Our foodie friend and colleague Claire Walter shares these articles and photos from some of her favorite Italian eateries. Find more of her reviews on her website www.culinary-colorado.blogspot.com.
Nona's Bistro
The intersection of Leetsdale and South Monaco in Denver is particularly uninspiring, so an attractive restaurant in a strip shopping center is quite a find. My friend Laura, who lives not far away, was the finder. We went there yesterday for lunch. During a previous visit, Nonna’s Chicago Bistro was a small, cafe-size restaurant — the kind of charmer that should be just around the corner from everyone’s home.
Looking at the restaurant’s website, I have the impression that the Catalano family has operated restaurants around many Mile High corners since opening a place called Johnnie’s back in 1952. Other names that might sound familiar to Denverites are Red Hot Experience (a Chicago-style hot dof [sic] place, Littleton), Frankly Red Hots (location unknown to me), Ristorante Catalano (Englewood) and Catalano’s Italian Market (Highlands Ranch).
Nona's interior
Since then, Laura had told me, Nonna’s had doubled in size and added the Bella Vino wine bar next door to the original space. The owners, Joe and Dedria Catalano-Tudor, have successfully transformed their cojoined spaces into a pretty place made to feel Italian with faux flowers, vines and fruit painted directly on the stucco walls. Sinatra and other recorded crooners serenaded lunch guests, and on Friday and Saturday evenings, I understand that the entertainment is live.
Thick-sliced, toasted Italian bread and marinara sauce for dipping holds hunger at bay until the rest of the order arrives.
I ordered a small pizza margarita, a thin-crust pie topped with olive oil, sliced fresh tomatoes, cheese and julienne strips of basil leaves. The crust was the best part — thin-crust in spite of the owners’ Chicago ties, tasty, chewy and baked for just the right amount of time. The mozzarella (or maybe mozzarella and something else) was standard. In addition to the cheese that was melted onto the pizza, small cubes of cheese were sprinkled on top — sort of a cheese-0n-cheese garnish. The tomatoes would have been better if it were still tomato season. And the fresh basil curiously did not have a strong basil flavor or bouquet. But most curiously, instead of being cut into wedges, the pizza was cut into little squares. Kind of a pizza grid that doesn’t quite show in the image below.
Laura’s chicken piccata was a lightly breaded and sautéed or pan fried-till-brown piece of poultry perched on a bed of perfectly cooked linguine. The sauce was creamy and lemony, but the assertive capers dominated and overpowered the citrus flavor.
Price check: Many dishes cost the same price at lunch and at dinner. Antipasti, $8.75-$12.95; insalata, $6.95-$10.95; zuppa, $4.95-$8.50; sandwiches, $8.87-$10.95; pizzas, 10-inch, $11.95, and 16-inch, $19.95; entrees, $9.95-$14.95 at lunch, $12.99-$21.99 at dinner.
Nonna’s Chicago Bistro is located at 6603-I Leetsdale Drive, Denver; 303-388-1354.
View the original post on The Culinary Colorado blog.
Claire Walter is a Colorado-based, award-winning travel, food and snow sports writer who has written thousands of newspaper, magazine and online articles and has authored or co-authored some 20 books.
Nona’s Bistro is a TrueItalianTable recommended authentic Italian restaurant.
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