Make your reservations now! This year’s Denver Restaurant Week is February 26th – March 6th and we have a menu to excite every member of the family! Whether it’s a date night for two or a family affair, be sure to stop by Carmine’s on Penn to celebrate this local culinary tradition.
For $30.00 a person, restaurant patrons will be able to choose one dish from each category. For more information, please visit Denver Restaurant Week.
Appetizers
Ravioli alla Vodka
Sausage and Peppers
Bruschetta
Anti-pasta Misti
Tour of Italy
Portobello
Salads
House Salad
Caesar Salad
Pear Salad
Spinach Salad
Entrees
Strozzapreti
Chicken Montana
Carbonara
Pasta Carcio
Pasta alla Capo
White or Red Clam Sauce
Shrimp Calabrese
Chicken Besciamella
Chicken alla Carmine’s
Chicken Marsala
Chicken Parmigiana
Chicken Piccata
Chicken Pazzo
Baked Ziti w/Italian Sausage
Baked Ziti w/Bolognese
Baked Ziti w/Primavera
Baked Ziti w/Meatballs
Moose’s Pasta
Shrimp Parmigiana
Dessert
Three Layer Chocolate Cake
Tiramisu
Chocolate Chip Cannolis
New York Style Cheesecake
Vegetarian and gluten free options are available! Don’t wait – give us a call today and reserve your spot!
Before cutting out carbs – or even your beloved Italian food – for those New Year’s resolutions revolving around losing weight and eating healthy, we wanted to share how certain elements of the Italian culture can actually help make some of the most common resolutions of 2016 a reality.
At Carmine’s on Penn, we believe in knowing where our ingredients come from – and it’s not from a can. We stay away from processed food and prepare our meals fresh every day. When available, we do our best to source local and regional ingredients based on the season.
“First and foremost, we cook! We bake bread, we start with whole vegetables, we roast our own turkey for sandwiches. We discuss what we are looking for with our vendors and ask them to search out what we desire,” explains owner, Brad Ritter.
In addition to cooking with the freshest ingredients and avoiding processed food, Carmine’s on Penn offers a variety of substitutions for those with dietary restrictions. With over half of our menu ‘gluten-intolerant friendly’, our knowledgeable wait staff is trained to help guide restaurant patrons through the menu to find the perfect meal that fits with their dietary restrictions.
And it’s not just the type of food, but also how we encourage you to eat it, that can help you keep up with your New Year’s resolutions.
Our chefs spend all day cooking and preparing your dinner, so it would be a shame if you only spent 12 minutes eating it! To dine at Carmine’s means you must first take the time to talk with your dining companions and your service staff to decide your meal. Because our food is served ‘family style’ with portions made to share, the dining experience is more communal and intentional than at other restaurants. We encourage you to sit back, chat and share your time, food and wine together.
Whatever you’ve determined to be your New Year’s resolution, we hope to see you and your family at Carmine’s on Penn in 2016.
Celebrate National Pasta Day this October 17th with your favorite pasta dish at Carmine’s.
With over 300 known shapes, pasta is one of the world’s favorite foods. Generally, the larger shapes work better with thick, robust sauces, while skinny shapes suit light, cream sauces.
Here at Carmine’s, we offer our customers three different pasta types imported from Italy – spaghetti, linguine and ziti.
Spaghetti is the classic pasta shape. These are long pasta with a rounded shape, perfect for twirling around a fork. Spaghetti is best paired with light sauces like tomato or garlic and olive oil because they will coat the strands evenly without weighing them down. Need more than just pasta and sauce? Go ahead and top with fresh herbs or diced tomatoes to add some texture.
Linguini pasta is long, flat and narrow. Because it is thinner than other pastas, it pairs best with with simple sauces like Alfredo or delicate proteins like seafood. We like to add linguine to most of our seafood dishes, and we especially love it with our White and Red Clam Sauce, Seafood Marinara, and Lemon Shrimp Calabrese.
Ziti pasta is tubular and short like penne, but lacks the ridges and has a square cut. Short, tubular pastas go well with sauces that are thick or chunky. Ziti pasta is best known as an element in pasta bakes, like our Baked Ziti. We recommend adding Italian sausage, vegetables, meatballs or Bolognese to really complete the dish.
The possible combinations of pasta and sauce are limitless, giving you more than just one way to enjoy National Pasta Day. Come celebrate with us on October 17!
The following post was contributed by Carrie Packard, Development Director at The Delores Project – a transitional shelter program for homeless women in Denver. Carmine’s on Penn is proud to once again host a fundraising dinner for this wonderful community organization.
