There’s one thing you should know before ordering a sandwich at Chesco’s Vero Italiano, a small strip-mall eatery on East Yale Avenue and South Monaco Parkway:
Panini is plural.
Panino is singular.
So unless you’re feeding the whole family (or unless you’re just really hungry), order a panino.
(While we’re at it, most people think panini/o refers exclusively to grilled sandwiches, and while that’s how it’s most often used in the U.S., it really just means “sandwich.” A grilled sandwich is a panino alla griglia. But I digress.)
Open for just a year and change, this tiny, 10-table, order-at-the- counter establishment has charmed its southeast Denver neighborhood with simple urban- Italian meals, a case full of cured meats, cheeses and cookies, and excellent coffee.
Though it’s open until 8 most nights, Chesco’s is best visited at lunchtime when you aren’t in a rush. An hour at a table in this unassuming (but sunny and cheerful) room is a crash course in who’s who in the ‘hood: Pairs of young mothers with SUV-sized strollers, single guys juggling laptops and BlackBerries, groups of blue-haired gabbers, big-eating contractors in dusty jeans, work pals gossiping about the boss.
On your first visit, you should order a porchetta panino, soft Italian bread split and stuffed with herby, garlicky, slow-roasted pork and paired with a scoop of pasta salad. At once soulful and sophisticated, this rib-sticking sandwich is an excellent country-style lunch that’ll fill you up without putting you to sleep.
Too many people go through life eating their cured meats cold. Don’t be one of them: When you warm up salami or prosciutto to soften up the fat, they take on a whole extra layer of decadent, heart-stopping (literally) goodness. So on your second visit, order a salami, prosciutto and fontina grilled panino, generously stuffed with cured meats and soft, creamy cheese, then slowly, emphatically buttered and toasted.
Chesco’s also offers a handful of pasta dishes, and while the kitchen occasionally stumbles when preparing them (as is the case in almost all restaurant kitchens, where perfect al dente pasta is tougher to pull off than you’d think), there are two particularly fine pasta choices.
One is the rich but delicate spinach and ricotta ravioli (yes, the singular is raviolo) with sage and butter.
The other is the cheesy, decadent baked ziti alla Sorrentina (in the style of Sorrento, a coastal town in southern Italy) which is packed with basil, cheese and deeply tomato-y marinara sauce.
(Warning: The baked ziti will require a reclining spell after its consumption, so plan on a spending a few extra minutes in your chair to let this one settle. Or order it to go and dig in at home with a glass of inexpensive chianti, before hitting the couch for an episode of “Aliens in America.”)
Salads, including the misto (a simple toss of greens, olives and artichoke hearts) and the panzanella (a mix of romaine, tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs and bread) were, in my experience, overdressed and soggy.
This is my continuing frustration with salads all over town; for some reason, chefs seem to think we prefer the flavor of salad dressing over the flavor of fresh produce. Not I. I’d much rather a kitchen took care to gently kiss their leaves with dressing rather than drown them. Chesco’s drowned mine.
The second-best time to visit Chesco’s is late in the morning on a day you’re playing hooky. Bring the paper (The Post, please) and order an espresso and a couple of pinoli (pine-nut) cookies. Sit at the window, ignore your cellphone, gaze at the Italian travel posters on the wall and watch the suckers across the parking lot wrestle with their supermarket shopping carts.
On your way out, pick up a wedge of Parmiggiano cheese (you know you’ll need it) and a few slices of bresaola (dried cured beef) to lay over the salad you’ll make for yourself later at home.
Don’t leave the store without a box of cookies. While not the very best Italian cookies in town (I’m still partial to Dolce Sicilia in Wheat Ridge), the pinoli cookies and apricot farfallette cookies are buttery and sweet.
Service at Chesco’s is minimal but efficient. Order at the counter, then grab a seat; they’ll bring your sandwich when it’s ready. And while there’s little about the room that’s romantic or plush, its pleasant and friendly.
Not for nothing: Chesco’s is an excellent value. It’s impossible to leave this place still hungry, but you’ll have a hard time spending more than $10. With food that might command prices twice as high in more fancy-schmancy restaurants, your bill at Chesco’s will be blessedly light.
Chesco’s does a brisk catering business. Consider giving them a call for office functions or family gatherings. At the very least, the kitchen produces crowd-pleasing grub, and the prices won’t drive you into foreclosure.
Bottom line: Simple, un-fancy Chesco’s, while not a revelation, is a smart, popular option in its busy corner of Denver, and a solid new addition to Denver’s robust roster of small-scale Italian eateries.
And that porchetta panino? Worth a drive.
Tucker Shaw: 303-954-1958 or dining@denverpost.com
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