When prepared properly with love and respect, the classic Italian sausage sub is among the greatest American taste treats.
Carmine Lonardo’s Italian Deli, 15380 E Smoky Hill Rd. in Aurora, serves such a sandwich.
The market makes their own plump pork links. Flecked with fennel seed and red pepper flakes, they snap juicily when you take a bite. They’re topped with a good, lightly herbed sauce that’s heavy on the crushed tomatoes, not tomato paste. They’re supported by a length of soft, white Italian loaf — not French bread, and wrapped in iconic white butcher paper. Each bite is a messy memory with zero extraneous garnishes to muddy the perfect simplicity.
While you are there, grab some house-made tiramisu for the road.
COLORADO WINE TIME
Several Colorado wines took home Twitter Taste-off awards at the recent drinklocalwine.com conference in Denver. Best red wine: Ruby Trust Cellars Smuggler (cabernet franc blend); Best white wine Guy Drew Vineyards pinot gris; People’s Choice award: Redstone Meadery’s Nectar of the Hops; and Media Choice: Guy Drew Vineyards pinot gris. Sample some of these winning bottles to prepare for Colorado Wine Week, June 3-9. The Sculpture Park Urban Wine Festival featuring tastings from 40 of the 100 wineries in the state. Colorado wine and food pairings will be available at more than three dozen events at restaurants and retailers including Row 14 Bistro, Russell’s Smoke House and Highland Tap.
All the details are at coloradowinefest.com/denver/wine-week-events.html. The single best source for information on wine events in the state is localwineevents.com/cities/listing/us/8/colorado.
EATERY UPDATE
Visit Aurora has made it a little bit easier to find information about eateries in the city with its new restaurant search engine at: visitaurora.com/Places-to-Eat. … Yes Virginia, there really is an Applebee’s of vegan cuisine. The small California chain, Native Foods Cafe, is opening May 29 in — where else? — Boulder at the 29th Street Mall. Menu includes a Spicy Meatball Pizza with marinara sauce, seitan meatballs, roasted sweet peppers, caramelized onions, pesto and “Native Parmesan.”
COME TO THE TABLE
Colorado Table is our new section and site focused on Colorado cooks, chefs, farms, foods, beverages, gardens and distilleries — in short, everything tasty in the state. There’s much more to sample at aurorasentinel.com/colorado-table. Let us know what you think at jlehndorff@aurorasentinel.com. Get updates by liking the Nibbles Facebook page. Listen to John Lehndorff’s Radio Nibbles at 8:25 a.m. Thursdays on KGNU, 88.5 FM, 1390 AM, and kgnu.org.
FOOD NEWS
Colorado U.S. Rep. Jared Polis is unveiling a plan to set nutrition standards for pizza and prevent pizza from being counted as a vegetable in school meals. Really it’s a fruit if we are talking tomato sauce. … The grand champion prize at the recent Colorado Chocolate Festival in Denver went to the Saffron-Rose Creams from Denver’s Black Star Chocolates. … The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recently called for “an executive order banning staged official photo ops that depict the president … with unhealthful foods including processed meats.” The advice is unlikely to be heeded in an election year where sampling the local hot dog is proof the candidate is one of the people.
A SOILED CORRECTION
A May 17 Colorado Table feature about creating soil may have led to some confusion. While a soil with a loose, sandy mixture will help with draining, adding pure sand is a bad idea. The key, experts say, is a good mix of textures.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
“Another peculiarity of (the United States) is the absence of napkins, even in the homes of the wealthy. Napkins, as a rule, are never used and one has to wipe one’s mouth on the tablecloth, which in consequence suffers in appearance.” — Baron Louis de Closen (1780)
so would it kill you to tell me where Carmen Lombardo’s is?