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There are just eight more days to vote in the Best of Denver 2015 Readers' Poll, which includes more than eighty Food & Drink categories, all of which will appear in the final issue on March 26 — with Westword picks along with the readers' choices. In the first round of voting, readers chose these for their five finalists in Best Italian Restaurant: Osteria Marco, Panzano, Sarto's, Patsy's and Trattoria Stella. And that list inspired this response from Kerri:
And in true hipster douchebaggery that the transplants love so much, you don't mention the favorites from my neighborhood. North Denver has Patsy's, Gaetano's, Dino's, Pagliacci's, etc.
Sorry, Kerri, but north Denver hasn't had Pagliacci's for almost three years; after five decades, the family-owned restaurant closed its doors in August 2012. The building that housed it has been replaced by Lumina, a massive retail/residential complex that you can see as you drive along I-25. The neon clown that topped Pagliacci's was saved, though, and we hear that it will be reinstalled on the back of the new complex, where drivers will still be able to see it.
Dino's is still in business, as are Patsy's and Gaetano's, but the latter are both under new owners. Patsy's was sold to a descendant of the Aiello family that founded it back in the '20s; Gaetano's, which passed from the Smaldone family to the Breckenridge-Wynkoop Group, is now in the hands of former Wynkoop employee Ron Robinson.
Have you tried the new Gaetano's? The new/old Patsy's? What do you think of the red-sauce joints in north Denver?
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