The annual Share Dinner at Carmine’s is much more than a fundraiser for The Delores Project. Not only does the community come together for a fantastic family-style meal, but Carmine’s also hosts guests from our shelter as part of the evening, giving them the chance to enjoy a delicious meal, impeccable service and an evening out of the shelter with their friends and supporters.
“I was desperate for a place to stay and a meal. The Delores Project saved my life! I did not know that women from various backgrounds could survive by coming together to make a community.”
For more than 15 years, The Delores Project has provided safe, comfortable overnight shelter for women and transgender individuals experiencing homelessness. The Delores Project welcomes each guest without judgement, believing change comes from people in their own individual way. The Delores Project supports this unique path by providing services with as few requirements and restrictions as possible.
The Delores Project is seen as the leader in shelter programming for women and transgender individuals, ensuring that every night at least 50 women and transgender individuals have access to comfortable overnight shelter and services. Each evening, guests at The Delores Project are welcomed with a home cooked meal and a welcoming community helping them move from crisis towards stability and self-sufficiency.
We are grateful to have the support of Carmine’s, especially the waitstaff who so generously offer their time to serve our guests a warm and filling meal. It is appreciated more than you could ever know!
Call today to make your reservation for this special evening. A $45 prix fixe family-style meal will be offered, with $30 from each meal and 50% of beverage sales to be donated to The Delores Project.
Since the beginning, we’ve always focused on family and community. We even started Carmine’s on Penn with family in mind — using traditional recipes to create all of our sauces, breads and dishes the way they’ve been prepared for decades.
We wanted Carmine’s to be a place where people could come and gather with loved ones and enjoy delicious food. That’s why Carmine’s on Penn has served our food family style from the beginning. Every meal is made to share, whether it’s between two, four or more!
Other restaurants are now learning what Carmine’s has always known — food connects people and community in a magical way. It’s no surprise that family style dining is trending in restaurants this year. It encourages restaurant patrons to share — taking away ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ in dining and creating we.
Family style dining may be a ‘trend’ for some restaurants, but at Carmine’s, it’s how we’ve served our food for over 20 years. That’s why we’re thrilled to host our first annual Market-to-Table Community Dinner next week, where friends and strangers alike can dine together and enjoy a meal with ingredients grown right here in Colorado.
Family and community are synonymous at Carmine’s on Penn. We use food as a means to connect with our community, because our community is our family. It’s the connection of sharing food family style that makes Carmine’s on Penn and Italian culture so unique. Regardless of the trend of family style dinning lasting through 2015, our portions will always be made to share. Come join us!
After a weeklong winery and vineyard tour throughout Italy, Carmine’s owner Brad Ritter is back on American soil with a head full of wine knowledge and a belly full of authentic Italian cuisine. We’re not jealous..
Thanks to Dalla Terra Winery Direct – a direct importer of Italy’s finest wines – Brad was invited to attend a ‘Giro d’Italia’ for a behind the scenes look at where Carmine’s wines come from. This trip gave Brad the opportunity to meet the people who spend their days at the vineyards and in the wineries actually producing our wines – starting from the vine, to the grape, and finally, to the bottle. Learning about the wine making process first-hand allows us to appreciate and truly understand the wines we serve our customers.
Brad’s adventure began on the southeast coast of Italy, which is bordered by the Adriatic Sea. After enjoying the coastal life for a few days, the group traveled northwest to the Tuscany region, where a handful of Dalla Terra producers are located. To close out the trip, the group enjoyed their last few days in northern Italy and the “The Floating City”, or Venice as we like to call it.
Photo Credit: Dalla Terra
With so many wonderful sights, smells and tastes captured in Brad’s memory, it seems impossible not to share them all. Join us for our next Tour of Italy dinner and wine pairing on October 14 and enjoy your own Italian sensory adventure! More details coming soon.
Saluti!
When we took over Carmine’s nearly ten years ago, I was surprised by the number of solicitations for donations we received. It was our standard practice at the time to give a gift certificate to just about anyone who asked. But I could see that this was not a sustainable practice and questioned the true value of these donations from a both a philanthropic and marketing perspective.
Then the recession hit in 2008, really changing the financial realities for many people. Our business declined substantially as well. As the dust was settling, I realized that we were still in good shape and felt a need to support the local community in some way and to share our good fortune with others. My wife and I debated several ideas with a real focus on how we might “feed” people in need.
This led me to the head of The Delores Project. She agreed to meet with me and hear our “brilliant” idea. I wanted to open the restaurant for one day a year and feed anyone for free. She politely told me this was not only a bad, potentially chaotic plan, but that this one day of helping would not spread very far. So our plan evolved. We chose to select as many charitable partners as we thought we could support and then design specific ways that we might help each one.
