BOULDER RESTAURANT REVIEW: Frasca Food and Wine
Note: this was originally planned to post on December 31, but that was overly ambitious considering I was on holiday, so please forgive me pretending it's still 2025 in the introduction.
It's been a massive 2025 here at Adrian Reviews, especially considering that the site didn't exist before this year. In the past six months since starting this blog, I've been fortunate enough to visit both the #1 ranked restaurant in the world and the #1 ranked bar in the world, so why not end the year on a high note with (according to a different source) the best restaurant in the United States?
But first, a look back at some of my favorite bars and restaurants of 2025, both in Houston and beyond. Some of these were pre-AR, but by this time next year hopefully all entries on the 2026 best-of list should have an associated linked review.
Favorite 2025 Houston Restaurants:
- Musaafer
- Belly Of The Beast
- BCN Taste & Tradition
- TINS
- Street To Kitchen
- Burger Bodega
Favorite 2025 Houston Bars:
Favorite 2025 Non-Houston Restaurants:
Favorite 2025 Non-Houston Bars:
- Double Chicken Please (New York)
- Handshake Speakeasy (Mexico City)
- Connaught Bar (London)
- Tres Monos (Buenos Aires)
- The Cloakroom (Montreal)
- Thunderbolt (Los Angeles)
On to the main event.
As a fan of food and an even bigger fan of rankings and awards shows, I've always kept an eye on the annual James Beard nominations and winners. This year I was stunned to see that the honoree for Outstanding Restaurant was located in... Boulder, Colorado?! I hadn't heard of Frasca Food and Wine before, but needless to say, my curiosity was piqued. This normally wouldn't be an easy one to visit for me, but as fate would have it, my sister and her family moved not too far from the restaurant later in the year. I recommended my parents to go check it out for some reconnaissance (with promising reports coming back), and started counting down the days until I could go visit at Christmas time.
Even though it's often cited as the world's most popular cuisine, I don't eat a ton of Italian food (pizza excepted, of course). Not that I don't enjoy it, I just generally prefer different flavor profiles. In fact, there hasn't been a single true Italian restaurant reviewed on this site yet. And I CERTAINLY don't eat a lot of food from Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, the region of Northeast Italy that Frasca specializes in. This area, bounded by the Adriatic Sea, Austria, and Slovenia at the foot of the Carnic and Julian Alps, stretches from the sea to the sky, providing quite the diversity of ingredients and cultural blending.
The restaurant is over two decades old now, and has continued to rack up accolades over the years, including a Michelin Star and the aforementioned JB mega-honor. It's located on a quiet block of the famous Pearl Street in downtown Boulder, and has a comforting yet upscale vibe. Holiday decor only added to the ambiance, setting the table for a perfect winter meal. Service here is impeccable, uncommonly attentive and nimbly paced, unlike some other places I've reviewed lately.
There is the option for a sort of a la carte on the "Quattro Piatti" menu, where you can build your own four-course meal from a handful of selections, but to get the full experience we opted for the nine-course "Friulano" dégustation. The concept takes the eater on a culinary journey through FVG, beginning at the coast with seafood-driven dishes, and transitioning to meat-centric items as one metaphorically ventures inland toward the mountains.
To start was a collection of three small bites known as Assaggi (literally "to taste"). A polenta puff with bluefin tuna, capers, and colatura (an anchovy-based fish sauce from the Amalfi Coast) was full of umami and salinity, with an airy foundation topped with a beautiful slice of fish. The chestnut tegolino, veal ciccioli (a pressed meat cake), and golden raisin featured delightful maple leaf-shaped crackers sandwiching the soft protein, with a touch of sweetness from the dried grape. And third, the only item that has been on the menu since day one back in 2004, was a frico fritella, a fried cube of potato and montasio cheese, adorned with duck prosciutto and spruce. All three of these morsels had really fun textural interplays and together were a lovely way to start the adventure, though the latter was definitely my favorite. I can totally understand why it has survived all these years.
Next was Vellutata Triestina, a cold soup with potato, white asparagus, baby leek, vermouth fumetto, and Ossetra caviar. Named after the Italian word for "velvet" and the iconic port city of Trieste (which I hear is charming, though I can't say I've ever visited), this creamy blend of pureed vegetables was deftly complemented by the salty, luxurious roe. I normally don't care for chilled soups (gazpacho, etc..), but this one hit for me. My only regret is that I over-eagerly dipped a spoon in before snapping a picture, so the slight disfigurement in the photo below was my mistake, not theirs.
