Reiver's Bar and Grill: pub food with a flare

Catering to a devoted clientele for more than 30 years, Reiver's Bar and Grill has been the gathering place in the Old South Gaylord neighborhood near Wash Park. It's a simple pub, serving simple pub food — but with a delicious flare. 

Take the burgers. For $8.45, you can get a half-pounder on a basic bun and a side of French fries, baked beans, potato salad or soup. Or you can dress it up, ordering it on crusty ciabatta bread and topping it with homemade guacamole or portobello mushrooms.

You'll find a tasty horseradish sauce on the $10.95 steak sandwich; the $8.95 turkey club, with proscuitto instead of plain old ham, comes with a roasted garlic lemon aioli. You might not think of your neighborhood pub as the go-to place for a mouth-melting salmon smothered in an orange-tarragon sauce ($14.45) — until you've savored a good-sized portion of it.

In 2007, Reiver's won two of Denver Westword magazine's "Best Of" awards: for the green pork chile and the chicken fried sirloin steak — the latter pounded thin, paired with prosciutto and rubbed with horseradish sauce. A year later, it won the award for the best traditional chips and salsa.

Of course, Reiver's is as much a bar as it is a grill: Unless you sit in the patio out back, you'll probably be eating in a pretty loud place, where people are busy knocking back one of the 14 beers on tap or taking advantage of one of the daily drink specials.

If you happen to join the crowds here during, let's say, a Denver Nugget's playoff game, you might have a hard time being heard over all the shouting. But if some of that neighborhood feeling has gotten into you, along with a couple of pints of beer, you probably won't mind because you'll be shouting, too. 

Pub; Bar; hamburgers; salsa and chips; homemade; beers; neighborhood