Seafood Bar Traveling Mercies Is a Keeper

Where:

Stanley Marketplace, 2501 Dallas St., Suite 311, Aurora

The Draw:

Insanely fresh seafood; small and intimate space bathed in golden light at sunset

The Drawback:

The location can be hard to find (it’s upstairs!); drinks often pale in comparison with the food

Noise Level:

Medium

What To Order:

Oysters, nightly tackle box, razor clams, mussels escabeche toast, shrimp cocktail, anchovy and baguette with beurre de baratte, house martini

Is Traveling Mercies a bar or a restaurant? Esquire, the James Beard Foundation, and this magazine have given the spot—the second Stanley Marketplace offering from Annette co-owners Caroline Glover and Nelson Harvey—best new bar nods. And then there’s Traveling Mercies’ own description, which plainly states that it’s a cocktail and oyster bar.

I, however, beg to differ.

At Traveling Mercies, the food should be what we’re raving about. In fairness, cocktails (including several zero-proof creations), wines (by the bottle and glass), and beers outnumber the dozen or so plated options threefold. But the array of simple, briny coastal fare is exactly what I want to eat when I don’t want to think too much. Those exquisite bites make Traveling Mercies—named for a phrase Glover’s mom uses to wish someone a safe journey—a dining destination, in my estimation, anyway.

You can decide for yourself by winding your way up to the third-floor space (once a viewing lounge for the long-gone Stapleton International Airport) and starting with the ever-changing tackle box. The jewel-case assemblage is essentially a nightly sampler platter, on which you might find two shucked, icy East Coast or West Coast oysters—with an optional caviar bump upgrade—plus plump shrimp, razor clams or mussels, and spreadable trout rillettes on any given visit. When available, do not miss a solo order of the razor clams, whose sweet meat is diced and mixed up in a bright medley of celery, leafy herbs, and lime juice before being presented in slim shells. Also hope for the mussels escabeche toast: a hunky slice of bread slathered with aïoli, dotted with the vinegary shellfish, and garnished with pickled mustard seeds and dill.

Constants include marinated olives, an abundant serving of shrimp cocktail, and a composed salad that recently switched from a terrific iceberg slab with blue cheese to a creative take on a Caesar, but the menu largely changes to reflect what’s fresh. For those still hemming and hawing about eating seafood in a landlocked state, hear this: Traveling Mercies sits 22 minutes from Denver International Airport, where shipments of pristine catch (fished out of the water yesterday!) arrive daily, so you can enjoy fresher oysters in this corner of Aurora than if you were on the East Coast dining on bivalves pulled from Washington’s Puget Sound.

Still, there were a couple of hiccups: I wished the oeuf tonnato, a dish of soft-boiled egg dressed with creamy anchovy and tuna sauce and overlaid with two anchovy fillets, was a tad saltier or zested with lemon. Either addition would have popped the flavor and brightened each bite. Also, there was so much of the silky tonnato (which ate like a cross between aïoli and tartar sauce) that I wanted bread to mop it all up.

And, particularly if we’re considering Traveling Mercies a bar first, the cocktails need more balance.

The Hills are Alive is billed as “the equivalent of biting into a crisp apple on a brisk walk in the Italian Alps,” but it really isn’t. It goes down smoothly, and the column of crystal clear ice is a neat trick, but I wished for more depth. The Misirlou leans on rhum (rawer and funkier than traditional rum), but with such clean and delicate flavors coming from the seafood, the tropical nature of the drink detracts more than it adds. From the lengthy list of zero-proof drinks, I ordered the very beautiful Third Way; its purple tint and vague floral flavor is reminiscent of an aviation, but a cloying sweetness fills the void of booze.

The exception is the house martini, which can be ordered as a single or a double. In either case, you have the choice of Kyro dry gin or Ketel One vodka accented with house-made oyster shell vermouth, tomato water, and brine. Bracingly cold, savory as heck, and garnished with an olive, a cornichon, a pickled onion, and a lemon twist, the cocktail is the platonic ideal of the dirty martini.

When I think about Traveling Mercies, I rearrange the description to an oyster house—or even a seafood restaurant—with cocktails. The edible offerings are on par with the legendary Saltie Girl in Boston and Renee Erickson’s Barnacle Bar in Seattle. But in the end, it doesn’t matter how you categorize Traveling Mercies. Go for the seafood, go for the drinks—just go.

Read More: The 25 Best Restaurants in Denver in 2025: Traveling Mercies

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4 Non-Seafood Restaurants for Oysters in Denver

Alteño

Chef Johnny Curiel’s new Cherry Creek restaurant relies heavily on the foods his father grew up with in the Mexican coastal state of Jalisco, including oysters with tangy chile güero mignonette, lemon, and crackers. 249 Clayton St., Denver (Cherry Creek)

Revival Denver Public House

This Uptown eatery offers regular specials from both coasts; choose them raw, baked, or broiled. If it’s your first time trying uncooked oysters, start with Oishis from Washington. These guys are small, low on brine, and cucumber-sweet on the finish. 630 E. 17th Ave., Denver (North Capitol Hill)

Cart-Driver

As it turns out, pizza and oysters make for an unusual but terrific combo, and at Cart-Driver’s RiNo and LoHi spots, these bivalves are shucked and left beautifully alone, save for DIY servings of fresh horseradish, zingy mignonette, and a lemon wedge. 2500 Larimer St., Denver (RiNo); 2239 W. 30th Ave., Denver (LoHi)

Read More: Where to Find Denver’s Best Pizza

Coperta

If you’re not going to slurp oysters straight from the shell, then make sure to order them at Coperta in Uptown. Here, the broiled mollusks taste less of the sea and more of char from the grill, brightened with citrus butter and Parmesan. 400 E. 20th Ave., Denver (North Capitol Hill)

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Read More:

• Caroline Glover’s Traveling Mercies Is the Ultimate Getaway Eatery
• Get to Know Aurora’s First James Beard Award–Winning Chef
• The 25 Best Restaurants in Denver in 2025: Traveling Mercies