Pasta with a Pour

RiNo’s next neighborhood haunt comes with Michelin credentials and a very good wine list. Soda Club, the four-time Michelin Bib Gourmand-awarded fresh pasta, natural wine and cocktail bar from James Beard Award-nominated restaurateur Ravi Derossi, is slated to open this August inside The Ramble Hotel at 1260 25th Street. Derossi, a Colorado native and one of the founders behind Death & Co, helped bring the acclaimed cocktail bar to The Ramble in the first place. Now, he is returning to the same address with a more relaxed kind of polish: fresh pasta, natural wine, grappa-anchored cocktails and the kind of low-lit room that makes one more glass feel inevitable.

Derossi and partner and wine director Drew Brady opened the original Soda Club in New York’s East Village in 2021, inspired by European natural wine bars that function as true neighborhood gathering places. The Denver outpost will carry that same spirit, with an intimate, moody dining room planned for the former Super Mega Bien space, seating 70 inside and 30 on the patio. Dinner will be served nightly, with late hours that stretch to midnight during the week and 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, which already makes it one of the more civilized answers to the eternal Denver question: where do we go after dinner?

The menu comes from Executive Chef Amira Gharib, whose Sicilian-inspired, Arab-influenced cooking gives Soda Club its point of view. Expect signature and seasonal fresh pastas, plus Roman-style pinsa, a lighter, airier cousin to pizza made with long-fermented dough and a blend of wheat and rice flours. The team also plans to bring its popular monthly pasta-making classes to Denver, for those who prefer their carbs with a little coursework. Brady, a Wine Enthusiast Future 40 Tastemaker, will curate a 200-plus bottle natural wine list focused on small, independent producers, while the cocktail program promises the same level of intention Derossi has brought to Death & Co and Amor y Amargo. In short: RiNo is getting pasta, but not the predictable kind.