The Ponti at Denver Art Museum — Restaurant in Denver

I was excited to hear that Jennifer Jasinski, one of my favorites and one of Denver's top chefs, would be consulting for the Art Museum's new restaurant. The menu certainly shows her current interests with its focus on vegetables, ancient grains, and simple, but elegant presentations.

I thought the menu was very interesting and well-designed for an art museum lunch crowd. There are a number of starters and small bites, including salad, soup, mezze, vegetables, and seafood. Four sandwiches and a grain bowl make up the middle of the menu. More substantial are a pasta, roast chicken, a vegetarian dish, and a seafood plate, followed by three creative desserts.

The menu does have a field day with somewhat obscure and unusual terms for certain ingredients and styles of preparation. Fortunately we all have smartphones these days and can look these things up. The staff is extremely knowledgeable and can explain all of the dishes in detail.

I ordered the Cavatelli (a tiny pasta shell that looks like a miniature hot dog bun) which was covered with a lamb sugo (an Italian term for red sauce), pecorino (a hard sheep's milk cheese), tomato confit (tomatoes cooked in oil), and crispy rosemary. OK, OK, a glossary on the back side of the menu might have been helpful. The server explained the dish quite elegantly, however.

The presentation of the dish was gorgeous. The mini pasta shells contrasted with the rich color of the lamb, accented by cheese shavings, strips of red tomato, and the bits of green rosemary leaves. Then I tasted it. Most of the lamb was way overcooked and tough. A few pieces were properly cooked and showed how delicious it could have been. The pasta was tough and gummy. The server promised that the sugo would be more like a broth. There was a bit of broth at the bottom of the bowl. I wished there was a lot more as, overall, the dish was very dry. What a disappointment!

My friend had the Seared King Salmon. The fish was somewhat awkwardly perched on a bed of Thai black rice and came with Savoy cabbage and a coconut green curry. She said the curry flavor was wonderful. I tried a bite of the salmon. I felt it was improperly cooked and mushy, although the flavor was good.

The main part of the space features a long bar and is very elegant. We were seated in the rather drab room to the right of the entrance. This definitely lacks the pizzazz of the rest of the restaurant.

Service was very knowledgeable and excellent. Too bad the food was such a disappointment. Please, Chef Jen, could you spend some time in the kitchen to ensure the staff is properly trained on the fine details...

Disappointing since the Palettes Restaurant was such a great venue. The menu is small and did not change within a months time when we revisited. The first visit the food was good but not worth the high prices. The second visit, the food was actually just not good. Salad with chunks of gorgonzola cheese, dressing on the plate so much of the salad I ate was undressed not knowing I needed to agitate before eating. The cheese chunks were big and super salty - just not a good flavor and overwhelming to the whole salad. Also had a soup - the textures were awesome but the flavor of the soup was OK. Not worth $9 in my opinion. This restaurant is much smaller than the Palettes was, very tight and mostly bar space. This time we were seated at the bar and were nearly rubbing elbows with strangers next to us. Really tight. Not a good place for anyone at high risk for Covid. The servers were awesome, that is why they still got a couple stars. They were very friendly. However the big shocker of this visit for me was when an employee picked up a cloth napkin from the floor and handed it to my husband claiming it was his. It was not his, it was someone else's. Yuck! And even if it had been his, please do not pick up things from the floor and hand them to customers during the meal. This was wrong even before the pandemic. Pretty sure this will have been the last visit, don't think we will be missing anything since as I noted -- looks like the limited menu doesn't change month to month....

I had high expectations for The Ponti, but unfortunately, our experience was tainted by an unwelcoming encounter at the host stand. When requesting a table for four, the gentleman assisting us—who appeared to be a manager—was shockingly dismissive. His response was an exasperated “ugh, you can try,” followed by body language for us to exit.

A restaurant’s atmosphere isn’t just defined by its design or menu but also by the hospitality extended to guests. While I can understand busy timings or limited availability, a simple courteous response would have made all the difference. Instead, we were met with aloofness and condescension that left us feeling unwelcome.

We ultimately chose to dine elsewhere, where our business was valued. I hope The Ponti takes this as constructive feedback—service matters just as much as the food, and no guest should feel like an...