At three o'clock on a weekday afternoon, Andrea Frizzi wants you to walk into Risica at 3463 Walnut St. and order a single ounce of mortadella with a little giardiniera. "We're open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., so you can come at 3," the chef told Westword when the place opened in October. Nothing on the menu costs more than $20.
That ounce of mortadella describes the fall well. Since August, the new openings around Walnut and Larimer have been built for small orders, long hours and lingering over a bottle. The clearest example is a single weekend in October on two neighboring streets.
One Italian Room Closed the Weekend Another Opened
Risica opened over the weekend before October 19. As Westword pointed out, that was the same weekend The Greenwich closed. The Greenwich, at 3258 Larimer St., opened in 2021 under former Denver restaurateur Dolores Tronco. It started out serving Italian dishes and later shifted to pizza and small plates, the Denver Post reported. Westword's October roll call counted several changes over those five years: the concept moved from "eclectic New American" to Italian pastas to more of a pizza focus, the chef changed and the business changed owners. It was one of the two closures in October that Westword said "left the biggest reverberations" in the city.
Risica comes from a chef the neighborhood already knows. Frizzi ran Il Posto and Vero, and Risica opened after more than a year of anticipation. He calls it a "Milanese pizzeria and wine bar" modeled on the places he grew up with in Milan. Asked what makes a pizza Milanese, he points to the room instead. "It's not the pizza," he told Westword. "It's the energy."
A Menu You Can Order an Ounce at a Time
Look past the pizza and almost every part of Risica's menu is sold in small, separate pieces:
- Taglieri, the Italian take on charcuterie, offers six meats and eight cheeses, ordered by the ounce off a list like a sushi menu. Westword photographed one à la carte plate at $11.
- Piattini are small cast-iron saucers of snacks, including eggplant parmigiana, cured salmon and the stuffed calamari regulars will remember from Il Posto.
- Portafogli, or "pizza wallets," are sandwiches made from pizza dough folded in half and stuffed with meats and cheeses.
- Pizzas use toppings found more often in Italy. The tartufo has trumpet mushrooms and truffle powder in a cream and fontina sauce, and "La Frizzi" is prosciutto di Parma with arugula.
The bar works the same way. There are Aperol spritzes and four versions of the Negroni, which Westword ties to Milan's aperitivo culture of small, inexpensive bites. Most hot dishes come out of a $70,000 oven with gas flames and a rotating floor. Frizzi spent that much on the oven, and he keeps the menu priced for quick stops at any hour.
Three Doors Over, the Same Bet
Most of the openings in the blocks around it since August run on long evenings and small plates.
| Place | Address | Opened | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soda Club | 1260 25th St., in the Ramble Hotel | August 2026 | All-vegan Italian pastas, pizzas and natural wine in the former Super Mega Bien space |
| La Vie En Rose | 2636 Walnut St. | September 2026 | Parisian-style champagne and cocktail bar in the former Noble Riot space |
| Tiny RiNo Treat House | 2669 Larimer St., Denver Central Market | September 2026 | Treat stall in the space High Point Creamery used to hold |
| Risica | 3463 Walnut St. | October 2026 | Milanese pizzeria and wine bar, open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. |
| Garden Cafe | 2590 Walnut St. | October 2026 | Listed among Westword's October openings |
La Vie En Rose comes from Nicole and Scott Mattson, who also own Nocturne Jazz & Supper Club next door. The food is hors d'oeuvres and small plates chosen to go with champagne: savory petit fours on tiered platters, steak tartare, a "grand gougère" with mornay sauce and popcorn fried chicken. The by-the-bottle champagne list has more than 120 options, one of the largest in Colorado, and the cocktails lean on French spirits like cognac and armagnac. Scott Mattson summed up the approach to Westword as "finesse over flash." The Art Nouveau interior was designed with Kevin Nguyen of Regular Architecture and includes velvet curtains and a bar that curves around a built-in champagne bowl. It's open in the evenings Wednesday through Sunday, until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Soda Club comes from New York's Overthrow Hospitality. Co-founder Ravi DeRossi, wine director Drew Brady and executive chef Amira Gharib serve fresh focaccia, house-made pastas and Roman-style flatbreads called pinsas. The chef de cuisine is Jon Robbins, whose Bistro Barbès closed in June after 12 years. In its fall list of the best new places, 5280 singled out the chile-forward, pork-free 'nduja in the bucatini arrabbiata and the date cake with saffron ice cream. Westword's August roll call called the room "a space worth lingering in with a glass of wine and a bowl of pasta."
These openings are also part of a bigger shift that Westword described. RiNo's early businesses moved into old industrial buildings, and newer, more polished spaces have been taking their place. The transition from Noble Riot's punk-graffiti look to La Vie En Rose's velvet is the clearest example on the block.
The Pop-Up That Ran on a Deadline
The fall's best po'boys came from a sushi chef. Kenta Kamo of Temaki Den grew up in Louisiana and went to college there. While Temaki Den underwent a renovation, he and fellow Louisiana chef Isaac Woo opened Poor Boys as a temporary shop at The Source on Brighton Boulevard. The menu included a fried shrimp and oyster combo, a roast beef debris po'boy on a Vinh Xuong Bakery baguette, and fried catfish smothered in green chile crawfish étouffée.
The pop-up was scheduled to run through mid-October. In 5280's fall roundup, Kamo said he hopes to reopen the concept in a permanent location in 2027. A short run with an end date fits the same format as the rest of this fall's openings: a tight menu you can drop in for.
December 4 Puts the New Map to the Test
The holiday market season will be the first busy stretch these rooms see together. The RiNo Art District's free, all-ages It's a RiNo-FUL Life holiday market runs for three days at RiNo ArtPark, 1900 35th St., with artisan booths inside Truss House, a seasonal bar and live music from Andrea Asali. The schedule:
- Friday, Dec. 4, 5 to 9 p.m. Artist Lucy Holtsnider leads a make-and-take holiday card printmaking session. At 7 p.m., the district lights its cone tree, a holiday tree built from traffic cones.
- Saturday, Dec. 5, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Yeastie Boys hosts zine and button-making workshops throughout the day.
- Sunday, Dec. 6, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The workshops continue, and "The Spaces Between," a group exhibition curated by Johnny Draco, is on view in the ArtPark Welcome Center Gallery all three days.
The district asks visitors to RSVP through MultiPass so it can plan for attendance. The same Friday, the Five Points BID holds its December First Friday along the Welton corridor starting at 5 p.m., with live music, local vendors, food and drinks.
Risica fits easily around a weekend market visit. It opens at 11 a.m., so you can drop in between the Saturday zine workshop and the drive home, and order an ounce of something and a spritz from a menu where nothing tops $20. On Friday night, La Vie En Rose is open until 11, two hours after the market closes.
If keeping up with which RiNo rooms changed hands this year helps you understand the blocks you live on, we would love to compare notes. Dillon at Campfire Real Estate follows these corridors storefront by storefront. Let's Connect, ideally over an ounce of mortadella on Walnut.
