Best Chicken Parm in Denver, CO

Chicken parm in Denver, CO: our top picks

Denver’s Little Italy was North Denver, where Italian immigrants settled along Navajo Street between 32nd and 38th avenues and founded Our Lady of Mount Carmel in 1894. The church still stands at 3549 Navajo and still holds its feast every July. The red-sauce rooms have thinned out: Patsy’s lasted 95 years on Navajo Street before closing in 2016. Gaetano’s, opened on Tejon Street in 1947 by Clyde Smaldone of the city’s infamous mob family, is still cooking under Ron Robinson, who has owned it since 2013.

A good share of the area’s parm now lives just past the city line. In Arvada, Vinny and Marie’s Italian Street Food started as a food truck in 2021 and now runs a mostly takeout shop on Wadsworth. Owner Jimmy Pino grew up in the Grove neighborhood of Pueblo, which explains the green chiles on the Mosco sausage sandwich, though he says the chicken parm sandwich is the bestseller. In Lakewood, Cafe Jordano has been on Jewell Avenue since the early 1990s, cooking from owner Elisa Heitman’s hometown of Naples. It makes chicken and eggplant parmigiana, and where you’d expect veal there’s a buffalo parmigiana.

Back inside city limits, Marina’s Italian Cuisine on South Parker Road does Southern Italian cooking with house-made pasta and serves its eggplant parm with vegetables and pasta on the side. South of town, Pino’s Place on East Hampden Avenue in Cherry Hills Village, at the Englewood line, grew out of the neighborhood pizzeria Pino Saverino opened in 2011. The pizza is still a draw, which helps when not everyone at the table wants a cutlet.

1. Bella italia (Denver) — Parm Score 89. Chicken parm comes up in 3 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.5 on Google across 730 reviews.
2. Romano's Pizzeria (Littleton) — Parm Score 89. Chicken parm comes up in 2 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.6 on Google across 2,282 reviews.
3. Colore Italian Restaurant - Broadway (Englewood) (Englewood) — Parm Score 89. Chicken parm comes up in 2 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.6 on Google across 1,784 reviews.

We ranked 13 restaurants within 10 miles of Denver, CO. 6 of them have the parm confirmed, by reviewers or on their own menu, and Parm Scores run from 57 to 89. Confirmed places rank first; the rest are well-reviewed Italian spots where the parm is not yet confirmed, and pizzerias and steakhouses need a mention to appear at all. How Parm Score works.

More rankings: Veal parm in Denver, CO · Eggplant parm in Denver, CO