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Four pasta-heavy, Italian-inspired restaurants have opened across the Mile High City in the last three months. Call it a trend, or call it amore. But all four are very different, and diners will be hard-pressed to find two plates that taste the same.
The first was Boombots Pasta Shop, which opened in the Sunnyside neighborhood in November. That was followed in December by the Florence Supper Club and Johnny Bechamel’s, both landing in the neighborhoods west of Washington Park; and, most recently, Dear Emilia, which debuted in the River North Art District on January 29.
While all of these restaurants draw influence from Italy, they speak completely different languages.
“People crave pasta,” said Heather Morrison, co-owner of Dear Emilia and its sister spot, Restaurant Olivia, which just earned a James Beard nomination for Outstanding Hospitality. “There are a million different ways to do [pasta] and do it well; and I think the Denver scene is a really good example of that.
“There’s so much room in the market for every version of Italian,” she added. “Nobody’s holding each other back. Nobody’s judging each other for what they’re doing. We’re just a bunch of people who love restaurants, love pasta, and love Italian food.”
At Dear Emilia, the menu is a tribute to Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, filtered through Colorado sensibilities, and the kitchen offers dishes like anolini, a coin-shaped pasta filled with beef cheek and tossed in a Parmigiano crema and balsamic essence. There’s also a classic lasagna verde layered with Bolognese sauce and bechamel, and cappellacci, a type of tortellini filled with butternut squash and dressed in a squash miso jus.
A few years ago, Morrison and co-owners Austin Carson and Ty Leon visited Emilia-Romagna and were impressed by how deeply local everything felt, with neighbors sourcing from one another and communities eating directly from the land, she said. “We were so taken by the ingredients, hospitality, and warmth of every place we went.”
Where Dear Emilia’s mission is to stay true to the culinary traditions of northern Italy, Boombots’ is to completely push the boundaries of what pasta can be.
That’s why you’ll find dishes like smoked duck and green chile lumache made with semolina pasta, everything-seasoned cavatelli stroganoff with porcini pasta, and samosa agnolotti made with curry-flavored pasta.
“The whole idea is to look at pasta through a different lens and make it really fun and creative, ” said founder Cliff Blauvelt, who also owns Odie B’s sandwich shop with his wife, Cara. “Everybody knows what a samosa is, but being able to stuff it in something different is really cool. And when you eat it all together, it really tastes like a samosa, it’s pretty wild.”
Perfecting the shop’s eclectic flavor combinations took a lot of trial and error, he added. For the dirty martini bucatini, for instance, which is made with an olive pasta, the team spent significant time dialing in the right olive flavor, experimenting with everything from olive leaf (which proved too bitter) to dehydrating Castelvetrano olives to turn them into a powder.
“That’s the cool thing, you can really manipulate the pasta [doughs] into different things. It takes time and practice, but you can get there,” he shared.
While northwest Denver was once known as the heart of the city’s Italian restaurant scene, the neighborhoods around Washington Park are now making their own case.
The longstanding Carmine’s at 92 S. Pennsylvania St. – which has been serving comfort dishes like bolognese, carbonara, shrimp scampi, ravioli and lasagna since 1994 – now has a bit of competition with the recent openings of Johnny Bechamel’s right across the street at 81 S. Pennsylvania St., and Florence Supper Club a few blocks away at 375 S. Pearl St.
“I think we are different than Florence or Carmines,” said chef Spencer White, who owns Johnny Bechamel’s along with Dio Mio, Redeemer Pizza and Little Johnny B’s with business partner Alex Figura. “Alex and I start cooking and think we’re going to make an Italian-American restaurant, but they distinctly always become our own with our little touches on everything.”
The restaurant features playful twists on classic offerings like deliciously sacrilegious matzo meatballs, made with ground pork and chicken rather than matzo meal, and sitting in chicken broth and dill oil; and lasagnette, which features mushrooms and leeks stuffed between only two sheets of lasagna and smothered in bechamel sauce.
The menu also features “doughnuts” as an appetizer (fried dough filled with Parmesan cream and topped with prosciutto). Clearly a nod to gnocco fritto, which can also be found on Dear Emilia’s menu, their version is meant to be torn open and stuffed with the domestic prosciutto and pear mostarda it’s served with.
“It’s definitely more Jersey Italian,” White added. “But it’s definitely not true Italian-American.”
Florence Supper Club also claims East Coast roots, but favors tradition over reinterpretation. Where Johnny Bechamel’s riffs and remixes, Florence delivers on the straightforward classics like meatballs in red sauce made with Jersey tomatoes, lasagna Bolognese, chicken parmesan, and spicy rigatoni that feels lifted directly from the tri-state area.
“These are the dishes I grew up with,” said chef and co-owner Miles Odell, who is originally from New Jersey. He sees Florence, which he runs with business partner and New York native Paul Lysek, as a tribute to how Italian food has evolved on the East Coast.
“Over several generations of Italians immigrating to America, this style of cuisine developed. We’re trying to pay our respects to the food we grew up with and really keep those classic flavors,” he added.
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Sara Rosenthal
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