The Saucy Noodle Ristorante

Same old, same old…
Rude front desk people, gave us the worst seat in the house next to kitchen, i looked around and found a booth but was told that it was «reserved» 25 minutes later the table was still unoccupied.
Service was slow and then 25 min later the server says that the whole grain pasta that we ordered had not come out right and that we would need to pick another pasta, no sorry or offer to compensate, not expected but pretty common in that circumstance. In general sever was pretty indifferent about everything, not super helpful and while not rude not especially friendly.
Food was good but not exceptional, the highlight was the cheese bread if that gives you an idea. The spaghetti is very thin and mushy, stick with the Penne or Rigatoni for any semblance of texture
I think the place is lucky that it is in a convenient location, my experience has been pretty similar every time i go there, they just seem arrogant because it is typically busy.
That’s my two cents

there isnt a lot of good home cooking italian food in Denver. this is pretty darned good. liked everything that we had but the pesto pasta. the Linguini appears to be homemade and the sauce was great. Excellent waitstaff!

Yup! Good for a date, good for the fam, and tough to find something on the menu that you won’t like. Sometimes they have this soup… oh… my…garlicky…goodness! Cream of carmelized onion and garlic soup. This place will serve you up a home-​cooked style meal that is dressed up just right to let you know you’re dining out.

We really enjoyed our first visit to the Saucy Noodle! Stu was our waiter and when I told him it was our first visit, he gave us some history of the restaurant and made some recommendations. I chose the half order of spaghetti and meatball but substituted linguini since they make the linguini from scratch. My husband had the half spaghetti, half ravioli. We also ordered the house salad. We both took about half of our meals home. The only complaint we had is the lack of parking. We will go back there again!

Amazing authentic Italian spot! My boyfriend took me here on one of our first dates, and 2 years later, we keep coming back. Make sure to get the house salad-​and the fettuccine Alfredo with chicken. If I could give the Saucy Noodle 10 stars, I would!

My friend chose this place after craving Italian food. The place is quaint and charming and alongside all the fun stores/​restaurants at Bonnie Brae. The service is OK (not overly friendly and kind of abrupt) and the food is also decent. The half sizes are still quite large and definitely sharable between 2 people. I had the eggplant parmesan, which was decent and my friend said she really liked the maiale parmigiana.
On a Saturday night dinner, the food took a little while to arrive.
All and all, everything was good. After dinner, my friend and I went for ice cream at Bonnie Brae ice cream after dinner. That review is next.

Local family owned place with great food! Great portions that will send you home with food every time. I love the stuff shells and Gorgonzola dinner salad. The restaurant has a classic Italian feel. The prices maybe a little high but you get two meals out of a dinner size order so it’s worth it.

Love Garlic! Love the Saucy Noodle Ristorante!
If you don’t like Garlic — go away! Run Away, as the Saucy Noodle Ristorante is not for you.
I LOVE Garlic, so the Saucy Noodle calls my name every time we are in the area.
Service is excellent, no EXCELLENT! The wait staff is attentive, but not in your face.
We had several questions, which were promptly answered. Suggestions were made, and it was absolutely wonderful!
The food is excellent, with plenty of it. We split a salad, and an appetizer, and were Sufficiently Suffonsified (full, very full!). All of the food was wonderful, absolutely no complaints.
The interior was clean, comfortable, and relaxing. There is plenty of seating inside, yet it did not feel stuffy or cramped, which was very nice.
Parking — well, that’s another word, as the restaurant is located off of University, which in itself, can be tricky. We parked about 2 blocks away, in the neighborhoods behind, and that made it easy.
Price — very good, considering all of the food you get, and the excellent service too.
Will we be back — absolutely!
Thanks Saucy Noodle!
See you there!

