But at least Bonanno's salumi locker — with all that salty, fat-licked sausage, prosciutto and other meaty addictions — will no longer be a bone of contention. Late in December, nine months after the first complaint came in about Osteria Marco and eight months after Bonanno started working with the department to make his salumi production legal, Lee signed off on Bonanno's HACCP plan for the production of non-heat-treated, dry, fermented sausages and non-heat-treated whole-muscle salumis. The plan, he says, will allow Luca D'Italia — the only restaurant in Denver that's officially approved for in-house salumi-making — to operate as a commissary kitchen that can supply house-cured meats for the Bonanno Concepts restaurants. Bonanno, along with two other licensed chefs on his staff, will have the authority to produce — and serve — his own prosciutto, bresaola, coppa, spalla, lardo, guanciale, pancetta, finocchiona, sopressata, speck and lonza.
And none of this, Bonanno admits, would have been possible without Lee's assistance. "Our relationship started changing for the better once we first applied for our HACCP plan. Danica knew that she had to work with us, and she single-handedly made it happen — and, honestly, without her unbelievable cooperation and help, we would have never gotten this approved," he says. "She's eager to learn, she's been amazingly open-minded and forward-thinking, and I can't give her enough credit. It just goes to show you that when we and the health inspectors work together, a lot can be accomplished."
Frank Bonanno
Pete Meersman
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While Bonanno, who regularly cooks at all of his restaurants, still gets cranky about some of the department's policies, he and his staffs are doing everything they "possibly can to comply with the health department," he says. "We have a checklist for every restaurant, and every day, the chef or the sous chef goes through the checklist and basically does an inspection of things that we used to get dinged for — making sure the hand sink is clean, making sure that gloves are available everywhere in the kitchen.
"If you stay on top of things, and if the health department is more understanding about what really makes people sick — none of us want to do that — then I think we can have a good relationship," he adds. "I hope that 2013 is a better year for all of us."
