Benzina — Restaurant in Denver

Been trying to go here for a few years. Finally made a reservation. Unfortunately, I left confused and a bit disappointed.

The arancini was a bit untraditional, served with honey. The sweet and savory worked well. Not bad, though a bit small for the price point.

The cauliflower head with pine nut puree and a bacon jam was the highlight of the meal. No complaints about this dish; it was well executed and a surprising mix of flavors. Savory and sweet seemed to be a theme.

From here, the experience went downhill. The "medium-rare" NY Strip came out brown nearly the whole way through, past medium-well and heading into well done territory. The cubed deep fried potatoes were novel, but unfortunately, rather unseasoned. They relyied on, you guessed it, the sweet bacon jam, along with a small splash of brown gravy with peppercorns. The gravy was quite good, and the scant few peppercorns were great, but there weren't enough. The dish wasn't well balanced, and the issue was exacerbated by poor timing from the kitchen.

The DOP Margherita pizza came out several minutes after my strip, very awkward timing for a place with menu prices where they are. While the ingredients were premium, the buffalo mozz was scantily applied, insufficient even for a neoplitan style pizza. The cheese was hard to the touch rather than stringy, probably undercooked. The red sauce was competently made, but applied too thickly, leaving the middle half of the pizza soggy. The basil was cooked with the pie and charred to a crisp rather than applied after cooking, definitely not my preference.

We left with half the pizza in a box and stopped by another neoplitan pizza spot on the way home. I'm not sure if Benzina's pending closure caused my experience, or the experience is causing the closure, but either way, I don't think I'll...

The experience overall was a bit underwhelming.

So to start, I understand this is a new restaurant and that they are figuring things out. Dogs on patio? Idk for sure. They let me bring mine but they don’t have any official calls on that. Even the owner didn’t know for sure.

The restaurant itself looks beautiful and I like the design/overall layout.

The Service i received was not very good. I waited for about 10 minutes or so before being greeted. Since it is a new restaurant I was hoping for a little explanation about what they serve or even some direction on what I should be looking forward too. I don’t even think I received a name of who was taking care of me. And I was just asked what I would be getting. It just seemed like there was nothing keeping me there. I questioned walking out just due to the lack of communication with how long anything will take. I ordered the calamari and it took about 25 min. And for a new restaurant I fell like they should be trying to gauge how things are and communicating with guest so the experience is understood but it seemed like it wasn’t important if I was there. Maybe because I was eating alone? I watched other tables receive service before me while I sat. Maybe it was my server? I just kept getting apologies that they were new which is nice but felt pretty empty.

The food was good and the beer I had was delicious. I can’t recall if the pricing was the same on my bill though for the beer but I didn’t want to stay further.

I’ll be back in a couple months hopefully when things are fully...

This is a tough one to review, but I will give it a shot. First, the service was excellent, no complaints there at all. The bad reviews from others about service might have been when this place first opened. But our service was fine. In fact, the server brought a margarita to us, on the house. That was quite nice. I thought the food was excellent. The bread was amazing, but it did cost $8.00. The prices are definitely on the high side. One medium size pizza was $20! I had the tagliatelle and it was $36. And the serving was average, if not on the smaller side. I asked for some grated cheese. The server said it would be an additional $2. When I got the bill, it was $3 for a tiny ramiken. Bottom line, this place is very expensive. A martini is $15. I also noticed that the menu prices on the website menu are inaccurate, on the low side. . Hopefully that is not intentional. The inside was very nicely designed, I will say that. We were a group of 4 and the bill with tip was $150. And we had no alcohol, except for the free drink, and no dessert. We had 2 pizzas, the tagliatelle and the salmon salad. And the bread. And the $3 "extra" parmesan cheese. I hope this place makes it but I don't think customers will approve of the high prices in the long run. It will be a while before I return, only because of the high prices. $150 is a weeks groceries for...