The New York cocktail bar, Death & Co, was welcomed with open arms in Denver more than eight years ago, when founders David Kaplan and Ravi DeRossi chose the brand-new Ramble Hotel as their first place of expansion.
On the way to building out coast-to-coast locations for Death & Co, DeRossi’s pendulum between his native Colorado and adopted NYC only gained momentum. Now, he’s brought Soda Club, a vegan restaurant and natural wine bar with roots in the East Village, to the bottom floor of the Ramble, 1280 25th St., Denver.
DeRossi and his Soda Club partner, wine director Drew Brady, don’t advertise the restaurant as vegan, though DeRossi, 52, adheres to the diet. His mentality, he said, is that the restaurant’s cuisine — Mediterranean with Middle Eastern notes — “is just good food” at the end of the day.
Brady, 38 of New York, expounded on their guiding ethos: “This is just well-executed food. This is pasta that’s rolled out fresh every morning. There’s a heavy attention to detail. Let’s not contextualize the experience too much before people arrive.”
The Denver location had to be more than just a carbon copy of the original, they agreed.
Only some of the dishes made the hop from the original Soda Club location to the snug quarters inside the Ramble, formerly home to tapas house Super Mega Bien. Executive chef Amira Gharib compiled a concise list of vegetable-forward plates and pastas, executed on site by chef de cuisine Jon Robbins and his lean, efficient kitchen. Robbins last worked in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood as the chef and owner of Bistro Barbès, which he closed earlier this year.
Five “classic” pastas, including rigatoni, bucatini, and gigli, are listed on the menu. The rigatoni ($22) comes with pistachio pesto, kale and sumac onion. There is also an option, at $75 a person, to order all five classics and a bottle of wine.
Further down are three other entrees: tortellini ($24) and a bowl of gnocchi ($25) meant for one, with an elegant onion dzܲsauce and topped with crispy shallot bits and white pepper.
ճpinsas, however, are meant to be shared. These circular flatbreads ($26) have an almost elastic base and a tall, crusty perimeter. Their toppings are vibrant, such as the tender roasted carrots, seasoned with cumin, golden raisins and feta on the menu’s “qarwani” pinsa.
These pizzas and pastas are complemented by smaller sides and salads. The broccolini ($11) is salted and roasted to tenderness, then laid on top of a preserved lemon aioli and sprinkled with chili crisp and pickled chili. The focaccia, plush and served with a scoop of fancy butter, has urfa biber baked on top, a spice closely resembling sumac. The zesty aioli for the broccolini and the urfa biber on the focaccia are little touches that nod to the Egyptian ancestry of Gharib, the executive chef.
Soda Club’s simple, clean dishes, paired with natural wines from established regions around the world — the restaurant also has a full list of cocktails — are persuasive enough not to necessitate either a “vegan” label in bold type or a desire for any meat.
“I think [Ravi and I] bring a general public sensibility to the tastings,” Brady said. “When you balance that with folks who are working in kitchens all the time, it seems to have good results.”
DeRossi’s and Brady’s most visible influence on the Denver branch is in its expressionistic interior design. Their vision was inspired by DeRossi’s background in fine arts, and they relied on a floor planning software, Homestyler, to tinker with designs before build-out, they said.
“It was almost like jazz music, but it came out perfectly,” DeRossi, who studied theater at the University of Colorado Boulder, said.
Rich purple and green hues surround thick paintings of moon “faces” and roses above the dining-room booths. At least two dozen vintage Tiffany lamps are suspended from grates along the ceiling.
Soda Club’s founders were smitten by the moon face symbol, identical at both the original East Village locale and the Ramble restaurant. No matter where one is on Earth, the moon always reflects the same surface, they said. It’s what connects disparate areas, or blurs geographical boundaries altogether.
If DeRossi has his way, they’ll be looking up at the moon from future Soda Club locations in Austin and Nashville in addition to the Death & Co lounges that now exist in Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
“We kind of have a similar future for Soda Club,” DeRossi said of scaling. “Obviously, Denver is like, the test.”
One passing mark: They were able to open on time and on budget thanks to the quick assumption of the restaurant property and Super Mega Bien’s former liquor license. DeRossi said that’s the first time that’s happened in his more than twenty years in the business.
