Pete’s Satire

Have been going to the Sat for decades but over the last months have been extremely turned off on Friday nights by the self promotion of the bar managers band and attitude — disheveled rude and arrogant & not what a manager should exude — the entire dinning area is encompassed by his band & so loud that conversation is impossible — walked out numerous Friday nights with group of 8 – 10 other people and won’t be back until the customers considered 1^st & the manager’s self promotion 2^nd — hope Pete will read this & make some changes — bartenders are good as is Joey!

Had been here xx years ago. Was really good. Now I live right down the street. Let’s be honest-​one visit to the next, you never know what the clientele will be. Very interesting people. Don’t come here if you’re a suburb person and afraid of what you might «run into» in the city. Since Señor pepe’s closed I’ve been trying to find comparable food close to home. So far, this is the closest I’ve come. I am sure, as another reviewer wrote, this stuff is probably frozen and then «flash heated.» I like the chili rellenos and I always order the refried beans. The booze is good. Margaritas are ok-​like the fake jukebox they have.
Always entertaining because you will find all types of people there. Service has been great every time I’ve been there.
Having lived in Vegas for a while, the folks who hang around here are ok compared to the STRANGE people everywhere in LV!
G. Simon

Sad, you can’t go back home again I guess. I went back, not for the drinking or the night life but for the amazing chili rellenos they used to make twenty years ago. I noticed now that they don’t even appear on their online menu. Not only are they not made the same way they used to, breaded and deep-​fried but the sauce was ghastly. The sauce had an extremely vinegary taste that to me didn’t resemble any kind of Mexican sauce I have ever had. The Chili’s himself’s were bland very tough. Guess it’s time to learn how to make them myself.

Drinks — cheap and decent. Food — awful and awful. Granted this is a divey spot that serves Mexican food so I should probably blame myself for ordering chile rellenos at 11:30 pm on a Saturday night. On the other hand, this food was terrible. Honestly, my guess is that prepackaged food is purchased here and then placed on an oven safe plate until the plate is «finished». Dead giveaway is the fact that our plates were about 350 degrees to the touch. Our bartender warned us, but you know us men like to find things out the hard way sometimes. Anyway, come here for a drink. Stay far away from the food — I doubt Bobby D ate anything when he played here.

great drink specials, I got a salty dog for a buck 75. Can’t beat that price.
Did not eat there though. I would say it had a neighborhood bar feel. This place is best for those who live within walking distance. Not sure I would bother getting in my car to head there.
Homeless hangout?
I will try the food sometime before I give a final judgement.

A little back story, this place was started by Pete Contos, a Greek guy who came here with no money to his name but big ambitions. He started this restaurant in I believe the 60’s, after being a dishwasher and bartender during most of his youth. He didn’t have much money to start it so he went in with a partner. It was one of the first places born on Colfax with an intention to fix up the area. Many rockstars hung out around here during this time (my dad is familiar, they are all obviously before my time). He had many nights of disruptive, rough customers. He later went on to open Pete”s next door and then several other restaurants on Colfax and the south Denver area. He is about 85 years old now. He is truly an example of the American dream and how hard work can pay off. He also paved the way for improving Colfax.
My dad, brother, and I are regulars here. The service is generally consistently pretty good, especially when we get a server that recognizes/​remembers us. They know our order without us having to say anything. That means a lot and makes us feel consistently valued as customers here.
Our last visit was HORRENDOUS. We came on a holiday, I think Christmas Eve or sometime during early lunchtime. There were several patrons and one blond server. She was pretty but had a BAD ATTITUDE. She took FOREVER to greet us and rolled her eyes several times at us. She was complaining one of the waitresses called in. We were understanding, that would really suck and obviously will slow down service, but that is no excuse to treat us poorly, it’s not like it was our fault.
When I got a burrito with an enchilada on the side she gave me this wide eyed bitchy look and said, «That’s a lot of food!» umm, sorry? I’ll be sure to order less and tip you less. She was so unpleasant and awkward it really interfered with enjoying time with my family whom I don’t get to see enough. If I wasn’t so familiar with this place, I would give it one star, and call Pete to insist on firing this dreadful woman. This was the only time she has waited on us though (thankfully) and hopefully I never have to see her heavily painted face again. This is the reason for a lack of a star
ANYWAYS. The burritos here are great. We tend to go for the smothered chicken and sour cream burritos most of the time. Enchiladas are small and have the same sauce as the burritos (wish they did enchilada sauce on these instead of green chili though). The chicken chipotle is phenomenal!
The service is usually good, we just came at the wrong time when someone had the wrong attitude. This place has a lot of history. I have tons of respect for the owner. The food is a good value for what you are paying, and they keep the free chips & salsa coming. Me, my dad, and my bro will be regulars here forever.
I love sharing this place with my incredible family.

