Sputino is perfectly placed in the quiet upper end of Denver’s Highlands neighborhood. This sweet little red house is the manifestation of a couple obsessed with food and wine. While no beds or living rooms occupy this space, there’s a kitchen that is always running and crafting dishes all the way down to the pasta featured in their primi courses. Upon entering, your eye can get caught reading the chalkboard decorated with a list of their farm fresh purveyors that make each dish exemplary. The vision for this project is to be proud of Denver’s culinary artists and pay tribute to the ones that taught them their masterful skills in the kitchen. Sputino takes the works of locals and features them in a beloved Italian style feast. This quaint restaurant may not look like much on the outside, so much so that you might miss it without a GPS. Nevertheless, this bold red restaurant will transport you to the shores of the Italian coastline faster than Dorothy’s ruby red slippers can get her home.
Owner and head chef Cindhura Reddygrew up eating South Indian food. It wasn’t until she and her husband traveled through wine country that she found a love for Italian fare, knowing it would be the foundation for her restaurant in Denver. Even though she is influenced by Italy, she refuses to surrender her Indian spice cabinet and makes sure to pay homage to her family. There’s an added pop of excitement with an extra spice or bold color in all of her dishes. Sputino is no different to the many other Denver restaurants that have adopted seasonal menus to showcase the earth’s treasures at the peak of their ripeness.While the foundation of dishes don’t change with seasonality, the star of the dish is left up to mother nature to choose.
Sputino’s menu guides you through a typical Italian meal. Antipasto boards are adorned with an assortment of cured meats sliced thinner than a sheet of paper and cheese ranging from sharp and firm to gooey and buttery. Their housemade bread comes to the table with the sour dough’s pungent scent perfuming the table, causing smiles to emerge. The crust flakes apart while maintaining a crisp outside and soft and chewy inside. But, if you cannot get enough of a carb fix, then the focaccia is definitely another option to accompany your meal. It resembles a thick pizza crust, but here it’s dotted with rosemary plucked fresh from the garden. The bread is also drizzled with olive oil to add a hint of sweetness and flaked sea salt for the ideal flavor contrast and much needed crunch.
Since Sputino wants to take you away from the Colorado mountains and out towards an endless Italian ocean, another board features a daily seafood special. It could be smoked fish or one canned in olive oil; regardless, it offers a much desired bite emulating the fresh scent of the sea.
Next is always a primi, or, the pasta and risotto dishes. Sputino boasts about being most proud of this section because of the love and attention it always receives. Each pasta dish requires delicate hands to sweep the ingredients together on the table and form a bright yellow dough that gets its bright hue from the egg yolks that swirl within it. Usually, the pasta is a vehicle for the unique sauces that enrobe it. In the case of Sputino, they begin to impart flavor with the dough. Their ravioli is striped green to accentuate the flavors of the garden with a peppery flavor profile from arugula. Inside these pockets are heirloom squash to give you the essence of fall without forcing you to have pumpkin again. The finishing sauce is a chimichurri, or a spicy pesto comprised of olive oil, with fresh herbs and a hint of red pepper flakes. Finally, sweet onions that are caramelized for hours until they are a deep mahogany decorate the plate as well as dollops of goat cheese that are whiter than snow. Even though the pasta is already bright in color, another dish adds turmeric exemplify the yellow hue, while also taking a detour to India. This yellow spice is saturated with the scents of ginger and orange. These profiles highlight the Indian theme of the dish featuring lamb and beef, the iconic duo in a classic gyro. Finally, the cavatelli pasta is incomplete without a green accent of kale grown locally in Golden that adds the bitterness to round off the dish.
Another beloved filled-pasta dish is the baby raviolini that blends sweet and salty freshness into one delicate bite. Inside is a mixture of Robiola Bosina, the unique intertwining of milks from cows and sheep that create an earthy, creamy cheese. With dark figs to add sweetness, it resembles a perfect cheese plate. The dish is finished with peas, pistachios and a light wine sauce to fuse the salty sweet combination into an Italian crescendo. The crunch of the pistachios adds texture but a nuttiness that works well with all cheeses and notes of honey figs. Then, pieces of prosciutto graze the plate to add a hint of pork flavor and make this dish emulate a charcuterie board even more.
For the traditionalist, Sputino offers a long flat pappardelle pasta that gracefully picks up a rich tomato based sauce. Their bolognese is not what an Italian grandma stewed in her kitchen, but I bet she would’ve liked to. With access to fresh tomatoes, there is no hint of iron that comes from using tomatoes from a can. Instead, the whole tomatoes burst to create a thick sauce that gets amplified with floral and earthy aromas. In addition, no bolognese can be complete without an added richness from ground meat. Sputino goes more exotic than the Americanized ground beef version and gets a new flavor profile from goat. It resembles the mildness of lamb, a Coloradan staple, while still reminding us of Reddy’s Indian roots.
Regardless of whether you decide on a dish that’s lived there since the restaurant’s inception like their elk tartar or the daily pasta (composed of the chef’s current imagination), the choice couldn’t possibly be wrong. The long communal table encourages you to stay a while and feel at home here. The exposed kitchen acts as a fireplace providing warmth to all the patrons. All there’s left to do is put on fuzzy socks and a movie because the microwave mac and cheese you usually eat on a cozy winter night just got replaced with a piece of Italian art.
