Dave Chung is not an influencer. He’ll tell you that himself, though probably not in those exact words. He doesn’t post videos with selfies at viral spots, except he does show himself eating. But he wields real influence with anyone who follows his videos, especially when it comes to his food recommendations.
The Korean American content creator has built one of Denver’s most-watched local YouTube channels on a simple premise: this city is worth paying attention to, and too many people — newcomers, visitors, even longtime residents — don’t know where to look.
So he shows them.
His curiosity for seeking out food has been part of his life as long as he can remember. When he was a high school student in Boston, for instance, he and a couple of friends saw a TV commercial for Quizno’s, the sandwich chain that had been founded in Denver in 1981 and by the 2000s had expanded to almost 5,000 shops across the country. The closest one to his high school was 90 minutes away, but Chung and his pals didn’t hesitate to drive the distance to try the food. He laughs about it today.
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“It was Quiznos. Freaking Quiznos,” he says. “In a mall. That was it – a mall food court and we drove out there just because we wanted to try it and you know, that’s just kind of who I’ve always been.”
Even before that, traveling around for good food was instilled in his culinary DNA as a child. “Absolutely, yeah,” he recalls. “Growing up there were only so many Korean and Japanese restaurants that were out there, and you know my parents were first generation immigrants, and so we drove all over the place to go to random restaurants. Like to us, it was kind of nothing to drive 45 minutes to get freaking tonkatsu. My parents just thought it was always worth the drive to try the best or what people thought was the best version of a dish. We grew up doing that all the time. So I think that that was totally instilled in us too.”
After Boston, Chung moved to Northern California, spent a decade navigating Los Angeles, working new media jobs including writing and shooting content for Rotten Tomatoes, the movies review site, and eventually landed in the Denver area, where he began documenting the area as a side gig (he jokes that he holds down four jobs) during the Covid pandemic with the eye of someone still slightly amazed by Colorado. His channel covers things to do, places to eat, and hidden corners of a city that he thinks tends to undersell itself. With 27,000 subscribers, his videos have racked up more than seven million views. His goal is to gain 100,000 subscribers so he can get a silver plaque like other YouTubers that he can display alongside his Nuggets paraphernalia on the shelf behind him, something his kids request.
Food accounts for roughly half his output. Of that, Asian restaurants claim a significant share — not because of any programmatic mission, but because that’s where his appetite and his curiosity naturally converge. He’s the kind of eater who gravitates toward the mom-and-pop spots, the places whose signage doesn’t promise much but whose kitchens deliver everything.
What sets Chung apart from the army of food influencers flooding Denver’s restaurant scene is his instinct for storytelling over spectacle. He’s not doing the trembling-fork-over-ramen-bowl routine. He’s on camera as a host, a guide, a person genuinely interested in the place and the people behind it — talking to viewers rather than performing for them. The camera catches something real: an easy smile, a natural ease, a sense that he actually wants to be there.
Dave Chung’s home office with his Nuggets (and Rockies) collection behind him.
He does all of it himself. Writes, shoots, edits. He also holds a full-time job as a lead copywriter at Cash App, and his wife runs a therapy business. Ask him how many hours a week he works and the answer is the kind of number that makes most people tired just hearing it.
That level of output requires a certain discipline about what makes the cut. Chung approaches potential subjects the way a journalist might — research first, visit second, opinion earned rather than assumed. If something doesn’t hold up, it doesn’t go on the channel. That integrity hasn’t gone unnoticed. His audience has grown because viewers trust that he’s not just there because someone comped his meal.
Denver’s Asian food scene has exploded in recent years, and Chung has been paying attention longer than most. He’s covered the new boba shops and ramen spots, the Thai and hot pot openings, the sushi restaurants that have quietly become serious destinations. But he’s equally drawn to the places that don’t generate press releases — the strip-mall Korean spot, the pho joint with three tables, the places that survive entirely on neighborhood loyalty.
There’s a moment that says something about who Dave Chung is. While filming near Sakura Square, Denver’s historic Japanese American cultural hub, someone apparently mistook him for a person experiencing homelessness. He tells the story with a laugh. The irony — an Asian American creator, doing exactly the kind of documentation that Sakura Square deserves — is not lost on him.
Denver’s restaurant PR machine is only beginning to discover him. That will change. In a food media landscape dominated by influencers chasing the next omakase invitation, Chung is doing something quieter and, ultimately, more durable: building a record of this city, one video at a time. He loves to shine a spotlight on the less-viral, less hyped restaurants, like the mom-and-pop shops, the ethnic eateries and the ”hidden gems” that populate many of his posts.
When he’s not putting together videos about food, Chung has turned his focus on other local highlights. He’s posted travel guides for destinations in Colorado, and reviews of events. And in his latest foodie post about eats in the northern suburbs, he inserted a thorough look at the amazing Anythink Nature Library in Thornton (which he notes has a café, so it’s “food adjacent”).
“Yeah, both of our kids were literally like, ‘I wish our library was like that.’ That’s exactly kind of what you want a library to do, you know, a place that kids actually want to go back to. Like, how cool is that?”
It’s definitely worth visiting Anythink Library next time you drive up to the northern ‘burbs to have a bite on Chung’s recommendation.
Dave Chung’s videos are collected on his website at DaveLovesDenver.com and on his YouTube channel.
Dining and Cooking