Shake Shack RiNo — Restaurant in Denver

Not to be morbid in a restaurant review, but I am a dying man, given only several months to live from 86% total heart failure. It is a terrible way to die; essentially a controlled (at best) drowning. There is a constant existential sense of dread. It does not help that there is also a strong sense of hopelessness and depression. In my particular case there is also the fact that I am totally alone and poverty stricken and lacking in good food or luxuries of any kind. I just attained housing after 2 brutal years ( and winters) in the Colorado cold. My heart was blown up by massive heart attacks in my last Denver homeless camp housing sweeps several weeks ago. I went from perfectly healthy to dead man walking just like that. Needless to say, these have been the hardest few weeks of my life. So today when I realized I was craving real food and had 20 pills to take I surprised myself by suddenly picking up the phone and calling shake shack and asking the manager to feed me. He agreed just like that and invited me to come anytime before he left. It was only his naked decency that allowed me to make the trip there. Noone in my position wants to be patronized or rejected. When I arrived I was welcomed as an honored guest and told to order whatever I wanted. Which I proceeded to do. I am sure my cardiologist would not have been happy. But I was. To the point of tears and humility. In a city often cold to those in my situation,I was shown what the Golden rule means. The food was awesome and the staff could not have been kinder. Tim, you are a credit to your company and your humanity. I simply cannot thank you enough for your subtle understated kindness that even now leaves me in tears. I just want to find the words to say that such decency deserves to be rewarded. Please, Denver, make a point of doing business with the Shake Shack on Larimer and let them know that you encourage such kindness in our society. It was such a small thing, but so very unusual in our often cold corporate world. Such kindness harkens back to a day when perhaps we cared more for one another. I encourage anyone reading this to pass this story on and tell their friends and family that our local Shake Shack embodies the very qualities we would all wish of our corporate neighbors. God bless you Denver. And especially God bless you Tim, you and your restaurant. You are a model for the rest of us. Overwhelm them with business Denver. Let their corporate rivals see what good...

Famished in the evening after a run through Meow Wolf, the partner and I decided we needed more food before bed because dinner beforehand didn't cut it. Enter standing on a bustling corner with seemingly dozens of restaurant options on a busy holiday weekend in Denver while your stomach is trying to suck in your spine. Dietary restrictions mean limited options in the best of circumstances, luckily Shake Shack had me covered! A gluten free bun (fluffy and delightful but very crumbly unfortunately) AND a mushroom burger?! That's not all. Plant based shake 😮 I haven't had a chocolate shake in YEARS. the place was loud and crowded and the gal at the register was brand new, asking the manager lots of questions before she even got to our order. Admittedly, dietary restriction orders can be a PITA 🫓 and frustrating for all involved, luckily she was very patient and took time to enter my order right and ask questions despite the line and hustle going on around her. Confident in our exchange, we moved to sit. Every table was dirty. The one trash can observable was full past the brim to where patrons were setting their food and beverage refuse on the tops/around it. (the other trashcan in the back was barely touched, hardly visible) I can imagine with the holiday rush it was impossible to keep up with so if this location gets knocked for it, have some grace!

Order number called, we sit to dig in and....I find out the portabello for the vegan burger is deep fried (and thus not gf) and filled with cheese? Also there was a whole entire rare beef patty on the burger. Fortunately everything was labeled clearly indicating which burger was gluten free, though it was no longer technically the truth. LESSON LEARNED. Take the time to read a little more thoroughly before ordering and specify that a vegan burger shouldn't have a bloody meat disc on it 🥲

I'll be dreaming about that plant based chocolate shake for at least another week though 🍀

Hope to try...

I think I had a really mixed experience here so I'll start off on the negative and end on the positive. On the more poor side of things the cashier that took our order was pretty low energy and we had kind of a hard time understanding her and vice a versa. She got our order wrong so then we had to go back and fix it and then we had to go back again to get the difference in money back after we realized that our actual order cost less than what we were charged for so that was a little frustrating. Also the food took quite a long time to come out which kinda increased my frustration. Also if you're just getting a straight hamburger without any of the bells and whistles I think there are other shops that just pound for pound have better ingredients for the same price. However with all of that out of the way, their fancier burgers are quite good there flavors are delicious and the burgers are cooked well. The place is clean and well lit and has a very modern down town vibe. The fries are some of the best in Colorado, they came out hot and crispy and perfectly seasoned and I don't even normally like crinkle cut fries.

EDIT: we went back here but ordered through the app and had a much better experience than the above review. We placed our order on the way to shake shack through the app which was easy and intuitive (and for an anti social person like myself has the added benefit of not having to talk to a person) and they sent me a text saying roughly when our food would be ready. Initially I was bummed because the estimated time was going to be quite a bit after we were going to get there and I thought oh boy here we go again waiting around for our food. However right as we were pulling in I got a text saying our food was ready and we got our order right away and it was even still hot by the time we got home! Overall I'm really satisfied with the online experience which I realize is kind of comparing apples and oranges but still worth an...