Vita Bella Italian Restaurant

Reviews

• True Family Feel

  May 12, 2009

  Denver's A-List

  This place has such a warm feeling with all the family that works
  there. They take the time to get to know you and what you like.

  They
  serve everything Hot and delicious! We had a very important function
  there a year ago and our family still talks about that "lovely little
  italian place we chose in Littleton!" We even have family from out of
  state asking us to set aside a night for vita bella when they come to
  visit next month. I can't say enough about it. The presentation was
  amazing, the tiers of desserts, the service, the taste, of course the
  taste! everything was amazing!

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• Finally Found It... Good Italian Food

  May 12, 2009

  Yelp.com

  Constantly
  whining about the lack of quality Italian restaurants in Denver drove
  us to the suburbs of Littleton actually using one of those coupons we
  all recieve in the mail. 

  Vita Bella offered two entrees, salad, soup
  and a bottle of wine for $35 per couple. (total) We found this place in
  a tiny shopping center behing a mini mart gas station near Kipling and
  Quincy.

  One enters into small, local dining experience with a very
  small bar filled with locals, for a Friday night, the tables were about
  1/3 full.
  Our waiter (new but nice) kindly accepted our $35 coupon,
  kept pushing meat dishes (we kept telling him we are veggies)  but
  bought us a good bottle of wine, hot tasty bread served with a cup of
  excellent spaghetti sauce, yum city.
  Caeser Salad was crisp, large,
  lots of cheese buy my 3 bean soup was a tastful treat. Westside girl
  ordered veggie lasagna, great red sauce, thick cheeses with a perfect
  crust. But, my spinach eggplant parm was off the charts, best red sauce
  I have had in Colorado, and lots of parm cheese crust on the top.
  At 8PM,. we were surprised by a solo jazz guitarist playing easy hits, perfect mellow finish to a delightful and tasty dinner.
  Look for the coupons for Vita Bella, but give them a chance regardless!

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• Vita Bella Proves There's No Place Like Home

  May 12, 2009

  Westword Magazine

  "I remember when my father opened Armando's," says Anthony Sarlo, former general manager of his father's place in Cherry Creek and now the owner of Vita Bella
  in Superior. "There would be a bunch of us kids in the back,
  everywhere, rolling dough, cutting vegetables. My father and his two
  brothers are there, cousins, wives. It's a family thing; it's always
  been a family thing."

  Anthony Sarlo talks New York
  fast, bouncing from topic to topic, discussing uncles and cousins and
  grandparents like I should know them, like I was from the neighborhood.
  When I ask about the flavors, textures and experiences that shaped him,
  he speaks only in terms of these people -- his family. And he does so
  in the immediate tense, as if it were all happening now and they were all sitting right there with him.
  I ask for his most powerful food memory, the one thing that hooked
  him on cooking. "There's so many," he replies. "I guess it's eating
  Sunday dinner with my grandmother. She'd make this...wait a minute, I
  wanna be sure I get this right." He drops the phone and yells back to
  his grandmother -- who really is right there. "Hey, Grandma! What's the
  name of that spinach pie? Yeah, the real name. What'd you call it?" And
  then he's back: "Yeah, a Sicilian empanada."
  Sarlo tells me how they used to have it every Sunday, how it was
  made and how it smelled. "But you gotta use fresh spinach," he insists.
  "Fresh baby spinach. We never changed the recipe, you know? You just
  sauté it in a little olive oil with garlic..."
  I realize mid-sentence that he's no longer talking about how his
  grandmother used to make it, but how he makes it today -- how he'd
  probably been making it all day before I got him on the phone. The
  spinach pie on Vita Bella's menu is the spinach pie he remembers having
  as a kid: a stuffed, double-crust pie filled with mozzarella and romano
  cheeses, black olives and that gently handled spinach. "Done just
  enough," he says. "So it's cooked, but still green and fresh. I know
  these other places..." And then he goes off on the chains, restaurants
  that will abuse their spinach and commit a variety of other culinary
  sins.
  Chain restaurants are a big concern of Sarlo's. He's surrounded by
  them in Superior. The location he chose for Vita Bella -- a strip-mall
  suite with big front windows looking out over a Blockbuster and a Land Rover
  dealership, just south of FlatIrons Crossing in the former home of
  Bleachers Sports Grille -- guaranteed that the restaurant, a wiry
  Italian flyweight, would be duking it out from day one with a ring full
  of super-heavyweights and proven punchers. Red Robin, Bennigan's and California Pizza Kitchen,
  they're all big fellas. But Sarlo knew what he was getting into when he
  opened his own place last December. His tactic was to offer something
  different, something more warm and welcoming. Vita Bella is casual,
  with about twenty tables spread around an understated dining room, all
  visible from the long, open-line kitchen. Sarlo's confident -- very
  confident -- that his vision will sustain him. "It's a family thing
  here," he says. "And we're deserving."
  Every other sentence out of his mouth is about the family. The
  recipe for the wonderfully light, espresso-spiked tiramisu is his
  mother's secret. He remembers her working the cash register at
  Armando's during the Cherry Creek Arts Festival while his dad manned
  the ovens in back and he and his cousin sold pizzas. Sarlo's mother,
  brother, sister, grandmother and cousin Sal all work at Vita Bella; his
  father is still at Armando's; his aunt is at Cafe Jordano in Lakewood
  (see Bite Me). The family's restaurant history goes back to 1962 in
  this country, when Sarlo's maternal grandfather, who was from Vizzini,
  Sicily, opened the Continental in Brooklyn. The old man spent the rest of his life in the business, opening a total of seven restaurants in New York City, culminating with the Oriental Manor, which achieved a measure of immortality when Martin Scorcese used it as the setting for Henry Hill's wedding scene in Goodfellas. Sarlo's father arrived in New York from Naples in 1979, working at Original's in Brooklyn, then coming west to Colorado.
  In 1986, he opened Armando's. Anthony did time there for years, turning
  dough and throwing pies, until finally he left for college. He was in
  his fourth year, pre-med with a double-biology major, when he walked
  away.
   

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