4 Best Restaurants in Vail Valley, Colorado

The huge, seasonal menu includes highlights like a high-end Colorado Kobe steak served with asparagus spears and bleu cheese fritters, a crispy pork shank with a sherry-apricot glaze, and a variety of delicious sandwiches, pizzas, and lighter, tapas-style plates. Meals are rounded out with expert wine and beer pairings that make this somewhat out-of-the-way restaurant well worth the free shuttle from the village.

The stately appearance of this Pines Lodge restaurant belies its friendly, welcoming attitude. The fresh, farm-raised, cage-free food philosophy makes for quality ingredients, and the chef here truly knows how to make the food sing. There's live music most nights. If you get chilly on the patio the waitstaff brings out blankets.

With spacious glass windows, this sleek, sophisticated space in Gravity Haus looks as if it belongs in a big city, with only the fireplace reminding you that this is Vail. The menu puts a modern spin on the classic steak house, featuring food from Rocky Mountain ranchers and farmers.

At the Ritz-Carlton, Wolfgang Puck's restaurant is housed in an expansive dining room whose vegetable-dyed wood paneling and enlarged black-and-white photographs achieve a sleekly modern look without contradicting the resort's rustic mountain sensibility. Puck's seasonal menu often favors Asian accents and regional ingredients. In late autumn the menu's butternut squash soup is deliciously intensified with cranberry chutney, spiced cream, and pumpkin-seed brittle. The Colorado lamb chops spiced with Hunan eggplant and cilantro-mint vinaigrette is not to be missed and for dessert the kaiserschmarren, a souffléd crème fraîche pancake with strawberry sauce, is otherwordly. Service is impeccable, if a touch formal; those who prefer a low-key (or less bank-breaking) meal might consider dining in the bar area.