Best Neighborhood Italian Restaurant

Just in case you were ever wondering, yeah, every neighborhood Italian joint back east is a little like Patsy's. Which is to say that every one of them has a claim to some kind of history, serves a wicked good linguini with white clam sauce, has a weird bar filled with exactly the kind of guys you never want to grow up to be, and makes spaghetti and meatballs that will hang with you, in flavor and in sweet memory, for the rest of your days. Patsy's has been around in one form or another, under one owner or another (a cousin of the founding family recently took over) for more than seventy years, since back when northwest Denver was a true Italian neighborhood, and it remains the best taste of neighborhood Italian in town. The kitchen does the simple stuff (pizzas again, mussels, that benchmark linguini with clam sauce) very well and, wisely, leaves the more complicated things for other restaurants. But you won't miss them, because at Patsy's, you'll find a dish you like and stick with it for the rest of your life — just like customers at a proper neighborhood joint are supposed to.