On those days, I head for the nearest gourmet takeout spot where I can get main courses, sides, desserts, breads--you name it--already cooked and ready for nuking. The dishes available at such places are often much more complicated than anything I'd ever consider making for a weeknight supper, and usually the prices fairly reflect the labor involved. But, hey--some days I'd pay any price.
The number of gourmet-takeout locations in the Denver area has increased significantly over the past year. For once, we're keeping up with the trends. Food & Wine magazine's recent issue listing the top 100 hot food topics named gourmet takeout as one of this year's biggies, and they certainly have my vote.
But Pasta Pasta Pasta was way ahead of the pack. This place has been offering homemade pastas, salads and other dishes for takeout since 1986, when co-owners and sisters-in-law Patti and Lisa Miller started their little shop. They were both proficient cooks and expert pasta-makers, so initially they offered the public nothing but fresh noodles and sauces for carryout, along with a few sandwiches and pasta salads that you could eat there at lunchtime. Gradually, though, their customers began asking for more involved preparations. "Through the years, we found that people wanted elaborate dishes that they could take home and serve for dinner," Patti says. "So now we have two or three main courses a day, plus veggies and antipasti and desserts, too."
The menu changes daily--the price for dinner takeout is always by weight and varies according to that day's market price of ingredients--but a few items are such customer favorites that Patti and Lisa can't take them off the menu. The most popular seems to be the roast chicken they offer on Monday nights. "It always comes out of the oven at 5 p.m.," Patti says. I got there a little after that, but the pieces were still warm, their crisp skin covered with balsamic vinegar and herbs that had soaked right into the juicy meat. There was a hint of lemon, too, but not so much that it took over.
Patti says they try to always have at least one poultry item on hand. On one visit, the woman behind the counter said the entree was turkey scallopine; while the turkey was indeed scallop-shaped, it had been rolled around spinach and thinly sliced, then baked in a deliciously onion-heavy chunky tomato sauce. Another time it was chicken done a la milanaise, the breasts coated with breadcrumbs mixed with parmesan and fried with a mere hint of butter. (On the side, I sampled a chilled salad of pasta, broccoli, carrots and roasted red peppers that had been drenched in a balsamic-kissed vinaigrette.)
As good as the chicken dishes were, I'd have to say that my favorite Pasta Pasta Pasta entree was the rotoli ($6.95). Thin, freshly made pasta had been wrapped around ricotta blended with spinach--almost of a pureed consistency--then brushed with a creamy tomato sauce. After trying this rich, decadent pasta at Pasta Pasta Pasta for lunch--when it was perfectly sided by a simple green salad doused with a pungent Italian dressing and their crusty house-made bread--I went back a week later and got another batch to take home to my family.
And as good as the rotoli was, I'd have to say that my favorite Pasta Pasta Pasta item overall was the cassata ($2.50 per slice), a Sicilian delicacy that layers liquor-soaked pound cake--Patti uses Grand Marnier--with chocolate and ricotta. Patti says her ricotta pie is even better, which, if true, means that I'm going to have to sell my soul to the devil to get the recipe.
A mile down the road from Pasta Pasta Pasta is Cucina Leone. This place has been through the personnel mill since longtime Denver restaurateur Jack Leone opened it in 1994; Leone is long gone, reportedly doing restaurants in Detroit, and since he left, there has been a succession of owners, chefs and general managers. Now it's the property of Boulder Concepts, the same company that owns both Bella Ristorantes, Wazoo's on Wazee, the Giggling Grizzly and Spanky's Roadhouse. But the food doesn't seem to have suffered during the changes--and Cucina Leone last year added a snazzy dining room where you can enjoy your meal if you don't want it for takeout.
These days the chef is John Bunting. He's still doing a few Jack Leone standards, such as the Caesar salad ($2.95 for a side) that jumps with garlic and comes extra-crunchy courtesy of focaccia croutons; the sauce on the pasta pomodoro ($7.95 for one portion) seemed familiar, too, with its strong garlic tomato sauce and showering of fresh basil. But the rotisserie chicken ($5.95 for a half), while still receiving the same tender roasting job, had an intense balsamic glaze that was new. And the fillet of chilled roasted salmon (7.95), a beautiful specimen, was coated with an innovative four-peppercorn mixture glued on with honey. In addition to the fish, on this stop I netted a filling side of penne pasta in a cheesy pesto sauce ($3.95), flavorful red-wine-vinegar-soaked green beans studded with gorgonzola and walnuts ($3.95), and a portion of garlic mashed potatoes ($1.95).
Other dishes worth checking out: the wood-fired Leone pizza ($7.95), with its perfect proportion of wild mushrooms, pancetta, caramelized onions and goat cheese, and the Tuscan pasta ($7.95), which pairs angel hair with a chicken broth brimming with roasted chicken shards, artichoke hearts, tomatoes and cannellini. The only misstep I've encountered thus far was the dry roast beef on the focaccia sandwich ($5.95), an otherwise inspired combination of red onions, roasted red bell peppers and goat cheese. But a slice of chocolate oblivion ($4.50) more than made up for that, since there's nothing a dense, dense flourless chocolate cake can't cure.
So far, the nine-month-old What's Fresh & Wild has offered only takeout, but chef/owner Desiree Ainsworth may change that if she moves to a new location. Although Ainsworth, a former caterer, waitress, hostess and pastry chef, has been in the restaurant industry for twenty years, she's relatively new to the gourmet-takeout game. Her biggest problem has been the site, in what was Jacob's Bagelry at Downing and Alameda, and she lists parking as her number-one headache. "I'm looking to take this somewhere else," Ainsworth says. "But that won't happen for quite a while."
In the meantime, she's serving up well-prepared takeout fare. All of the recipes are Ainsworth's, and she does all her own cooking, the hardest part of which is knowing how much to make each day. "This is an unusual business," she says. "Unlike the restaurant, I have to make a heaping amount of everything and try to keep it looking and tasting good for a while as it sits in a display case. I'm still working some of the kinks out."
The only kink I found was that the roast beef ($8.95) was inedibly chewy and fatty: I think the meat's fibers had seized up after sitting around for so long. But the mushroom jus and two sides that came with the meat--a comfortable helping of apple-flavored carrot disks and chivey mashed potatoes--were top-notch. Those same sides came with the meatloaf ($7.95), two thick pieces iced with a sweet sauce, and the caper-butter-coated salmon fillet ($11.95), which had been undercooked just enough to survive a later microwave job. I also took home a helping of cheese-loaded au gratin potatoes ($1.75 for a side) and a unique beet salad ($2.95 for a small) with mixed greens held together by a fresh ricotta that Ainsworth special-orders.
What's Fresh also offers a selection of imported prepared foods and Colorado-made jams that I have yet to try. And while I'm eager to test the carrot cake and banana-bread pudding she says she makes regularly, every time I've dropped by, she's been out. Fortunately, you can order those desserts, along with her dinner specials, a day ahead, and she'll have it all ready and waiting.
Now if she would just do my laundry.
Pasta Pasta Pasta, 278 Fillmore, 377-2782. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday.
Cucina Leone, 763 South University Boulevard, 722-5466. Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.
What's Fresh and Wild, 290 South Downing Street, 722-6137. Hours: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday; 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday; 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday.