Rounding out the sea-forward dishes was the Capesante, with dayboat Hokkaido scallops, brovada (an ancient technique of fermented turnips), Prosciutto di San Daniele, and tropea onion. The mollusks arrived gently wrapped around prisms of turnip, plated over a jam made from the sweet red onions, garnished with a crispy slice of the cured ham... before a prosciutto broth (!!) was poured over the top. You would think that that would overpower the scallops, but the rich, slightly saccharine liquid only served to elevate the rest. A really unique course that combined a lot of distinctly regional items with an unexpected Japanese influence.
Moving on to the pasta portion of the evening (of course there was pasta), we had Canederli di Zucca. This large bread dumpling, which was made from red kuri squash, foie gras, and cheese, was visually reminiscent of a pumpkin, strikingly contrasting against the tangle of wilted spinach and golden thyme jus atop which it sat. The soft, spongy dumpling was surprisingly flavorful due to the hidden infusion of foie, and bits of cranberry added a hint of tartness to the ensemble. I was reminded of the Czech bread and potato dumplings that my grandparents used to cook when I was younger, though I don't think they ever incorporated foie gras (not that I would have eaten it in those days, when my palate was significantly less adventurous).
Ruota di Tartufo was another pasta dish, a wagon-wheel shape referencing the carriages that once transported spice in the region. Made from carob flour (historically used as feed for the horses that pulled the aforementioned transports), filled with a montasio cheese fonduta, egg yolk, and brown butter emulsion, and finished with pine nuts and Burgundy black truffle shavings, this raviolo-esque noodle exuded indulgence. Perhaps a touch too eggy for my liking, but the craftsmanship was undeniable.
Now we're really cooking. Cervo ("deer" in Italian) was an expertly seared venison loin with a marsala glaze over a black sunchoke puree and shaved Perigord black truffle. This was undoubtedly my favorite dish of the evening: the meat was incredibly tender, and the accompaniments were so delicious that I was begging for more. I'm a BIG wild game guy, and venison is one of my absolute favorites that I really don't eat enough. Perhaps if I ever move to the mountains I can up my deer consumption.
The other meat course, Vitello, was veal two ways (loin and sweetbread) and Colorado apple two ways (sliced and pureed), with mustard seeds, a buckwheat crisp, and caraway jus. Stunningly presented, this was perhaps the most complex plate of all, with alluring sweetness from my favorite fruit augmenting the delicate protein. I much preferred sweetbread in this small cube form to the colossal slab of thymus I took on earlier in the year in Argentina.
We're almost done y'all. For dessert, Pera e Mandorla: an almond cake with lime gel, miso foam, pear sorbet, and an almond tuile. There were some interesting flavors here, with a hit of umami and some acidity contrasting the sweet, nutty cake. You might not know this about me, but I love a tuile, though I would have appreciated a more unique shape or design, however frivolous that might be. And finally, Pasticcini ("pastries", basically the Italian equivalent of mignardises) were five little sweets, including a house made Klondike bite, a bergamot and hazelnut bonbon, and a blood orange pâte de feuille (I am now an expert in spelling this). A cute epilogue to a great meal.
I won't get too far into the drinks (there is wine, as you can probably deduce from the name, and even though I am not a big oenophile, I can confirm they have both red AND white), though there were some gorgeous cocktails... please see some of the photos below. But I have to mention the most unusual thing I've experienced in quite some time: for some reason they had a bottle of a circa-1960's Yugoslavian créme de menthe-esque digestif, which I obviously had to try. A fluorescent, almost radioactive green color, it was startlingly smooth and pleasant (even if some might describe the taste as "toothpaste"). This is allegedly the only bottle remaining in the United States, and there wasn't too much left in there, so if you want to try it, you better hightail it to the Front Range.
Overall, this was a wonderful dinner, and while I don't necessarily plan on returning every time I'm in Colorado (it was not cheap, that's for sure), they do change at least one dish every week or two, and completely overhaul the menu about once per quarter, so maybe in a few years I'll come back and have an entirely new experience.
RANKING UPDATE: While it doesn't quite crack my best-0f 2025, as seen above, I am still adding this to my Beyond Houston guide, as it was an excellent dinner, and a type of cuisine that is not very well represented on there.
NEXT UP: A love letter to Mexico City and one of my top two favorite spirits... unexpectedly found in Denver