La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal, Denver, CO

Oct 1, 2022

Written By: H.Couch

Back in April, during a Google search of Vegan Mexican restaurants in Denver, I took a screenshot of La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal for a later date. Well today became that later date. After another recent read about the local restaurant, it was time to try it out. Located in a very unassuming building on Larimer street in the Ballpark District & Five Points neighborhood. You could pass right by if you didn’t know where you were going. There is a simple cloth hanging from an awning that reads Tacos, Posole and Mezcal that lets you know you are here. A small, La Diabla, sign propping open the door helped mark that we were in the right spot.

Walking in, the atmosphere is dark and gives you the feeling of walking into the local hangout. The dim light and green glow sets an interesting mood for what seems more like a bar than a restaurant. All the things I had read about say that the posole is what to order. One Vegan posole please, add some chips and we are good. Well, I thought we were good.

And we’re waiting and waiting. Waiting to place our order, waiting for our chips and salsa, waiting for our food, waiting for some water, waiting for some napkins, waiting for Jon’s drink that he ordered. It’s like we had disappeared, except in an exceptionally small place with only a few other customers, but we hadn’t disappeared. We felt that we were ignored. I’m not sure if it was because we weren’t drinking any alcoholic drinks or that we didn’t order two meals and we were sharing, but for some reason we didn’t exist in the world of the La Diabla waitstaff.

Finally our chips arrive, a small handful. A little disappointing for $7 dollars. I know that inflation has been high and times have been tough, but how much are chips really? Then a nice big bowl of pozole soup arrives. Dressed with cabbage, limes, a vinegary salsa and some tostada shells on the side. The soup was full of veggies including mushrooms, squash and onions. Once our soup arrived, again we were chopped liver. No one asked if we needed anything or how the food was, it was just like thank you and goodbye. Our original waiter came by and said that he was helping this other group and that another waiter would be helping us for the rest of our stay. Well she did not, in fact she never came by once to check on us. The first waiter came by later and apologized that she did not help us and finalized our bill.