Cool environment very delicious tacos!! if you’re into the heat thing I recommend soft steak tacos, plus the Mexican wings are bomb!!:-)

Just the look of this place is enough to keep me coming back. Tinted slit windows. Neon everywhere. It’s small-​ish and divey in the best way possible, and feels like a mid-​century time capsule. Neither the food nor the cocktails are particularly unique, but it’s a classic dive and it serves that purpose superbly for myself and other East Colfax locals.

Pete’s Satire is rather folly-​filled and rife with shortcomings, by which I mean that while its food is just okay (though there’s definitely better Mexican food in Denver – even just down the street) its pitcher of Margaritas is truly forgettable. Put simply, I shared a pitcher with my girlfriend, which amounted to four drinks each, and left feeling Utah sober. What’s frustrating is that a lady across the bar from us, all a shiver, complained about how strong the individual Margaritas were. (I’ll take a single Marg next time.) Now, the food. The Chicken Nachos were delightfully filled with meat, and the green chile wasn’t all that bad. Even so, the guacamole on top looked as though it had been prepared earlier that afternoon, and no one thought to leave the avocado pit in. Brown, verging on brownish brown. The server was nice, but the service was slow. It took about 15 minutes to get the drinks from order to delivery (I assume the bartender was trying to figure out how to use the jigger, which bottle was Tequila, and whether the tequila, triple sec, and lime juice went into the bottom or the top of the pitcher). I get that a lot of people like dive bars, and I do too. But this is one I won’t frequent at all. I will, however, go back to get my free drink (I’ll juts be sure to ask the quality of the bartender before I head over).

I had a shredded beef burrito platter that was pretty tasty. The reason for only 2 stars? Service was lacking even though it wasn’t very busy. Our server didn’t refill our water cups once even though I’d drank half of mine before we even got our food. But the worst part was our beverage… One house margarita was $ 5 whereas a pitcher was $ 17. My boyfriend and I, wanting to enjoy our Friday night to the fullest, ordered a pitcher which amounted to about 4 margaritas each. Yes, 4 margaritas EACH — and tequila usually hits me fast — but after those 4 margaritas, we were looking at each other like «What’s up with the Mormon bartender?» because I’m not convinced there was any alcohol in that pitcher whatsoever. (Sorry to our LDS brethren — ’tis a joke.)
Once at home and fully realizing that our bellies were chock-​full of kool-​aid, my fella decided to (politely) give feedback about the wretched margaritas to the manager on duty. She was happy for the helpful info and handled the situation well but being that our first experience here was so surprisingly disappointing, we don’t ever plan to go back.

What’s not to like about a kitschy dive bar on Colfax? The weird accoutrement behind the bar make the vibe of this place all the more real and all the more fun. I like that it’s not a huge place but when you need a drink it’ll serve.
What’s really cool is that you can order from the Pete’s Kitchen menu even though you are in the bar. Talk about the best of both worlds. I get the feeling they don’t like customers ordering food on this side very much so choose your time wisely when you ask for munchies. Still, it’s a nice option.
Remember — it’s The Fax. You can see anything from a bachelorette party to a smelly old man sleeping in the corner. It’s that kind of variety that keep me coming back. The perfect midway point to stop if you are on a bar crawl.
The bartendress on my last visit was fun and engaging but she didn’t ignore any of her customers even though she was the only one working at the time. I like that laid back feel and the come as you are vibe of this place. If nothing else, it’s worth checking out for the craziness behind the bar — the décor, not the employees :-)

Wasn’t impressed at all. The service was bad and our «salsa» tasted like pizza sauce. Queso was fresh Velveeta but edible. The bar was packed and maybe we would have had a better time if were sitting there.
We paid, left and had dinner at another place. If you want authentic keep searching!

We love this place… food is great, the bartender is awesome… we made the mistake of sitting in the dining area… the waitress is horrible… on the phone the whole time we were here…

A sad place to take a shot of whiskey in the afternoon. Or talk to other orphan strangers on a holiday. Décor is kitschy and nostalgic. Satire is the king of dive bars, and delivers accordingly.

