Bite Me

That's All, Folks

Comments (0) By Jason Sheehan Thursday, Aug 18 2005

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Gaetano's Restaurant

3760 Tejon St.
Denver, CO 80211

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Northwest Denver

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But after talking with Susan Klos, Piatti's manager, I think there could be something to this Locali concept. Piatti's chef, Mario Godoy, now spends his weekends hunting through farmers' markets in Boulder and Cherry Creek, looking for ingredients. The kitchen is using Torpedo Farms pork out of Pueblo, Haystack and Bingham Hill cheese, Sun Valley tomatoes and striped bass from Alamosa. The new menu -- which went into effect in the heat of the summer and also represents the roll-out of the Piatti Locali branding -- features homemade fettuccines with Hazel Dell mushrooms, wood-fired pizzas with MouCo's Colorado camembert, and roasted chicken with Palizzi Farm veggies on the side.

While it's nice for a national restaurant to use local ingredients, what really counts is when the cooks start to feel it. "As you can imagine, the kitchen is doing great now," Klos says, explaining that the Locali change has been in the works for the past eighteen months or so, and the galley crews have been working with these new ingredients -- coming up with dishes to feature the home team's products -- since early spring. They're into it. And Godoy? Rather than rely on faxes and produce lists, he's out doing his own shopping -- squeezing the tomatoes and touching the lettuce. There's no better inspiration than that for a chef.