Fired Up, Pizza, Denver Colorado

Artisan pizza, fire oven

1135 Bannock

1/2 block south of Art Museum

Street parking, takes quarters + nearby lots

Reservations available www.gtfiredup.com

303-825-1995

Coloradoan, lamb with Haystack goat cheese

Haystack goat cheese is big around here

Original goat farm in Niwot where there is a large hill shaped like a haystack

Salad Caprese, it's breezy.

Cool. Can I be in you guyzez club?

Why this? Because I like it, that's why.

It's not chiseled in stone, here is the lunch menu. You have to click around to see it all or PDF, but it's a bit more 'splainy than the paper menu. Nice site, not overwrought as some restaurant sites are, but I'd prefer the menus were put on one page on the website for savings in clicking, you know, like a resume. It's tricky, how to cram it all into one page and make it look simple and the impulse for designers is to break it all down and spread it all out, but that is not so necessary here.   

Apologies for these blurry things.

I guess I have a lot to learn outside my own controlled little setup. I don't trust my judgement, this was all automatic. And now I don't trust automatic. 

[the camera didn't know it needed to be a little more fast for the flame and a little more open to compensate for poor light.  That is, wrongly fast and wrongly wide open according to its algorithmic calculations. It could have, but I didn't tell it that.]

Never even considered letting it use its own flash. We just don't do that. And I thought I was getting really good results too. I can do much better than this. Sorry. 

Even blurry the oven must be shown, it's essential,

the sine que non of the place as it were.

This place is new and apparently they get a good crowd right off the bat for dinners. I was there for late lunch and got special attention because I'm so adorable and because they had a bit of time for it but mostly because they had a bit of time. 

It would have to be that.

The people are nice as can be. Everybody is. The staff, the owner, I think that guy is, I didn't ask, the visitors, the cooks, the puppies.

Every time I've walked by someone outside had a puppy. And you know what puppies are, don't you? They're conversation starters! Duh. 

The place has a very hot oven, you can stand there and feel it blasting right out. It's not made of stone as you might imagine, rather it is a super duper modern scientific Hadron collider type thing or possibly an extremely hot enclosed space. It does have stone, but the stone is not obvious. It has a glass front, long and flat but not so flat as a regular commercial pizza oven, with wood burning on one side and gas burning on the other side. The enclosed work area around the stove is also extremely hot. The cook said, "Welcome to my world."

Cheering, so much more inviting than Dante's 'abandon all hope.'  

There appears to be a mason jar sub-theme. The suspended lamps are mason jars, there are other mason jars around.

Buffalo mozzarella, fire roasted tomatoes are the best! Fire roasted peppers and onions, all that is amazing. Amazing. I couldn't eat all mine, but I picked that off and scarfed it to make sure I absorbed every last molecule of fire roasted vegetable flavor and swoon inducing smokey goodness. Honestly, all vegetables should be cooked like that. 

Local ingredients wherever possible. Colorado lamb, Colorado goat cheese. 

The salad I had was fresh and not prepared in advance like they do at, I cannot say their name but their initials are R.A.C.I.N.E.S. Oops. I hate that, when you get your salad and it's been obviously suffocated under plastic waiting for a passing waiter to snag it like they do at R.A.C.I.N.E.S. Oops I did it again. No, not like that at Fired Up, the salad I had at Fired Up is fresh. Sorry for mentioning that other place that cannot be mentioned but the excellent fresh salad I had at Fired Up compares so favorably that it completely outshines the salad that I had that was suffocated before serving at that place not mentioned.

I bet if you ask nicely they'll let you ride their pizza bike. I didn't ask because I was starving.  

The pizza I had at Fired Up is how I would make it myself. So is the salad. Therefore I approve. Yes. Go there. Go there right now before they realize their prices can be higher.

Also, I discovered this. A person told me this who would know. Pure, a medical dispensary is next door, two doors, and if you have a receipt from there, on the day I suppose, I don't know for sure, and show it, then Fired Up will give you a 10% discount. I was told. So, pot and pizza in one go. These are the wonderful people of Colorado. God, I love Colorado.

Ed: Thought about this more. The cooks. These guys, from looking at them, observing for awhile, they allow that, are  real cooks, not just a bunch of schlubs. Schlubs as you will find three blocks away on Broadway at Luciano's. Fired Up has TVs but they are muted not the chaotic din found, say, three blocks away on Broadway at Luciano's. The techniques I noticed at Fired Up were so deft. Big fat meatball, perfect size pan, ladled with Mariana sauce, jerked to distribute, covered with another pan of the same size upside down, then lifted off and jerked again to redistribute, covered again. Someone is getting a splendid meatball. Made me wish I ordered a meatball. I'm going back for a meatball. They make their own chorizo too. That's another thing I'm going to try.