Last week, The Denver Post ran a story about a pending lawsuit filed by Dino’s Italian Food, the well-known, long-standing West Colfax red-sauce stalwart in Lakewood, against Dino’s Pizza, a new, tiny, bare-bones pizza counter on Santa Fe Drive in Denver.
According to reports, the suit wants the new Dino’s to change its name, so that Denver’s legions of pizza lovers aren’t confused.
I read the story with great interest, not because I know (or care) much about the legal issues surrounding restaurant names, but because it was lunchtime and I was hungry. For a slice or two of pizza.
So I jumped in the car and drove to Lakewood for one of Dino’s Italian Food’s trademark deep-dish pies.
The West Colfax Dino’s is a very large restaurant with a very large parking lot and a very large sign. It has at least two distinct dining rooms and a plush wood-paneled bar. Checkered tablecloths cover the dozens of tables peopled by extended-family groups having extended lunches. Waitresses whiz to and fro delivering the same deep-dish pizzas, red-sauced pastas, iceberg salads, homemade sausage and pepper plates, and cheesecakes they’ve been delivering for 40-plus years.
The pizza was pretty good, for deep-dish pie (not my favorite kind of pizza). A bright, slightly sweet sauce, a lot of hot melty cheese, a fat doughy crust.
The next day, I visited Dino’s on Santa Fe, a tiny, mostly takeout pizza counter with just two tiny rickety cafe tables, both of which were peopled by the same rather large man. There is no dining room, no wait staff, and not much else on the menu besides paninis and pizza. Just a guy behind the counter and another out making deliveries. Other than me and my friend Daniel, there were no other customers in the place when we arrived.
This Dino’s pizza (handed over in a pizza box that announced “Sooo Bomb!”) was also pretty good, a thin-crust disc with similarly sweet sauce and lots of cheese. Not “sooo bomb” as promised, but not bad and at $12 and change for a large pie, cheap.
If you ask me (which you didn’t but because this column is titled “Food Court” I’m going to weigh in anyway) there’s absolutely no way any pizza customer with an IQ in the double digits would ever confuse the two places, even if they’re both owned by men named Dino. They truly couldn’t be more different.
Even their pies, the crux of the so-called confusion, are distinct. One is a deep-dish Chicago/Sicilian style pizza, the other a thin-crust New York/Neapolitan style pizza. Comparing them side by side is like comparing burgers and meatloaf. Similar in concept, perhaps, but entirely different.
And neither one a splendid representation of what pizza should be.
(For better pizza than either Dino produces, hit Big Bill’s in Centennial, Virgilio’s in Lakewood, or any of the Anthony’s outlets around town.)
The lawsuit feels, from the outside, like a waste of time and money, although from the inside I’m sure it feels much more important than that.
Nonetheless, it seems to me that both parties could better spend the energy and money this lawsuit will surely require in perfecting their pies.
Meantime, I’ll be over at Dino’s Soda Bar on East Mississippi enjoying a burger and chocolate shake.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-954-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
