Denver may not have a Little Italy (not anymore, at least), but we're still hungry for Italian. So hungry, in fact, that when we started tallying the best Italian restaurants in the metro area, we decided to split the category in two: modern Italian and old-school red-sauce joints.

What's the difference? We could talk about style of service or creative interpretations of the cuisine or regional specialties or the roots of Italian-American dishes, but it really comes down to the chicken parm rule. If a restaurant has chicken parmesan on the menu, it falls into the red-sauce category.