Fast forward to today. We have used our restaurant space for special gatherings, catered events, and hosted dining evenings where substantial portions of the proceeds are directed to our partners. Each fall, we entertain presentations from organizations that ask for our support. We are naturally drawn to certain types of organizations. Specifically, we have worked with groups dedicated to homelessness, children and schools. We try to determine if our support will be important to the recipient either financially or in a way that helps to build up an organization. We want to evaluate each organization for their ability to deliver to those in need and use our donation wisely.
This month, we are proud to support the work of two local organizations – Project Angel Heart and The Denver Waldorf School. On Tuesday, April 28, we are hosting a fundraising dinner for The Denver Waldorf School and will be donating at least 50% of the evening’s food sales to the school. My three children attended Waldorf Schools from preschool through high school, so l am acquainted with the wonderful work done by dedicated teachers in this system. Not only that, but The Denver Waldorf School moved back to our neighborhood in 2014 and is celebrating 40 years in Denver! We wish to support their continued growth and capacity to serve children.
Then on Thursday, April 30, we are joining over 250 restaurants throughout Denver and Boulder to participate in Dining Out for Life to support Project Angel Heart – a nonprofit whose mission is to deliver nutritious meals to Coloradans with life-threatening illnesses. Save the date to dine out with us and we’ll donate 25% of the evening’s food sales to Project Angel Heart!
We hope to see you soon, and thank you for your continued support.
-Brad Ritter, Owner
Does anyone age wine anymore?
Once it was standard practice for a restaurant to purchase wine with the intention of aging before presenting to the consumer. But today, market pressures make this quite rare as the cost of inventory, space, and knowledge limit the opportunity.
Here at Carmine’s, we strive to offer a simple, uncomplicated wine list composed of all Italian wines (which can be very confusing to consumers). We are committed to serving the finest wines we offer after some extended aging in an effort to show the true sense of Barolo, Barbaresco and Brunello di Montalcino wines, for example.
Recently, we were offered the current vintage (vintage = the year the grapes are harvested) of these “big three” to add to our wine cellar. We tasted 2009, 2010 and 2011 vintages. We try to project development of these “young” wines so that they can be offered in a rotation with other purchased wine when they are more ready for the consumer.
Some of these same wines are on our wine list today from the 2001, 2004 and 2006 vintage! We will try to save a couple of bottles from special vintages for those times when a consumer is really searching for something special. So we typically have a few bottles of quite special and more aged wines when requested. This category represents a small corner of our total wines sold, but it occupies a large portion of interest and intrigue as we get to follow these wines in their development.
Next time you dine with us, feel free to inquire about the following wines:
Cogno “Vigna Elena” Barolo 2004
Allegrini Amarone 2006
Gianni Gagliardo Barolo 2006
Pe’re Allesandro “Vigna Giaia” Barbaresco 2001
Frescobaldi Castelgiocondo Brunello di Montalcino 2006
Mark your calendars for February 20 – March 1 as we celebrate Denver’s culinary scene during Denver Restaurant Week. Bring your friends and family together to enjoy a multi-course family style meal for just $30 per person.
Choose one of each:
Appetizers
Tour of Italy
Ravioli alla Vodka
Sausage and Peppers
Bruschetta
Antipasta Misti
Portobello Mushrooms
Zuppa di Mussels
Salads
House
Spinach
Caesar
Pear
Entrees (all served family size)
Strozzapreti
Chicken Montana
Carbonara
Pasta Carcio
White or Red Clam Sauce
Shrimp Calabrese
Chicken Cacciatore
Chicken Besciamella
Chicken alla Carmine’s
Chicken Marsala
Chicken Parmigiana
Chicken Piccata
Chicken Pazzo
Baked Ziti w/Italian Sausage
Baked Ziti w/Bolognese
Baked Ziti w/Vegetables
Baked Ziti w/Meatballs
Seafood Fra Diavolo
Moose’s Pasta
Shrimp Parmigiana
Pesce
Desserts
Three Layer Chocolate Cake
Tiramisu
Chocolate Chip Cannolis
New York Style Cheesecake
We also have vegetarian and gluten-free options available!
Want to really feel like a winner during Denver Restaurant Week? Enter The Pursuit of Culinary Perfection Contest by Lexus and you could win a Passport to the City for you and a guest! Tour the city in a luxurious Lexus, enjoy chef’s table seating at The Nickel, and a night’s stay at the Hotel Teatro. Enter to win here.
