Favorite Places
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Luigi's Homemade Italian Food $$
- 947 S. Tejon St. (map)
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Downtown
632-7339
- (based on 3 user reviews)
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Phantom Canyon Brewing Co. $$
- 2 E. Pikes Peak Ave. (map)
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Downtown
635-2800
- Be the first to review this location!
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Panera Bread
- multiple locations (map)
- various
- Be the first to review this location!
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Rock Bottom
- 3316 Cinema Point Drive (map)
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Powers
550-3586
- (based on 1 user review)
Bites 2013: Manicotti
The key to Luigi's manicotti is the delicate, homemade pasta, whose thinness somehow manages to contain a rich ricotta stuffing. But then there's the blend of white and red house sauces: a béxchamel and an herbaceous tomato sauce, rendered mellow from seven hours stewing but bearing both ground meatballs and Italian sausage bits. A choice between a full meatball or anise-seasoned sausage link, both homemade, completes the affair. ($16.25 includes a salad or house minestrone soup/$13.50 as a special on Friday and Saturday nights)
Best Of 2012: Restaurant for Tourists
Best Of 2012: Place to Shoot Pool
Since it's just a block off the Springs' main strip, lucky tourists often stumble into Phantom Canyon for lunch or dinner. There they find a well-executed seasonal menu, which Phantom's Suzie Nichols says is focused on warmth and comfort food like meat and potatoes in fall and winter, and cool and crisp items like peach- and strawberry-infused plates in spring and summer. But locals flock to Phantom for its brews and 13 pool tables. (OK, maybe for the famous blonde ale and smoked gouda soup, too.) Look for a significant expansion to the brewery soon, which will not only increase brewing capacity, but bring an old-school video-game arcade into the billiard hall — sorry, the foosball tables had to go. — Steve Hitchcock
Bites 2013: Blonde Ale & Smoked Gouda Soup
Like the Iron Throne in Game of Thrones or one of those geek-ass elven blades from The Lord of the Rings, this soup is legend. It's not so much that wars have been fought over it (aside from the personal mental battle of resisting eating it all the time) as the fact that it's pretty much the greatest beer-cheese soup in the known realm. With its Queen's Blonde Ale base and thick cheese, it's so rich it's royal. ($3.25 cup/$5 bowl)
Click here for Phantom Canyon Brewing Co.'s Pork Green Chili
Best Of 2012: Bread
Best Of 2012: Soup
Drink 2010
Happy hour: Monday-Friday, 3-6 p.m. and 10 p.m. to close
The goods: $3 house drafts, wines and wells, $5 appetizers
InSider 2010
Rock Bottom may be corporate, but its Springs location does all its brewing on-site, every beer the product of local brewmaster Jason Leeman. He picked up two awards at the Manitou Craft Lager Festival last summer, and each month unveils a new creation. Rock Bottom usually offers about 14 brews on tap, but don't expect to find Bud or Coors: "If we don't brew it," Leeman says, "we don't serve it."
