The Bite

The menu at Bravo! Ristorante (1550 Court Place) has also changed -- for the better -- since former Fourth Story chef Chris Cina signed on with the Adam's Mark eatery. Cina, who left last spring to work for the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland, says the September 11 attacks were partly responsible for his decision to return to Denver. "I was there to eventually replace one of the chefs, but he decided to stay," Cina explains. "They offered me a job elsewhere in the hotel, but there was nothing else there I really wanted to do, and I felt like I'd really covered the job I'd been working. So I started traveling around a little, in Germany and London, and thought about doing something there. But then September 11 happened, and all I really wanted to do was come home."

But when he got here, he found that things in the restaurant business had tightened considerably. "I spent about six to eight weeks knocking on doors, asking around, but there aren't many positions available right now," he says. "Then a friend told me about Bravo!" The restaurant had lost its chef, Doug Ganz, in August, and Cina decided to check out the opening. Now he's glad he did. "This kind of thing, European-Italian food, isn't something I'd have thought of doing on my own, but it's definitely turning out to be a challenge, stretching me," he says. "That's always a good thing."

Since Bravo! was still using its summer menu, updating it was Cina's first order of business. He says the hotel's executive chef, Patrick Delaney, gave him free rein, which Cina has used to assemble a roster of intriguingly updated Italian classics, including char-grilled salmon with red-wine truffle sauce, lentils and cippolini onions, and veal loin stuffed with artichokes, tomatoes and garlic with zucchini "spaghetti" in a lemon-caper sauce. At lunch, the sweet Italian-sausage panino with fresh mozzarella and marinara could be good enough to catch the mayor's attention.