Jonathan R.
Yelp
Greater Denver's greatest culinary shortfall is its Italian food, whether it be Southern or Northern. The region, despite being ladened with ample Italians, suffers immeasurably in this regard. After visiting AFV for the first time, I left conflicted.
To explain, I ordered the rigatoni with meat sprinkles, their house specialty. It lacked any semblance of red sauce that a traditional Ragu would have: just pasta with cheese and ground beef. The server brought a small dish of marinara sauce at my behest, and once tossed into the mix, such embellished the recipe. The dish was tasty, but again, there's only so much satisfaction one can derive from pasta plus meat plus oil, yes plenty of oil. It needed the customary addition of at least a modicum of marinara.
Finally, the check was about $7.10, actually, precisely $7.10 over what I calculated. The restaurant takes it upon themselves to summarily add a 20% community gratuity to the check. I was a party of one. It doesn't get much smaller than that. When I gently confronted the help about this, they explained it as a house "cost of living" add on. What about the customers' own cost of living?
Ambiance is utilitarian but clean. Prices l, before the forced tip, are fine. I somehow find this unreasonable and will likely not return.
No bread is provided whatsoever. At an Italian restaurant serving pasta? This seems odd. It's a side order.
The grease accumulation within the bowl was, honestly. palpable. I thought that I was imagining things when I first viewed it. It's so considerable that I had to prop up the plate with an inverted bowl to slope the grease into a small pond, on the starboard side. The grease puddle within the bowl measured nearly an inch.
Caesar salad: no real ground pepper is available. That's never a good thing. The lettuce was fresh and tasty, but the dressing lacked flavor and overall saturation or pungency.
Photos are attached. I think that this place could serve a much needed gap in the Front Range's poor quality Italian offerings, but desperately needs some error correction.