Trattoria Stella — Restaurant in Denver

I've been meaning to leave a review for this place about my experience for a while. I don't like leaving reviews when I'm still mad about it, so I kept waiting to write this. It's been six months and I'm still thinking about it, so I guess I'll just put this out there.

Two stars because the food is always great at both Stella's locations.

I came here with a party of 15, where we were celebrating an occasion for one of my friends. I picked the restaurant and made the reservation, which was a mess to begin with since they told half the party that they were at the wrong Stella's when they arrived. Luckily no one left to go to the other one; they called me and I sorted it out with several of our party individually.

Due to the occasion of my friend, it was stated to the server that no one would be ordering alcohol. Well, that's where it went downhill. I'm guessing the server was expecting a huge bill from a party of 15, but without booze, it cut the tip by 1/2 or more. We were treated like absolute garbage the entire night. He didn't offer to bring anyone anything else to drink, and only one person was able to order a soda because he was barely around after slamming water glasses on the table and taking our food order. We had to request enough waters to cover everyone several times. People did want to order other drinks, but couldn't. I think one or two people were able to sneak an appetizer order in.

The food came. It was good.

After dinner, several people wanted to order dessert and coffee, but the server came and brought the check, obviously wanting us to leave. They did bring the guest of honor a free dessert for her celebration, so that was nice, and is included in my opinion for the 2-star review.

We asked if the server could provide us with separate checks... just to be split amongst the couples and the one single person. That was a whole other ordeal, because he got mad and said it would take a while. The manager actually came out and chastised us for even asking for such a thing. I served tables at multiple restaurants, independent and chain, for 15 years. Sometimes splitting checks was a pain, but most of the time it was not a problem. When you're in the customer service business, it's about pleasing the paying customer (within reason of course).

Well, "a while" turned into 30 minutes, and when he finally brought the checks, every single check was split incorrectly. We decided we'd figure it out amongst ourselves because the server's attitude had turned pretty toxic and everyone was super uncomfortable. There was an extra entree on one of the checks (16 entrees/15 people), and when we mentioned it to the server he said, "someone better pay for that". So we did, because it just wasn't worth fighting with someone who was spewing hatred at everyone at the table.

Overall, I tried to have a good night celebrating my friend, but I was super embarrassed the entire time because I picked the restaurant. I'm really disappointed in how everything went down, and at the end of the day, it was because no one ordered alcohol. I've never been treated so poorly by both server and manager of a restaurant, and it really soured the celebration. We didn't do anything wrong, but we certainly paid the price for disappointing the server.

I doubt a single one of use will return to this restaurant, as our experience gets brought up in conversation...

I have never written a review of a restaurant before, so please bear with me. My evening at Trattoria Stella was so much fun and so perfect that I decided to write my first review. This is maybe the third or fourth time I have been there, and it has been great every time. Enough so that I make a point of eating there every time I am in town -- the location is excellent and close to downtown that you can easily take a quick Lyft or even a bus.

Tonight I happened to be there for a fixed-price dinner previewing their new fall menu and everything was fantastic. Luckily my dinner companion likes to share everything, so I got to taste most of the menu. My favorites were the cauliflower soup that was creamy but more cauliflowery than dairy, and the scallops with some special kind of yummy dense plank of bacon with a savory sauce. The pumpkin risotto had great texture and lovely flavor but was not super pumpkiny -- also not too cheesy which I liked. The steak was delicious, wonderful sauce but would have been too rare for most people I think. Luckily we both liked it on the rare side so it was perfect for us. The vanilla bean mousse custard thing was fantastic, and the flourless chocolate cake had a great flavor but was surprisingly dry. I wished I had gotten the key lime thing instead.

In addition to the great food and friendly service, my two favorite things about Stellas are:

The atmosphere is quiet enough that I could have a good catch up conversation with a cousin I had not seen in too long, but interesting with a cool stained glass panel, eclectic music, and a wilderness starscape playing on fast forward on the wall of the bar. Visually interesting with tons of great people watching, awesome atmosphere.

The wine list had this cool theme happening that I could not exactly figure out. The charming manager said that yes, there was a theme, and it was something to do with the government or politics or something. The one that stood out to me was the Federalist, and our bottle of that was absolutely DELICIOUS and a pretty good deal.

I will definitely come back to Stellas every time I am...

Friday night. We had reservations and we showed up 15 mins late for our reservations. They were still very accommodating and friendly. We were seated fairly quickly. Our waitress was awesome. Got our drinks out quickly and got our food ordered in quickly because we were in a hurry. We all received our food in about 25-ish minutes which she did warn us about in advance, so no issues there.

My wife and I could barely eat our dishes because they were so salty. She had something with spinach and cheese and chicken in it but I’m not sure what it was. She said it was so salty that she couldn’t finish it, so I tried it, and it was in fact extremely salty. I had to drink water immediately afterwards. I had the regular vegetarian spaghetti and it was also so salty that I couldn’t finish it. It was to the point that the salt obscured all the other tastes in the dish. Of course we are in a rush and of course I’m not sending it back at this point, so I just ate popcorn at the movie theater, which was actually LESS salty. Lol.

Everything we tried here was way salty. We definitely will not return unless they can tweak their menu. My only other complaint was that it was so dark inside you could barely see the menu. I saw people with their phone lights out, looking at the menu because it was too dark. LMAO. Not really a big deal there, but the salty food, oh my God. I felt dehydrated for a day afterwards. It’s like there was MSG in it or something.

The prices were pretty much on par with what you would find in a restaurant in this neighborhood on Colfax.

We might try it again in a couple years if they are still around. Maybe after they rotate cooks a...