The Apex of Colorado Dining
There are restaurants in Colorado that are celebrated, some that are exceptional, and one that stands apart from any comparison: The Penrose Room at The Broadmoor. Colorado's sole AAA Five Diamond restaurant, a distinction shared by fewer than 90 dining rooms across all of North America, The Penrose Room occupies the penthouse of one of America's great resort hotels and delivers the most complete expression of fine dining available in the Rocky Mountain West.
Named for Spencer Penrose, the Colorado mining magnate who built The Broadmoor in 1918, the dining room underwent a comprehensive renovation that reopened to considerable acclaim in 2025. The reimagined space honours the room's history — tableside service of beef Wellington, martinis mixed at your elbow, flambéed desserts lit to order — while the design language is stunningly contemporary: arched wood paneling in warm tones, velvet and leather seating in gold, jade, and copper, and an atmosphere of controlled luxury that makes every table feel like the most important in the room.
The view contributes equally to the experience. From the penthouse perch, the dining room overlooks Cheyenne Lake with the mountains rising behind it — a panorama that shifts from golden afternoon light to deep indigo as the evening progresses, as if the kitchen and the landscape have coordinated their timing. Both deliver their best work precisely when the other does.
What to Order
The menu is Contemporary European with tableside service as its ceremonial heart. The beef Wellington, prepared for two and carved tableside, is The Penrose Room's signature and a performance that justifies the occasion. The tableside martini service opens every meal with theatricality and precision. Composed starters lean toward caviar service, foie gras preparations, and delicate seafood — each executed with the technical fluency that comes from a kitchen operating at sustained excellence rather than periodic inspiration.
The flambéed desserts — crêpes Suzette, cherries jubilee — are not affectations; they are the point. These are preparations that belonged to a tradition of dining that understood spectacle and pleasure as inseparable. The Penrose Room has restored them not as nostalgia but as an argument: that some pleasures were correct the first time, and the best thing to do with a great tradition is to perfect it.
The wine program is exceptional, with deep verticals of Burgundy and Bordeaux alongside a curated American selection that reflects The Broadmoor's commitment to every element of the experience. The sommelier team operates at a level rarely found outside major metropolitan dining.
The Atmosphere
Jacket required for gentlemen — the only mandatory dress code remaining in Colorado Springs, and it is not a relic of stubbornness but a statement of intent. The Penrose Room is the most formally ambitious dining room in the state, and the atmosphere is calibrated accordingly: formal without coldness, attentive without hovering, grand without self-parody. Tables are widely spaced; conversations do not carry; the service staff understands that the best hospitality is invisible until it is needed and impeccable when it arrives.
A reservation here sends a signal before a word is spoken. In Colorado Springs — a city built on military hierarchy, executive tourism, and the vast hospitality machine of The Broadmoor itself — that signal is understood with precision. When the occasion demands the best available table in the state, this is the one.