South Boulder is getting a red-sauce restaurant, which, depending on your relationship to mozzarella, may qualify as excellent news.
, the newest concept from chef and restaurateur Hosea Rosenberg and Little Piggy Hospitality — the team behind and — is slated to open in June at 627 A South Broadway in the Table Mesa Shopping Center, in the former .
Morso, which means “bite” in Italian, is being billed as an Italian American “red sauce joint,” though the phrase can conjure anything from checkered tablecloth nostalgia to a plate of pasta the size of a hubcap. In this case, the team seems to be aiming for something broader and more polished, a neighborhood restaurant with wood-fired pizzas, pastas, parmigianas, cocktails and a menu that holds up well to group indecision and aggressive plate-sharing.
For Rosenberg, the appeal of the location was practical, while the inspiration for the restaurant was personal.
“We saw a real opportunity with that location and the fact that it already had a wood-burning pizza oven in it, and there’s no restaurant quite like that in South Boulder,” Rosenberg said. “We just felt that it would be a really good addition to the community in South Boulder.”
Rosenberg added: “I’m very passionate about this type of food. I love pizza. I think itap the perfect food.”
Lauren Feder Rosenberg, Hosea’s wife and Little Piggy Hospitality’s director of communications, said the concept taps into something close to home.
“What we love about this concept is it’s got the full span of what you’d expect from a classic red-sauce joint,” she said. “A lot of us have some family roots on the East Coast. Some of us grew up with this food, and we cook it a lot at home.”
Morso will not be a pizza-only operation, Rosenberg said, but a fuller Italian American restaurant with “a bunch of pasta,” a full parmigiana section, appetizers and a bar program built for lingering.
“There’s a lot of good pizza in Boulder,” she said, “but a lot of times the menus aren’t as extensive or in-depth as this one should be.”
As for the menu, Hosea Rosenberg said it all starts with the dough.
“The highlights for sure will be the pizza part of the menu,” he said. “We’re going to have a lot of wood-fired pizzas, and we’re doing naturally fermented dough with locally milled fresh grain, which makes it a lot more digestible and more delicious.”
He added that while the dough will not be suitable for diners with celiac disease, it may be easier for some people with gluten sensitivity to tolerate. Perfecting it, he said, has become “a big passion.”
Beyond pizza, Morso plans to commit to the classics, with a few favorites already surfacing as likely standouts. Rosenberg said he is especially excited about the restaurantap parmigiana section, which is expected to include chicken, eggplant and shrimp parm. The latter, he said, emerged as a standout during recent research and development in New York City.
The menu will also include the restaurantap takes on mozzarella sticks, fried calamari and chopped salad, alongside other familiar dishes such as rigatoni alla vodka, mafaldine bolognese, baked manicottini with broken meatball ragù, pork milanese and chicken scarpariello, plus desserts including tiramisu, affogato, salted caramel budino and soft serve with olive oil and pistachio. The beverage program is expected to feature regional Italian wines, cocktails and a substantial amaro list.
If the menu is meant to feel warm and indulgent, the room is being designed that way, too.
Lauren Rosenberg said the team is reworking the former Under the Sun space to feel brighter and softer, with blush pink, Chianti red and lighter tones intended to counterbalance the fact that the restaurant sits below the building’s ground level.
“We’re really just trying to lighten up the space itself,” she said.
Plans for the dining room include a central bar with 20 seats, a bar top facing the pizza oven, and eventually a private dining room for events and special occasions. That private room, Lauren Rosenberg said, likely will not be ready on day one because of construction timing, but should come online within a month or two after opening.
The broader goal, she said, is to create a place that can host many different kinds of nights at once: families with kids, couples out for dinner, friends catching up over drinks, people posted at the bar watching pizzas fly in and out of the oven.
The design team behind the project includes MaliaKai Architectural Design, Rachel B. Interiors and Duggan Construction, with branding by Boulder studio Berger & Föhr, which also worked on Blackbelly and Santo.
For Hosea Rosenberg, a whose , Morso also marks a new kind of expansion. The group has not done this style of food at its other restaurants, and it has not yet planted a flag in South Boulder.
“This is all new,” he said. “We don’t do this type of food right now at any of our restaurants, and, like I said before, itap food that I absolutely love. Itap food that I crave. I’ve never really done anything in South Boulder either. So itap a new group of people to feed. I’m just excited to create a community gathering place in the other side of town that we’re not represented in.”
Lauren Rosenberg framed Morso as an extension of the same values that run through the group’s other concepts — strong ingredients, careful execution and a desire to build something their staff can grow with.
“Itap been really great to be able to give our team this opportunity to grow and create something new that they’re passionate about, as well,” she said. “Itap a tough business to continue to be in and to expand, but we love it.”
