Home > Denver Restaurants > Restaurant Review > Inside: Vita

Vita is the kind of restaurant I should hate.  You see, I’m a trendiphobe.  I break into a cold sweat whenever I see thick-rimmed black glasses or drainpipe jeans. I’d also rather put $80 toward my 401k than dinner, and I think Highlands should be a place to which you flee in the case of a tsunami, not a stylish neighborhood. Two words explain why Vita – that trendy, pricy, Highlands-epitomizing restaurant – is my exception.  The food.  Good Lord, the food!

Food: The mushroom gnocchi with Manchego cheese belongs in the museum for tasty, creamy, savory things.  Lambs are suicide bombing themselves for the chance to be braised by Vita.  And the almost flourless torte with house-made gelato makes you wish you hadn’t almost exercised that morning.

While most of their menu is Mediterranean inspired, their land-locked dishes shine.  German food doesn’t usually get much respect in the culinary world, and let’s be honest; it’s hard to give props to anything ending in ‘itzel’ unless it’s in a Snoop Dogg rap.  But you’ll be ironing your best khaki and contemplating a land war with Russia after eating Vita’s mustard spaetzle (it escorts the pork tenderloin to your palette).  This isn’t the mushy spaetzle you’ve had served by waiters in lederhosen, yodeling Happy Birthday.  This is spaetzle that you’ll swear is made out of mini Heidi Klums because nothing else this scrumptious has ever come out of Germany. And Snoop can sing about it all he wants.  Ferspaetzel.

Drinks: By law in the Highlands, you must have a long, overpriced frou-frou drink menu, and Vita happily obliges.  If you’ve seen it in the produce or candy aisle at the grocery store, it’s a safe bet they’ll serve you a martini version.  Happy hour gives you the alcoholic equivalent of a night out with the Olsen twins – a 2-for-1 special.  If you don’t like the light, white one, then you’re bound to like the other light, white one.

Vibe: The atmosphere might give you flashbacks to the first day of high school when seemingly everyone had cuter, more expensive clothes than you did.  Or maybe that’s just me.  Luckily after enough drinks at the indoor-outdoor bar (yes, it is both inside and outside at the same time!  Try wrapping your mind around that after those twofers), the stuck-up blondes will have appletini on their designer blouses.  Take that, cheerleaders.  Hope you weren’t bitches to your dry cleaner.

Insider Tip: If the indoor/outdoor thing is too Twilight Zone, or you just really hate schizophrenic drinking apparatuses, there’s a rooftop bar offering the same Jelly Belly flavor list of a drink lineup, plus Denver skyline views.  Enjoy the drinks, the bar and the view, but don’t get so inebriated you forget about Vita’s fabulous food.

Vita
1575 Boulder St., Ste. A
Denver, CO 80211
303-477-4600

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