Riot BBQ builds its menu around two barbecue traditions at once: the discipline of Texas-style smoking and the asado techniques of Northern Mexico, treated here as one combined approach rather than two separate menus bolted together.
The name comes from Denver history. In 1898, a barbecue festival in Park Hill drew a crowd of roughly 30,000 people and ended in a stampede, wrecked tables, and a fatal bar fight after a rope line broke — an incident often cited as a forerunner to the National Western Stock Show. Riot BBQ takes its name and identity directly from that chaos.
Regulars point to it as a neighborhood find, though word around town on any given visit varies, with the Texas-Mexico combination landing differently depending on who's at the table.
The name comes from Denver history. In 1898, a barbecue festival in Park Hill drew a crowd of roughly 30,000 people and ended in a stampede, wrecked tables, and a fatal bar fight after a rope line broke — an incident often cited as a forerunner to the National Western Stock Show. Riot BBQ takes its name and identity directly from that chaos.
Regulars point to it as a neighborhood find, though word around town on any given visit varies, with the Texas-Mexico combination landing differently depending on who's at the table.