<\/p>\n
The votes are in for<\/p>\n
Three local restaurants \u2013 Oscar\u2019s Cafe<\/a> in Durango, Absolute Bakery<\/a> in Mancos and Beny\u2019s Diner<\/a> in Cortez \u2013 made the shortlist of 20 restaurants competing for the title of \u201cBest Chile Verde in Colorado.\u201d On Friday, the final rankings, chosen by readers, were announced on the USA Today website.<\/p>\n Although Colorado Springs\u2019 El Taco Rey and King\u2019s Chef Diner ended up taking the top two spots, three restaurants from Southwest Colorado made the Top 10: Oscar\u2019s was third, Absolute was fourth, and Beny\u2019s was sixth.<\/p>\n Paula Berg, co-owner of Oscar\u2019s, said she was honored that her restaurant\u2019s Spanish-style chile verde made it to the Top 5.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a little place, and we just don\u2019t have the population to vote like they do in Denver, so I\u2019m so glad they acknowledged us,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like the Four Corners area is a green chile place.\u201d<\/p>\n She said she\u2019s also proud of the other Southwest Colorado restaurants that made the Top 10 list, and plans to try Absolute Bakery\u2019s entry as soon as possible.<\/p>\n Karen Blaine, co-owner of Absolute Bakery, said she and her husband, David, heard about the contest results a day before they were made public.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were very happy to hear we made fourth place, because I think we\u2019re one of the smaller restaurants on that list,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She said she believed the bakery\u2019s use of vegetarian, organic ingredients helped its chile verde stand out, and added that the Absolute recipe relies on flavor, not heat.<\/p>\n Victor Nu\u00f1ez, Jr., part of the family that owns Beny\u2019s Diner, said being considered for the Top 10 list has already helped the restaurant\u2019s business.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been selling so much green chile, even more than before,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of people have told us we should be the winners, because our chile is the best in town.\u201d<\/p>\n But the restaurant\u2019s owner, the senior Victor Nu\u00f1ez, said he was just happy to be in the Top 10. He thanked everyone who voted for his restaurant, especially the Nu\u00f1ez family\u2019s friends and customers.<\/p>\n The other restaurants on the Top 10 list are all on the Front Range. They are Boulder\u2019s Blackbelly Market (eighth), and Denver\u2019s El Chingon Mexican Bistro (fifth), Sam\u2019s No. 3 (seventh), Blue Bonnet Cafe (ninth) and Se\u00f1or Burritos (10th). USA Today\u2019s Top 20 restaurants were chosen by a panel of experts, and were narrowed down to the final 10 through a voting process that lasted through April 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Absolute Bakery, Beny\u2019s Diner, Oscar\u2019s are voted among state\u2019s best<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,438,13,3593],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-100235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-food","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-restaurants-dgo-nav"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100235"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=100235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}