by Stan Dyer

Created on: October 25, 2008   Last Updated: November 02, 2011

There are many restaurants making outstanding pizzas all over the Denver area. I love most pizza and I have sampled the wares of many while searching for the very best. I have tasted thin crust, thick crust, gourmet pizza, New York style, Chicago style, individual pizzas, family-size pizza and just about every variation imaginable that is available for purchase in the Denver area. I have even asked readers' friends for their nominations and suggestions. I enjoyed most of the pizzas I tried and appreciated all their subtle variations, yet, to this date, none can top the one I consider the best, and it is not even available in the city. You have to drive the 30 miles or so west to Idaho Springs.

I cannot count how many times I drove by Beau Jo's in Idaho Springs before I finally stopped in. Idaho Springs is not far from the city and they really do have some nice hot springs there, but it took a while to find their real treasure, their Beau Jo's pizza. Friends and I would often visit the Indian Springs Resort just to get away from the city and unwind at the hot springs pool for an easy, quick, weekend getaway. We never spent much time in town and never expected to find anything worthy of note there except for a cute, little Victorian mining town, some ice cream and a few antiques. Then, we walked into Beau Jo's while looking for a pitcher of beer.

After a hot springs soak one afternoon, we went the rest of the way into town and found a historic-looking, mountain restaurant with an ample bar and plenty of suds on tap. We went inside. We liked the rustic, 19th century building decorated in antiques and memories from the boom mining days of another century, and it looked like a good place to relax over a beer. It even slightly reminded us of the Morrison Inn down the road. While sharing conversation and working on a pitcher, we made a monumental decision and decided to taste a "Mountain Pie". It was a nice choice. It would be our first "five-pounder", but it would not be the last.

Beau Jo's calls their premiere pizzas "Mountain Pies" and they sell them by the pound. The five-pounder is their largest size. What is really nice is that Beau Jo's is still one of the few places that offers the whole wheat crust, and their whole wheat crust tops everyone else's crust, whole wheat or not! It is perfect. I have tried, but there is no other way to describe it than simply "perfect". It is the standard all others strive for and is so good it even tastes outstanding by itself

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