Denver Steakhouse

July 2024

Denver is an Israeli steakhouse, merging elements of the classic Israeli steakiya with a high-end meat restaurant. Denver has taken the best from the steakiya and from the steak house, for a pleasant and familiar dining experience.

Like a steakiya, the restaurant offers a table full of salads. There is also a full starter menu that will work instead of the salads. There is a good selection of shipudim (skewers of barbecued  meat). But there is also a full menu if premium steaks and cuts of meat. With a nod to the non meat eaters, there are two fish choices and two vegan choices on the menu.

We started our meal with the steakiya-style table of 15 varieties of homemade salads, made fresh daily, with free refills. How I love this variety. The creamed eggplant is one of our favorites, not offered in many restaurants. There was a tasty sweet potato salad that we went back to several times, a spicy carrot salad, and a green schug that was very hot on the palate. The salads are served with focaccia from the tabun oven and a portion of chips for sharing. You can stop right there and not order a main course but the salads will cost you a hefty NIS 65 per person. If you order a full meal the salads are included with your main course.

If you are not addicted to the salads, you can skip right over them and go for a dish from the starter menu. The homemade humus with olive oil, chickpeas and beef comes highly recommended. This has a sister vegetarian dish without the beef.

Though Denver is most definitely a meat restaurant, we were very impressed with the consideration afforded to non-meat eaters. There are many vegetarian options that are kept separate in the kitchen. The chips, for example, are cooked separately from the meat, so they are indeed parve. Vegan alternatives like the non-meat shwarma dish, made with Beyond Meat, are not grilled alongside their meat counterpart. The vegetarian burger is made of portobello mushrooms. The menu also offers two fish dishes, something that we are seeing less frequently at meat restaurants. These are grilled separately from the meat, because, as Chen the manager said, who wants fish that tastes like meat?

We continued our meal with two main courses. I chose the sea bream fillet and my companion chose the Azul rib eye steak, the most popular dish on the menu. All the meats and fish are grilled over coals. This beats our home grill, which is gas.

The Azul is a large 300 grams steak grilled root vegetables. The premium Argentinian steak was at least two centimeters thick. It was soft and juicy and cut easily. After consuming about half of the large portion, my companion experimented adding condiments and schug left from the salads, and sopping up the gravy with the remaining focaccia.

The fish dish was no compromise over the meat alternatives. On the platter were two fillets, vegetables, potatoes. This was a very attractive dish that i couldn't wait to dig into. The fish was topped with a mild spice that added just enough to the fish without obscuring its favor. The dish was generous, and I could not finish both fillets.

Dear reader, I am sorry to disappoint you, but after that full meal neither of us could even think of a dessert. The desserts hail from Biscotti, and we have been there before.

The full menu is available the entire day. So should you come for lunch you are not limited to the business lunch.

The restaurant has a private room that can seat 100 guests. It is appropriate for business meetings, small parties, and get togethers. The Hanatziv center has convenient underground parking.

From the Menu:
Oven baked cauliflower on a bed of tahini NIS 58
Chicken thigh skewer 58
Kabob skewer 58
Hangar steak skewer 99
Beef fillet skewer 85
Azul ribeye steak main course 238
Beef fillet medallion 228
Charcoal sea bream fillet 130