mary riff off the Italian salad, made with basil-infused aquavit balsamic vinegar and a garden of garnishes that include a mozzarella ball. It’s like a free tapas bite with your sip. I get a complicated drink named the Vieux Verdánt (ostensibly based off the classic New Orleans drink the Vieux Carré). I don’t really detect the snap pea and parsley infusion in the mezcal component as much as my reading of the words makes me want to, and the Batavia Arrack van Oosten (a Indonesian sugarcane and fermented rice spirit) also blends in somewhat faintly with Suze (a bittersweet French aperitif) and bitters with lime and Tajin. It’s enjoyable enough, light, generically vegetal and fresh, but perhaps a bit underwhelming on the whole.
If you can only go for one drink, make it the Marble Rye, which I nab a sip of from Drew. It’s made with Benédictine, Punt E Mes, Cynar and toasted caraway bitters, and it’s just a fantastic rye whiskey drink.
Mythmaker Brewing
We fawned over Mythmaker when Drew first introduced them to us last year, and we ended up taking crowlers home of a holiday special release we were so enamored. He thinks the spot is among the best breweries on the planet (his recent words), and I have a hard time arguing a valid point against that opinion after continued tastings.
We luck into it being Fort Collins Beer Week when we arrive (it was June 16-22), and find a special collaboration beer made with Mythmaker, Breckenridge, Hello and Peculiar breweries. It’s named Are Thiols a Scam? and is a thiolized IPA, made with a specially engineered yeast that’s capable of enhancing tropical aromas and flavors. It’s fantastic, so much so I forget to snap a pic until I’ve already downed a long sip.
Anyway, I didn’t take notes in the moment, so here’s everything a beer nerd would want to know about it, in their words: “It features Troubadour Maltings malt, a whole leaf Cascade mash hop, YCH 303 + phantasm powder whirlpool addition, a Motueka dry hop, and a Cosmic Punch and Brett Impostor yeast co pitch. All of these help produce super fruity flavored thiol compounds in the finished beer. It's a 7.0% alc/vol balanced IPA with loads of fruit, overly ripe peach flavors. It's safe to say, from our experiment, that thiols are not a scam.”
Double Wide Burgers
Part of the reason we venture to Mythmaker is because Double Wide Burgers happens to be parked out front this evening. Drew is a superfan. He tells us some of their backstory, including how they use local, dry-aged beef (unless you’re ordering their Beyond Burger, ahem). The burgers come on high-quality brioche buns and have a great sear and char. My Black and Blue delivers everything you want in a funky blue cheese topping with other house fixings. I punish one, wishing immediately I’d ordered two and had more time to stick around for that and another pint.
Yellow Crunch
New to The Exchange — Fort Collins’ cute little outdoor shipping container food court — since we last visited is Yellow Crunch. It’s a cool Colombian eatery that we venture to because Drew wants us to try their buñuelo in particular. It’s the large orb pictured above my arepa below. Various international cultures treat the fried dough fritters differently, and the Colombians tend to make theirs with yuca flour and a queso fresco-like white cheese.
While Yellow Crunch’s rendition is listed in the pastries and desserts section of their menu, the item could easily be a starter, as it’s not very sweet, just surprisingly dense and heavy for a dough ball. Neither is it overtly cheesy; it’s … just right. A simple delight. And only $3.
That shredded chicken, bean and avocado arepa by the way — it’s the best one I’ve had since I was in Colombia. The maize flatbread texture is tight and crispy and it doesn’t just crumble after bite one. So yeah, Yellow Crunch plays a mean texture game, and the stuffing is generously portioned. This is my second dinner after the burger at the brewery, and by the time I finish it and the buñuelo I’m stuffed and beyond satisfied.
Beijing Noodle (Fort Collins)
I first mentioned this spot in Side Dish back in my 2023 end-of-the-year roundup. The highlight then was the fan favorite Oil Spill Noodles. I couldn’t wait to get back here. Turns out since I was last in, USA TODAY named it among a national list of Restaurants of the Year 2024. Read their short backstory here.
The housemade wheat noodles is just the beginning of this spot’s charm, built around real Chinese food, not Americanized dishes. This visit we get the spicy shredded chicken noodles with a sesame-soy sauce under a tangle of cilantro, simple and only lightly spicy from sichuan pepper heat that delivers a faint tongue tingle.
Our favorite bite though is the Wuhan noodles with sesame and peanut paste, with ground pork. The peanut sauce makes the dish; if you’re a Thai peanut sauce fan this one’s for you, though it’s less sweet on the whole and folded beautifully into the pork for a peanuty-porky punch. Fresh cucumber and carrot threads on both dishes lightens the proteins. And yeah, the soft noodle texture is such a joy to slurp and chew through.
Lima Coffee Roasters
Lima has a few locations in Fort Collins and we visit the Midtown one near some big box stores and a residential sprawl. They only launched in 2018 and they have a familiar craft coffee hipster vibe complete with cool wallpaper and minimalist branding.
We bypass the traditional drinks and nab a sweet and potently peppery turmeric latte (made with Minor Figures oat milk, proudly displayed on the front counter) from the regular menu. And a lightly sweet ube latte special off the summer menu, made with housemade ube syrup and Lima’s 11:11 Brazilian/Guatemalan coffee blend (available on a retail rack across from the pickup counter).
As quality as this spot is, we’re all agreed it’s still no match for Fort Collins’ industry leader, Harbinger Coffee (which has two locations in town).
The Bread Chic
To be clear, it’s The Bread “Chic” (rhymes with cheek), not The Bread “Chick” — which I’m told some people playfully call it. Anyway, it’s an artisan pastry and baking outfit that started at farmers markets in 2008 and grew into brick-and-mortar in 2021, expanding to a second location in May, 2025, just weeks ago.
This new location is the one we visit; it took over a former Great Harvest Bread space and is already sold out of many popular products by 10:30 a.m. when we arrive, having opened at 8.
So we can’t get a recommended ham and cheese croissant that’s sold out, but we do nab the last Caprese croissants, made basically open-face with tomato, mozzarella and a generous dollop of pesto. They’re a fresh, garden-y bite. A plain croissant is good but less buttery and flaky and more eggy and challah bread like in style. (We were so recently spoiled during our trip to Spain that this one just doesn’t register as too special.) But the house pretzels are great, big and soft with a pleasing crust and nice chew. $5 cake slices are enticing but we opt to try them next time we’re up vs. lug some home in a hot car where they might degrade.
The Bread Chic is no Nightingale Bread by way of comparison, but it’s a quality local bakery and perfectly fine option for a morning treat in the area.