We had dinner at Spuntino in Denver a couple of days ago and it may well be in my top ten dining-out meals of all time. Definitely in the top 15. This restaurant is really special.
We lucked out to be greeted by manager Kristin who was manning the hostess stand. She so clearly knows food deeply, and has such love and respect for Spuntino’s food in particular, that we decided just to order exactly what she recommended. If you go there, I strongly recommend doing the same. We would have ordered very differently on our own, and we wouldn’t have had nearly as spectacular an experience.
Kristin’s first suggestion was to order one item from each of the four menu sections and to share everything: Antipasti, Spuntini, Primi, Secondi. That was a generous amount of food for two people, but the portions in the first two categories are small, we hadn’t eaten all day, and everything was so creative, fresh, and flavorful that we were happy we tried a number of dishes. We took a leftover box of about half of the secondi course home so we’d be able to have dessert too.
I’m normally a bit skeptical of fusion, especially when it’s Indian-plus-something (I’m Indian). But that may be because I’ve rarely had fusion done well before. Chef Cindhura Reddy does Indian/Italian fusion brilliantly. She’s so subtle about it that in most dishes you probably won’t even register the second cuisine if you don’t already know those flavors very well. For example, the incredible tomato salad came with a yogurt/labneh sauce that had saffron and a tiny touch of asafoetida in it. The sauce for the lemon, mint, and fresh pea raviolini was made with ghee, but there was also a hint of what we think might be sambar powder in the filling. Not enough to currify it, just enough to bring a hard-to-pinpoint depth and excitement to the dish. The only primarily Indian dish we tried was the lamb osso bucco, and there she used Italian techniques and seasonings to subtly liven up the Indian flavors. That lamb dish was extraordinary. There’s a distinctly Indian home-cooking way of preparing goat and lamb in a pressure cooker with dry spices so that it comes out silky and deeply flavored in a way I’ve never been able to reproduce and that I’ve never tasted at restaurants , even in India. Spuntino’s bone-in lamb curry was like that lamb in flavor and texture. Very likely the best non-veg Indian food I’ve ever had at a restaurant, even though it wasn’t 100% Indian.
So, here are pics. I don’t usually photograph restaurant meals, so they’re not great, but I knew from the first bite that this was going to be a good one, so I tried. From the antipasti section, Kristin recommended the focaccia and ricotta (all housemade) with roasted garlic. This is one of the things we’d probably not have ordered with if Kristin hadn’t suggested it, but it was so good. Here it is with the tomato salad:
Here’s the pea/lemon/mint raviolini (we’d already eaten some when I remembered to take a picture):
And I completely forgot about photographing the lamb until we’d eaten a bunch of it already, so, sorry for the mess, but the photo still gives some sense of what the dish is like:
No shots of dessert, but they were lovely, and the management has been really smart in offering a few $3 mini desserts in addition to the full-size ones. My sister said the single scoop of oreo gelato she ordered was one of the best ice creams she’s ever had and far and away the best oreo ice cream imaginable. (Spuntino started as a gelato shop.) I just got a single amaro truffle and it was delightful.
Service was friendly, respectful, and informed. Our waiter, Danny G., was a lovely guy and seemed genuinely happy to be facilitating our experience of that beautiful food.
Spuntino is a great restaurant and a must-try in Denver.
