Antony Bruno

Antony Bruno focuses on deeply reported food stories that start at street level, following restaurant corridors, individual chefs and standout dishes to show how a local dining scene works. He covers food and drink for Westword with an emphasis on immersive neighborhood series, diverse immigrant cuisines and practical, well-contextualized recommendations.

Immersive coverage of Aurora’s Havana Street

A defining strand of Bruno’s work is his long-running focus on Aurora’s Havana Street, a corridor packed with independent restaurants representing a wide range of cultures. Before joining Westword’s staff full-time, he wrote the “Eat Up Havana” series, visiting every restaurant along the street and documenting what it was like to eat his way through the entire stretch. That project culminates in pieces such as “What It’s Like to Eat at Every Restaurant on Aurora’s Havana Street,” which combines first-hand experience with a clear map of the area’s dining options.

Within that series he profiles individual businesses in detail, including spots like +57 Bar & Restaurante, which he frames as a place bringing a taste of Colombia and Venezuela to Havana Street. Coverage on local business platforms highlights his role in featuring On Havana Street restaurants over time, underscoring that he returns to the corridor rather than treating it as a one-off project. The tone in these stories is exploratory and specific: he spends time with owners, notes menus and specialties, and situates each restaurant inside the larger, highly diverse strip of Aurora dining.

Spotlighting restaurants, bars and chefs

Beyond Havana Street, Bruno regularly introduces readers to new and notable food and drink openings, with “First Look” pieces that walk through a restaurant’s concept, menu and atmosphere. His work includes coverage of Mexican cuisine raising the bar in Denver, such as a first look at El Tule, where he focuses on how the kitchen and cocktails distinguish the restaurant in a competitive scene. He also reports on bars and lounges, using playful headlines like “Smoking Is Good for You” to anchor stories about contemporary drinking and dining experiences.

He devotes recurring space to specific dishes, not just venues. In his “Best Bites” roundup, for example, he selects five restaurant dishes enjoyed in June and explains why each one stands out, giving concrete guidance on what to order across different parts of the city. In the Yuan Wonton feature following Penelope Wong’s journey “from food truck to 35,000 feet,” Bruno traces a chef’s progression from a beloved local operation to serving food in the air, showing how individual talent and a strong concept can scale beyond its original format. His restaurant profiles in other publications, such as a 5280 feature on why Barolo Grill continues to thrive while other institutions have faltered, further demonstrate his interest in the combination of culinary execution, consistency and business decisions behind a restaurant’s longevity.

Contextual reporting and industry perspective

Bruno’s food writing often situates individual stories inside a wider conversation about coverage and accuracy. In his piece on Vogue’s Denver guide, he notes that the magazine recommended a RiNo restaurant that had closed years earlier, using the mistake to highlight the importance of current, local knowledge when presenting a city’s food scene. That article blends fact-checking with alternative suggestions, pointing readers toward viable replacements and illustrating how national spotlights can miss on-the-ground realities.

Across his work, he treats restaurant stories as part of a broader industry narrative. His analysis of Barolo Grill for 5280 looks at how one restaurant continues to thrive even as other culinary institutions struggle, touching on operational choices and long-term positioning rather than only reviewing a meal. This approach shows up in Westword as well, where he writes about the structure of the food section, invites freelance contributors and encourages coverage that spans restaurants, bars, breweries and food businesses of different scales. The mix of detailed dish descriptions, attention to owners and staff, and commentary on guides and lists positions him as a writer who connects what’s on the plate with how the local food ecosystem is represented.

Editorial role in food and drink coverage

Bruno has been Westword’s Food & Drink editor since April 2026, moving from contributor to the person responsible for steering the section’s coverage. In this role he continues to report and write, but he also works with freelancers and prospective writers, inviting pitches that align with the publication’s interest in distinctive food and drink stories. His editorial presence reinforces the same themes found in his bylines: sustained attention to corridors like Havana Street, spotlighting of diverse and immigrant-owned restaurants, and pieces that balance enthusiasm for new openings with scrutiny of how the dining scene is portrayed by outside outlets.

For story placement, Bruno’s interests lie in restaurants and bars with a strong sense of place, chefs with clear narratives of growth or reinvention, and food trends that affect how locals eat rather than abstract national phenomena. Features that can be grounded in specific dishes, neighborhoods and communities, and that offer both flavor and context, are the ones that fit best with the body of work he has built so far.