Music is a surprisingly important element to any quality bar. The key, I feel, is variety. You don’t really want all of the same kind of music playing. And on that count, the Satire has some of the best bar music.
Ray Charles turned to Johnny Cash, which morphed into The Wallflowers which melded into a David Bowie song then went straight into an old Aretha number.
Good music is the perfect soundtrack to good drinking. You can do plenty of the latter at Satire as well with cheap beers and drinks flowing all night.
It had been awhile since I’d been in the Satire and the place looks quite spiffy actually. It’s all marble counters and sleek wood chairs. They also have several decent sized TVs so you can watch your favorite game here. And the clientele is obviously very Colfax, which is exactly what I want.
The food is ok… really no reason to eat here frankly, but you can in a pinch. This Satire is no joke; it’s seriously a great place to drink and that is exactly what I’ll do here.

Food… not good… service…bad. The one cocktail waitress was very nice, but very overwhelmed by 3 tables. Forgot
to put in our food order, another table walked out and it clearly blew her mind. The bartender with 2 customers at the bar stood and watched the table leave, left our pitcher of Margaritas empty for 15 min while we listened to the server complain that she can not be at people’s «beck and call» when it came time for the check there were items that needed to be removed, we then asked to split our bill ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ and she charged one of us for the full bill and the other for half. She was very nice, but really overwhelmed. I really see no reason to return. Someone should really help the bartender with her shitty attitude towards her coworkers. If she wasn’t so lazy the service from the waitress might not have been so strained.

Looking for some place to eat at 10:00pm on a Thursday? Everything else nearby was closed or closing, so we decided to go over here for some Mexican food in a dive bar.
I was half-​expecting to feel ill afterwards, but it was actually not bad! The food isn’t out of this world, but we had two PBRS, two shots of Casadores, a veggie burrito and huevos rancheros for $ 32.90 pre-​tip. Our server was super sweet, although she didn’t really know the menu well, but she was attentive and asked others for information when necessary. The burrito was huge, packed with sour cream (love it!) and was still good for lunch the next day.
Oh and their kitchen is open very late, until 1:30 I believe. Late night food score!

I’m not quite sure what they’re going for in here. Decided to stop in because the sign is so cool. The inside doesn’t match the intrigue of the outside; way too obvious modern furniture in a place that seems like it used to be divey. No so anymore — or not so exactly. It was just … odd.
Not a lot of people there and the ones that were didn’t match the look of the place … though I suppose I didn’t, either. The drinks were good, however, and the staff was attentive.
I’d probably try it again, just to try and pin down exactly what’s going on in there.

I’ve been to Satire a handful of times before and didn’t really have an opinion of it one way or another. It’s pretty close to home and has food late at night… it was recently redone. The décor seems a bit over-​the-​top for a place on Colfax but I suppose it’s better than being dirty and gross.
I went this weekend and my friend and I sat at the little bar space between the main bar and the dining room. I think this was a service «dead zone.» My friend was starving so we went up to the bar to grab menus. They wouldn’t give us menus. Why? Because our server would do that. So we sat and waited another 15 minutes for the alleged server (luckily we made sure to grab beers at the bar). Finally went back to the bar to insist on menus and they eventually alerted the dining room area server to our presence.
I got an enchilada. It was… edible. Bursting with cheap cheese but still like $ 4 for one. My friend had a chili rellano on his plate which I snagged a bite of. It most certainly originated as frozen food from the nobel sysco truck. Maybe they shouldn’t «specialize» in Mexican food? I’ve had the nachos before and they weren’t terrible, but it’s hard to screw those up.
I probably won’t be making it over to the Satire again any time soon.

I’m not telling. How many years I’ve been going to the Satire, that is. Let’s just say many, many moons have passed. I used to live right around the corner and spent way too much time drinking their infamous blue margaritas. The crowd was quite iffy but my friends and I were young and living in the big city for the first time and a slightly «dangerous» vibe made us feel all grown up. The Satire was the perfect East Colfax dive and it still pretty much is, although on a recent visit I notice that both the clientele and décor have had some work done.
Not so much of a barfly anymore but I still stop in for what I would have to call Greco/​Mexi food (not cuisine). In case you didn’t know it Pete, in addition to his empire of Greek restaurants, owns the Satire. In fact I think the vanity plate on his Caddy still says «Satire». Say what you will about all of his restaurants, they are dependable if not earthmoving. The food at the Satire is not always what I crave. It’s certainly not authentic Mexican or even authentic Colorado Mexican food but I like it once in awhile. Chips and salsa are always fresh and the salsa has a little attitude. I actually like the «chile rellenos» which are unlike any others I’ve had — not deep fried and covered in a sweetish red sauce. Smothered burritos are a good bet — pretty much their take on all the standard Mexican items are OK. And, did I mention cheap?
So, the food is pretty good and the drinks are strong. If you find yourself on this stretch of Colfax, you might give it a try. And, if you’ve been here you know «this plate is hot».