Aurora is, by some distance, the best place to eat in metropolitan Denver — not for fine dining (Denver proper has the steakhouses and tasting menus) but for the kind of unpretentious, fiercely specific immigrant cooking that emerges when a city builds a refugee resettlement infrastructure and the cooks who arrive start opening places to feed each other.
The geography is simple. Two corridors hold most of the action. Havana Street, especially the stretch between Iliff and Montview, is Korean at the north end and increasingly Vietnamese, Mexican, and Indian as you move south — a half-dozen pho counters, several Korean barbecues, a row of Mexican mariscos places, and a scattering of Pakistani and Indian. East Colfax Avenue, from Yosemite eastward toward Tower Road, is more Ethiopian, Eritrean, Burmese and Latin American — including Mango House, the refugee-chef food hall that is probably the single most representative meal in the city.
The Stanley Marketplace handles a more polished, sit-down crowd with a strong lineup of independent restaurants. Plenty of taquerias and ramen shops scattered through every strip mall in between. Drive, park, walk in.