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Sure, you can hit up a Dunkin Donuts, a Starbucks or a McDonald’s at Denver International Airport — and sometimes it’s traveling that gives us license to be bad like that — but a better option is to try some of Denver’s homegrown food and beverages from local businesses. While these restaurants, coffee shops and breweries don’t actually own or run their airport branches — that is done by large concessionaires — many of them do take an active role in maintaining the quality and consistency of their offerings. Here’s a…

When Justin Cucci would fly out of Denver International Airport more than 10 years ago, he’d usually pack his own food. “As a traveler, I was always let down by the food and the lack of Denver representation,” he said. So when an airport concessionaire approached him about opening a branch of Root Down — his eclectic, farm-to-table restaurant — as part of a major retail overhaul at DIA in 2013, he decided to take the risk. “I thought it would be cool to make a statement about accessibility to craft food that’s…

Ana Fanakra sat in her bakery on the 16th Street Mall on what turned out to be its last day in business, Feb. 3, waiting for customers. But not many came, and she decided to close up early. “We had really low sales that day,” she said. “We hadn’t even made $100 yet, which was a very accurate picture of what the last couple of months looked like for us.” The next day, she decided to call it quits, closing both the original location of Ana’s Norwegian Bakeri, which opened in Centennial in June 2021, and the downtown bakery,…