It’s probably not been scientifically proven, but I’d be willing to bet that a direct correlation exists between the valet parking charge at a given restaurant and the expectation level of its patrons. High valet charge, high expectations.
For example, it costs $5 to have your rig parked at one of the world’s most famous valet spots: The Ivy restaurant in Beverly Hills, Calif. There, after your car is whisked away, you’ll enjoy one of the best crab cakes of your life and probably catch a glimpse of Reese Witherspoon lunching al fresco and ignoring calls from her publicist.
Not a bad return on a fiver.
By contrast, the valet parking charge is $12 at Prima, an upscale Italian restaurant in the Hotel Teatro at 14th and Arapahoe streets in Denver. Granted, the valet guy will sprint a whole block down 14th to retrieve your wheels, even in a chilly wind, but he will lighten your wallet by $12. Not including tip.
So by the time I stepped into Prima for my first of many meals there, my expectations were very high.
Unfortunately, Prima, a promising restaurant with a mouthwatering menu and a powerful wine list, didn’t live up to the expectations, even after several visits.
The idea of Prima, that of a restaurant serving elegant, contemporary Northern Italian cuisine and unique wines from Italy, Spain and California, is wonderful. But the idea of a restaurant carries it only so far. Execution matters more. Details, and the devil they represent, are everything.
Too many details, both in service and cuisine, are regularly overlooked and forgotten at the expensive Prima. And diners notice.
I began to notice on my first visit when a friend and I each ordered a glass of wine. I chose a zesty white Spanish Albariño ($8), and he chose a robust red Italian Syrah from Cortona ($13). The waiter poured each wine into exactly the same kind of glass, the all-purpose goblet that was already sitting on our table.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ll accept wine no matter in what glass it’s offered. But selections from a wine list as high-reaching as Prima’s deserve more attention to details like glasses. The Syrah wanted a wider, rounder glass to allow it more surface area to breathe and develop. The Albariño needed something slimmer.
Both wines were delicious. But the detail of using the appropriate glass was overlooked by the staff, and we noticed.
On another visit, we were a table of four and ordered the assorted salumi-and-olive plate to share. But the plate came with only three olives. I know our waiter was merely delivering the dish as it was produced by the kitchen, but I sure wish he’d felt empowered enough to add a fourth olive to the plate. Maybe none of us would have noticed the detail if he’d added an extra olive. But he didn’t, so everyone noticed: There weren’t enough olives to go around.
The menu at Prima is as grand as its wine list. Sectioned into crudo (raw dishes), antipasti (appetizers), primi (pasta), secondi (main courses) and daily specials, it’s a lush take on classic Northern Italian cuisine, from veal to pork to seafood to pasta.
It’s also a delicate menu, packed with devilish details. When the details move in concert, the effect can be delicious. But when they don’t, the dishes go south.
One star on the menu was the seared rare tuna with eggplant caponata and puttanesca vinaigrette ($21). It was beautifully balanced, especially in texture, with the soft sweetness of the nearly raw tuna deftly contrasted by the sharp tang of the puttanesca and the quiet crunch of the caponata.
Another winner was the crispy monkfish with clams and pancetta ($19), which sat in a robust zucchini and roasted tomato broth. The squid ink linguini with bay scallops, calamari and tomatoes ($12) smacked of the sea. The beet salad with walnuts and endive ($8) was earthy. And the veal scaloppine in saltim-
bocca sauce ($22) was sagey and rich.
But more dishes fell short than succeeded. One that nearly fulfilled its mind-blowing promise was the homemade soft-boiled egg-filled ravioli with Spanish ricotta ($12) – in other words, a soft-cooked egg with cheese and pasta wrapped around it. It sounded like a cover shot on a glossy food magazine: velvety pasta, gooey ricotta, oozing yolk. But the dish got confused in the details; the ricotta was sticky and overwhelming, and the egg was cooked hard. No ooze.
The pork chop “Milanese” with crispy fingerlings and arugula salad ($19) should have been a no-brainer, with a light, golden-brown batter covering the buttery, succulent pork chop. But the salad it came with was puckeringly overdressed.
Roasted sirloin of beef and short rib with gorgonzola mash and salsa verde ($20) was another dish that promised much. Its lovely medallions of sirloin and fork-tender short ribs were delicious, but thanks to those pesky details (gummy mash and flat salsa verde), it stalled. Roasted salmon with mascarpone polenta and broken tomato vinaigrette ($19) was better, if intimidatingly rich.
Green potato gnocchi ($10) was rubbery and lukewarm. The crispy roasted chicken “under a brick” ($18) was limp, not crispy. The white bean farro soup with pesto had a soothing flavor, but I had a hard time identifying the farro, my favorite grain. The vitello tonnato (veal carpaccio with tuna aioli, $8) was too cold to taste like much.
Dessert, which on all my visits was served on a table that hadn’t been cleared of main-course crumbs, was a hit-and-miss affair. The chocolate-hazelnut cake with walnut shortbread ($7) was a hit. The Prima tiramisu ($7), a perplexing stack of crunchy lady fingers and chilled mascarpone cream in a puddle of warm chocolate espresso, was a miss.
Once, we ordered the pumpkin and golden raisin cake with pine nuts and cinnamon whipped cream ($7), only to be told they’d run out.
Three minutes later, our waiter returned, breathlessly announcing “We just got the pumpkin cake in! Just now!” We all looked at our watches and wondered for a moment what it must be like to be the pumpkin-cake delivery guy who has to work at 10 p.m. on Friday.
“Great!” we smiled. “We’ll take it.”
Wherever it came from, and whenever it arrived, it was just fine. Not spectacular. Fine.
Here’s how to do Prima: Go for lunch. Have a glass of wine, the delicious bitter green salad with soft egg, and that assorted salumi plate. You’ll leave contented, and you’ll get to keep all the olives to yourself.
Some of the missing details at Prima get lost in the kitchen, which is perhaps overburdened with the room service it provides the Hotel Teatro upstairs. (On one brunch visit, our server implored us to be patient: “Hang in there. The kitchen just got slammed with room-service orders.”) Other details get lost in the service itself. But when enough details fail, diners don’t plan another visit.
The mind behind the promising idea of Prima is Kevin Taylor, one of Denver’s most justifiably celebrated and talented chefs. And one thing Kevin Taylor understands, besides how to cook like a maestro when he wants to, is that a restaurant is theater.
Theater is meaningful because of the stories it tells, and there’s a good, clear story in Prima. But theater becomes transcendent through the details. At Prima, with the vision and potential to be a real star on Denver’s culinary landscape, too many of the details are overlooked. And the story suffers.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-820-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
Prima Upscale Northern Italian
1100 14th St., 303-228-0770
* (Good) rating
Atmosphere: Elegant, brightly colored two-level dining room anchored by a large bar on the ground floor of the Hotel Teatro. Mix of hotel guests and locals. Busy theater crowd.
Service: Friendly, but flawed.
Wine: An extensive and expensive wine list, mostly Italian, Spanish, and California selections. Few bottles under $40, some rare and unique finds.
Plates: Appetizers, $8-$12, Entrees $18-$25.
Hours: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 12 midnight Friday and Saturday, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday.
Details: All major credit cards accepted. Valet parking available. Wheelchair accessible. Reservations recommended.
Four visits.
Our star system:
****: Exceptional.
***: Great.
**: Very good.
*: Good.
No stars: Needs work.
