I wanted to love Pizzeria Basta. Honest, I did.
This restaurant with a thoughtful, whip-smart menu is tucked away in the confines of The Peloton condominium complex in Boulder. While Basta lies well beyond the downtown — and out of earshot of trustafarian buskers — the buzz said it was worth seeking out.
And when I wrote a review in early May praising Pizzeria Locale, Basta’s ostensible Pearl Street competitor, I received a fair share of keening e-mails that basically said, “No, no — Basta is the place you need to check out.”
So I did, in a pair of recent visits.
What I found was a spiffy room with engaged servers earnestly talking up a menu that read beautifully, full of contemporary takes on Italian cooking, paired with a smart, reasonably priced beer- and-wine list, many of the latter available in half-glass portions. But while the food featured a mix of cooking techniques both time- honored (a wood-fired pizza oven) and trendy (sous vide and other vacuum-packed methods), results were hit or miss.
That included the pizza.
Basta’s pies are meant to recall those in Naples and Rome, the two key cities in Italy’s pizza pantheon. But for all their worthy motives — fresh ingredients, hand-formed crusts made with organic “00,” flour, that wood oven — Basta is purist to a fault.
Without venturing into the whole New York-versus-Chicago pizza minefield, we can agree on this point: That for American palates, no matter how refined and adventurous, there is a general expectation for a pizza to offer some combination of cheese and sauce, even if the latter is just olive oil.
Out of five pies offered at Basta, only one, the Daisy, boasts that duet. At $12, the Daisy is a classic melange of earthy tomato sauce, hand-stretched mozzarella, fresh basil and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. Fired for a few short minutes in an 850-degree oven, it is deftly retrieved with a pizza peel, held near the top of the oven’s dome for a few seconds, and plated. Unless you have asbestos fingers, you eat it with a fork before picking up a cooled slice, which creases easily into the classic Brooklyn fold. (OK, so I’m betraying my position in the NYC-Chicago debate.) It’s lovely.
But another pizza, the $10 Sauce, was lacking — and not just mozzarella. It came with crushed tomatoes, garlic, oregano, Maldon salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Trouble was, the acidic tomatoes needed a leavening sweetness — say, cheese. Another problem was the uneven distribution of the oregano and garlic slices. Some sections of the pizza were dominated by garlic, others barely touched. The oregano formed a 4-inch vortex in the center of the 10-inch pie, so whole swaths bore just the tomato sauce. It made for humdrum bites.
The Cart-Driver pizza ($14) sounded good. It came with crumbled Italian sausage, rapini, mozzarella, fennel pollen and chiles. But without a sauce of some sort, the result was dry and didn’t meld.
Reviewing a restaurant always involves weighing your own expectations against the kitchen’s. My criticism of Basta’s approach is no rallying cry for Papa John’s and Domino’s. I applaud their pursuit of an Old World pizza. My complaint: Basta’s pies seem too nobly austere for their own good. On a basic level, the flavors didn’t work.
Starters were also a mixed bag.
Tomato bruschetta ($5) featured a trio of oven-crisped Italian bread slices, each topped with a lone tomato slice. The tomato was a bit lost against the bread.
More successful was an excellent soup of roasted red pepper and mascarpone. At $4, it’s one of the menu’s best values, rich and complex with a texture that was at once silky and robust. It would have made a fine base for the Cart-Driver pizza.
One of the stars of the charcuterie-and- cheese portion of the menu was the chicken liver mousse, served in a small jar and topped with a cherry compote. It came with a small block of bread infused with rosemary and topped with browned slices of lemon. With a tight, almost cakelike crumb, it was a fine complement to the mousse.
There is also a burrata ($12), the curd-and-cream stuffed mozzarella ball that is Puglia’s gift to the world.
Ours was, in the words of one diner at the table, “a mess.” The burrata was fresh, but served over a melange of chewy cooked leek strips studded with bits of cured pork belly. There was too much going on; the dish collapsed upon itself.
Basta seems to have aspirations of a destination spot. It may yet reach that. There is already a well-heeled, middle-age crowd on the floor — a good thing, given that this is a pricey place. Waiters are fresh-faced, friendly and engaged. Cooks are eager to talk about their ingredients and techniques — a short-rib sous vide promises great things — and they have the burn scars on their forearms to prove their mettle on the line.
Yet much as I want to, I don’t love the food. But I’d like to. Here’s hoping for some tweaking. The world can always use killer ‘za.
William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com
Pizzeria Basta
Italian
3601 Arapahoe Ave. 303-997-8775 pizzeriabasta.com
* star (out of four) | (Good)
Atmosphere: Austere but comfortable room with a bar that also partially fronts the pizza oven.
Service: Earnest, engaged
Beverages: Beer, wine
Plates: Italian cooking that strives for authenticity using local ingredients. Entrees from $7-$32; pizza $10-$15; starters $6-$16
Hours: Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 5 p.m.-10 p.m.
Details: Street parking within The Peloton condo complex.
Two visits
Our star system:
****: Exceptional
***: Great
**: Very Good
*: Good
