Denver's Alma Fonda Fina Is One of the Best Restaurants in America

There's a 38-seat restaurant tucked into Denver's LoHi neighborhood that, at any given moment, is probably fully booked. The lighting is warm, the tortillas are sourdough, and somewhere in the kitchen, a chef who started cooking in his father's restaurant in Guadalajara at age 14 is running one of the most talked-about kitchens in the country.

That restaurant is Alma Fonda Fina. And if you haven't been paying attention, it's time to start.

When Alma Fonda Fina opened in late 2023, it landed quietly in LoHi with a menu of contemporary Mexican cooking and a dining room small enough to feel like a secret. It didn't stay quiet for long. Within its first year, the restaurant earned a Michelin star, chef Johnny Curiel took home Michelin's 2024 Young Chef Award, and the restaurant became a James Beard Best New Restaurant finalist for 2025. Now, Food & Wine has ranked it the [#2 best restaurant in the United States](https://www.foodandwine.com/top-united-states-restaurants-2026-11919583). Not in Colorado. Not in the Mountain West. In the entire country.

Let that sink in for a second.

Soul Food, Fine Dining, and Everything In Between

The name tells you everything you need to know about what Johnny and Kasie Curiel were building.

"Alma means soul in Spanish. That's our approach to Mexican food — it's like soul food. And it's also my mother's name," Chef Curiel explained. "Fonda is your not elevated, kind of sketchy restaurant with really good food. And Fina means fine, like fine dining. We wanted to marry both of those together and create something that is elevated yet approachable."

That philosophy plays out on every plate. The menu moves fluidly — bright seafood crudos, agave-roasted sweet potato, crisp-edged pork belly carnitas folded into house-made sourdough flour tortillas. It's the kind of food that feels simultaneously celebratory and deeply personal, the sort of cooking you can only do when you've spent a lifetime living inside a culinary tradition rather than studying it from the outside.

Johnny Curiel's path to LoHi wasn't a straight line. He grew up working in his father's Mexican restaurants before moving to the U.S. at 12. Driven by a need to go deeper into Mexican cuisine, he eventually returned to Mexico for two years, immersing himself in the culture before coming back to Colorado and working in kitchens under notable names like Richard Sandoval, Dave Query, and Troy Guard. The result is a chef who brings serious pedigree to a menu that never feels show-offy.

His wife and business partner, Kasie Curiel, brings an equally grounded perspective. She got her start as a server at 14, studied business and hospitality, and spent a decade at the prominent Houston Restaurant Group before she and Johnny crossed paths in Denver. "The rest is history," she's said. It's a partnership that shows — the front-of-house warmth at Alma Fonda Fina is as intentional as the cooking, which is exactly how it should be when two people have been building toward something their whole careers.

The Chef's Counter Is Where You Want to Be

If you can snag a seat at the chef's counter inside the dining room, do it. The room seats just 38 people total, which means every visit feels intimate in a way that most restaurants at this level don't quite manage. You're close to the action, close to the food, close to the story unfolding in real time.

Order the tuna ceviche. Order whatever the kitchen is running that evening. And absolutely do not skip the avocado margarita from a cocktail menu that's as carefully considered as everything else coming out of this kitchen.

The demand is real — this place is small, it's always slammed, and reservations move fast. If you've been meaning to go, stop meaning to and actually [book a table](https://www.exploretock.com/almafondefina). A restaurant this good, this specific to Denver's culinary moment, doesn't stay a secret forever — and in many ways, it already hasn't.

Colorado has always had great food. But Alma Fonda Fina is making the kind of national argument that's hard to ignore: that the best meal you'll eat this year might not be in New York or Los Angeles. It might be in LoHi, at a 38-seat room where the tortillas are sourdough and the name is, quite literally, the whole mission statement.

Alma Fonda Fina is located at 1735 19th St, Denver. Reservations are required.