Twenty things to eat (and drink) in Denver this summer

Mark Manger

Try the Tree Line, Colorado's new official cocktail...and these twenty other dishes.

Happy 4th of July weekend, Denver. It's really summer in the city now, when patios beckon and menus bloom with produce. In celebration, we're serving up twenty things to eat in restaurants around town between now and fall.

Lori Midson

1. The tangy cucumber white gazpacho, bobbing with a scoop of refreshing watermelon sorbet, at Linger.

2. The seven greens salad -- rife with watermelon radishes, fat sugar snap peas and beets -- and a light, white-whiskey-focused Swizzle Me Timbers cocktail at Colt & Gray.

3. Creamy, housemade burrata and a glass of crisp, bubbly Prosecco on the patio at Osteria Marco.

4. Lambrusco sparkling red wine and a salumi platter -- piled with silky cured meat, swiped with spicy horseradish sauce and sided with thin, crackly breadsticks -- at Pizzeria Locale or Frasca Food and Wine.

5. Green papaya salad, studded with cherry tomatoes, dusted with peanuts and made as spicy as you can handle it, at US Thai Cafe.

Mark Manger

6. Breathtakingly cold oysters, which no longer have to only be consumed in months ending in R, at Ototo Food and Wine Bar.

7. Ripe tomato, cubed toast, fresh basil and acidic red-wine vinaigrette blended into panzanella at Row 14.

8. Rosy blocks of raw tuna, a heaping pile of greens and hearts of palm bathed in a robust, peppery vinaigrette in the Ahi poke salad at TAG RAW BAR, along with the Denver Omelette cocktail at TAG.

9. Sweet watermelon, tart goat cheese and toasted pepitas make an ideal match in the watermelon salad at Kaos, where it will be on the menu for the month of July.

10. The brothy shrimp cocktail, swimming with fat pink prawns, spiked with onions and cilantro and ringed with avocado, at El Camaron Loco.