Popination Inflation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: the bar at North Italia.
There are two places we like to frequent in the posh Denver neighborhood called Cherry Creek: the Cherry Creek Grill (which I’ve written about before), and North Italia (plus the coffee shop with the haunting artwork, but that’s not a pub). Both places are posh-ish restaurants, not pubs, but both have bars that are perfect for people watching and cocktail sipping. So in my loose definitions of what can count as a Popination, I’m a count this lovely place today.
I’ve always been a fan of Italian food: after all, there’s almost nothing better than a hearty Italian dish when one needs some comfort food that keeps really well for leftovers. But I first got into finer Italian cuisine via a mild obsession with Stanley Tucci’s travel/foodie TV show, Finding Italy. This show was nightly entertainment in our house this past summer, and is pretty much what made the entire world (of all genders) fall in love with Tucci at once. We bought his memoir, one of his cookbooks, and we found North Italia just in the midst of that obsession. And we’ve never been disappointed.
This past weekend, my fiance and I were planning on going to a local winery with a friend couple, and that was going to be my plan for this week’s Popination. But it had blizzarded too suddenly and severely to keep those plans – horizontal blowing snow and icy roads and all. So just the two of us went to lunch the next day instead. And yes, it’s Colorado: it can be a dangerous winter storm the day before and a sunny springlike slush-roaded patio-enjoying day the next. It’s a thing.
Unfortunately the bar at North Italia was too crowded to sit at, so we were sat at a cozy little corner in the back alongside one of the huge picture windows that make up the North wall of the place, Valentine rose still adorning the table.
We ate delicious pasta dishes after a divine burrata under wine poached pears. And drank celebratory cocktails. Why celebratory? Well, the world is shitty enough these days; why not enjoy little things like negronis and prosecco if one can? Also, both our wedding day and my birthday are coming up fast, and it’s always been my practice to celebrate my birthday during most of the whole month of February, so. Again, why not.
The devastatingly charming Stanley Tucci is goals, for sure. But there’s also something about how both my partner and I contain a paradox within (or is that contrast? Or conflict?) — we both contain the multitudes of that brand of immense unbreakable classy charm, mixed with a more rugged outlaw or scrappy cowboy heritage. The two don’t mix, but are held in tandem within. And traveling between those two demeanors has been hugely helpful in my line of work as an educator, and definitely in his line of work as he navigates relationships between the scary tough guys and the English or even European businesspeople. Going out to a crunchy dive bar or our beloved rough cigar bar is just as pleasant to me as going out for a fancy meal in Cherry Creek. Just in a different way. And we can fluctuate between the fighter with a heart of gold and the Tucciesque charm that’s warm but never hot. It’s fun, and it’s us. It’s not like we fake it, when in either mode, after all. Like I always say about the art of acting, it’s not about pretending to be something you’re not, but finding where you are in the work. And that’s the way.
