No. 98: E's clam linguini from Mangiamo Pronto
During the day, Mangiamo Pronto is a bustling cafe, where business types and studious academics, laptops in tow, converse over lattes, Italian pastries, breakfast frittatas and thin-crusted pizzas lobbed with everything from shavings of black truffles and apricot marmellata to eggplant caponata -- all of them utterly delicious.
But it's at night, when owner Enrique Guerrero unleashes his dinner menu seeded with pastas, that the restaurant, whose name translates to "Let's Eat Now!" really rallies. The pastas, all of which are made in house -- not by a machine but with callused hands -- are superb, but the clam linguini, simply called "E's," is the kind of dish that you hope for -- beg, bite and go grabby for -- when you visit an Italian restaurant. Edged with juicy little neck clams wreathing a mound of butter-kissed, garlicky linguini tossed with specks of pancetta and peppered with julienned arugula, it's a dish that makes you gladly surrender to its glorious, unrestrained richness.
Hungry for more? All the dishes in our countdown are linked below:
No. 100: Italian wedding soup from the Squeaky Bean No. 99: American Classic Burger (and fries) from Tarbell's
In late 2009, we embarked on a culinary journey that took us through our favorite dishes in the Mile High City -- one hundred, to be exact -- as a precursor to the Best of Denver issue. Now we're back with round two, counting down (in no particular order) a hundred more of our favorite Denver dishes in a list that, by our imperfect calculations, should be wrapped up by the time the Best of Denver 2011 hits the streets on March 31. In the meantime, if there's a dish you think we need to try, tell us about it in the comments section below, or shoot us an e-mail at [email protected].
