Leven Debuts Wash Park Location, Introduces Pizza

Six years after opening the highly popular and successful Leven Deli in the Golden Triangle, proprietor Anthony Lygizos and his team opened the first of two planned expansions, Leven Supply, on Monday, January 13, at 300 East Alameda Avenue near Wash Park.

Leven Deli made its mark with naturally leavened sourdough breads that serve as the foundation for classic deli sandwiches featuring a range of house-prepared meats, mustards, pickles and spreads. Leven Supply builds upon that history, with about 60 percent of the deli’s menu available at the new location. The two biggest differences are the addition of pizza and a market/gift shop offering gourmet ingredients, wine and grab-and-go meals.

According to Lygizos, a market was originally planned for Leven Deli as a nod to the traditional deli format, offering both counter-made sandwiches and goods to bring home — but customer demand forced a shift in focus.

“Part of opening a restaurant is having a concept and intention of what you’re going to offer, but also [being able to] best fit what the community wants,” he says. “And right out of the gate, everybody was like, this is a restaurant. But we always wanted to grow into this market.”

This is very much a conscious decision: Half of Leven Supply’s non-counter space is dedicated to ten tables for dining in, while the other half is reserved for the shelves and coolers needed for the market.
At present, offerings include house-prepared products such as olives, hummus, tomato pesto, granola, mustards and more. There are also several products from local brands such as Kream Kimchi, Sfoglina Denver's dried (and fresh) pastas, and Elevation Meats & Charcuterie.

All of Leven’s breads are available for sale as full or half loaves, and there’s an approachable range of wines and other beverages. According to Lygizos, that’s only about a quarter of the range of products the market intends to offer, along with a curated box of seasonal ingredients and products available on a monthly subscription basis.

“We never want to sell anything that we can’t stand completely behind as a very high-quality product,” says Lygizos. “We want to be high-quality, boutique, but not going to break the bank. Just a little bit of luxury, a little indulgence.”

Which leads us to the pizza. Many bakery operations focused on naturally leavened dough eventually get into pizza if they have the ovens to support it, which Leven Supply does.
Specifically, it makes sourdough pizza using naturally leavened dough similar to the restaurant’s bread operation, but with pizza-specific modifications. This is notable because making pizza dough from a sourdough starter takes a bit more planning and coordination than your typical dry yeast dough.

The pizzas use a different starter than the bread; it's left to activate for 48 hours to develop the acidity desired. Once mixed and proofed, the pizza dough needs to be used within 24 hours, a relatively small window.

“It’s a little bit more of an involved, technical process,” says Lygizos. “So we have a system for forecasting our consumption. We just have to anticipate it. It’s taken us six years to figure it out.”

Options include a classic Margherita; a prosciutto-topped pizza with a balsamic drizzle; broccoli rabe and fennel sausage; and a white clam pie with breadcrumbs. On every table, in lieu of a shaker of Parmesan, is Leven’s proprietary mixture of dehydrated Parmesan cheese, spices and dried herbs.

While Leven Supply is the first expansion from the original deli location, it won’t be the last. This summer, the group plans to open Leven Downtown, which, like Supply, will build off the deli concept with the addition of a full bar and dinner service.
It’s a far cry from the original deli, which opened with one convection oven capable of baking four loaves at a time. According to Lygizos, it’s all been part of a plan centered on controlling costs, maximizing revenue and growing at a deliberate, controlled pace.

“The whole design was to grow to an economy of scale to the point where we can invest in much larger baking and food production equipment to leverage our efforts,” he says.

Just as good bread is a seemingly simple yet delicate balance of water, flour, yeast and salt, building a successful restaurant business requires deft management of ingredients, labor and profit. For Lygizos and Leven, one of the keys to accomplishing this was investing in a commercial bread-making facility dubbed the Breadquarters.

With a five-deck oven capable of churning out 96 loaves of bread, Leven can now service three locations at scale while staying true to its naturally leavened roots.

“We want to continue to grow,” Lygizos concludes. “But in order to survive in the current economic situation, we need to be able to sell as efficiently and effectively as possible. So if we can be strategic with our efforts, somebody can come in here and buy pizza or bread or wine. That’s our goal.”

Leven Supply is located at 300 East Alameda Avenue and is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. For more information, visit eatleven.com.