Absent is the wall of regional athletics plaques below to keep is the stocked salad bar (with sneeze guards). Roca’s, the hottest salvation of a prolonged-standing Lakewood pizza parlor, opened Thursday for its neighborhood enthusiasts and other returning customers.
Previously this 12 months, Denver restaurateur Alex Seidel (Fruition, Mercantile, Chook, Fudmill) and chef Tim Bender (Comal, Osage Cafe) took above the area that had been occupied for additional than a few decades by Frontroom Pizza. They brought huge options to update the kitchen and eating area and overhaul the food stuff menu.
Now Roca’s is formally open for small business, serving slim-crust, tavern-design and style and thick-crust Sicilian-design pies as properly as residence-produced noodles in classic preparations — strozzapreti alla diavola, spaghetti alla vonghole, for case in point. The setting is cozy and charming, with paper over checkered tablecloths and ample brass and subway tile to truly feel modern day.
Go for your favourite comforting pasta dishes, as properly as for the moderately priced bottles of wine, and stay for dessert, particularly thick slices of tiramisu. And go forward and sidle up to that salad bar, a shock late-pandemic comeback, and an important spared relic from Frontroom. (Seidel’s spouse, Melissa, mentioned it also reminded her of childhood birthday functions at Pizza Hut.)
And leave it to the Lakewood pizza purists to examine Roca’s sourdough starter crusts to Frontroom’s. Seidel is using some of the rules — scratch cooking, contemporary ingredients — from his James Beard-awarded cooking and applying them listed here. But he’s also producing positive families can try to eat for around $50, with tiny kinds purchasing chicken tenders or “super cheesy” pizzas.
It’s the chef’s personal community joint, immediately after all, in which his kids and others’ will be coming in soon after university, just after observe, following tournaments. Heck, give it yet another 35 decades and there might even be plaques on the walls once more.
If you go: Roca’s Pizza & Pasta is open up from 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday by Thursday and 4-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday at 13795 W. Jewell Ave. in Lakewood. For additional facts, simply call 303-969-8880 or head to rocaspizzaandpasta.com.
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