Saucy noodle is yet another place on University that’s management has been passed on from generation to generation with few changes. Sometimes change is good and sometimes it’s not. Washington Park and Bonnie Brae demographics are changing fast, and this restaurant needs to rethink the pricing vs. quality of the dining experience they offer to the upscale clientele moving in.
I was on the fence giving 3 stars instead of 2 on this one. Too much of the food feels like it’s right off the Cisco truck in generic cans. They have the tag line «If you don’t love garlic, go home» which would imply good scratch-​made Italian cooking, but I’ve found it to be lacking in flavor and authenticity. For example, great garlic bread is not made from wonder bread unless it’s Texas Toast!
I do give them credit for having one of the better beers around on draft (Modus Hoperandi), an ample wine selection, and some addictive pop corn while you wait. One word of advice to the owners though: for the love of all things Italian, make some sauces and pasta from scratch if you’re going to charge those prices, and throw out the microwave! If you want to keep serving up the same, then look into value pricing that menu. A single entrée of this quality level shouldn’t cost $ 16 – 18 and still need sides. I might suggest you go try DiFranco’s and get some fresh ideas on the potential of your restaurant.

After having been here many many times I figured it’s time to write a review. This place is good, home style Italian comfort food. I have never been disappointed. And I’ve had a lot here — spaghetti, meatballs, rigatoni, ravioli, fettuccini Alfredo, pizza, chicken parm… All oh-​so good. The garlic bread is nothing special though. The pasta is homemade, which makes a huge difference… Especially in the ravioli flavor (for the better that is). Also, $ 5 for the house chianti — can’t go wrong, and it’s pretty good for a house wine too!

This place was great. I took a staff of about 10 there a week ago and it was fantastic food. Great portions for the price, great atmosphere and good service. Good variety of Italian food as well, although I mainly stick to my chicken parmesan… it was great none the less.

I wanted to be a fan but found it to be just your average run-​of-​the-​mill family Italian restaurant. The fried ravioli appetizer was just deep fried with a smudge of ricotta cheese and mostly hollow. Frankly, I prefer Olive Garden’s fried ravioli better. I ordered the «spaghetti» and meatballs and was surprised that the pasta was actually angel-​hair thin vermicelli, not regular spaghetti. It would be nice if that had been stated on the menu as I am not a fan of thin pasta at all. The meatball [singular] was very good though. Not bad but nothing great. Just average.

Four stars for the calamari. One star for food. The pasta was over cooked and the sauce could have been from a jar. Would not go back. Hard to believe they have in business for fifty years.

Absolutely amazing! Called on Saturday afternoon when another popular place quoted me a 30 minute pickup order wait. The Saucy Noodle quoted me 15 minutes. Because it was last minute they answered my menu item questions. I was craving lasanga… FANTASTIC. Came in a huge portion with salad and bread for lunch. Going back this week :))

At the conclusion of our dinner, my partner literally said, «I would only give this restaurant one star.» She was right– it was very disappointing.
We walked in and waited 2 – 3 minutes at the front door (we really did– we are service industry folks and know how annoying it is when people seat themselves) even though there was no sign with instructions either way. The bartender was chatting with one gentleman right in front of us, but didn’t bother to stop and greet us or tell us anyone would be with us. Awkwardly, we assumed since it was early for dinner we could seat ourselves.
We seat ourselves right next to everyone else who is seated in the restaurant so as not to be missed. 3 servers walk right past us. No big deal, maybe we were supposed to wait for seating. We approach a lady server who is pushing tables together for a future party and ask politely for menus. «Oh, you sat yourself?» She was tall, had glasses and bangs and seemed a bit older. She almost made me cry. I let her say her piece and huff and puff with our menus and waited for our real server. Consider us adequately punished.
Our server, a blonde gentlemen, was very polite (although he was one who had walked past us a bunch of times earlier) and accommodating.
We order spaghetti, but it is angel hair. Nowhere on the menu did it say it would be angel hair. We were really looking forward to the thick, homemade style noodles in our spaghetti. Could easily be the fault of our assumptions, but on top of it being angel hair, it was mushy and really tasted low quality. Huge bummer. We got a full order and only ate about ¹⁄₃ of it. The sausage was good, though.
We are the type that can never afford to go out to eat, so when we do and we get bad hospitality and subpar food, it can be seriously heartbreaking. We won’t be back.

We had a bad experience. Maybe we will give another try but for now, I’m giving it two stars.
For starters, they were out of so much. No beer, no caprese salad. No grenadine. We find this out after five minutes of ordering it. I made a huge about a discount for our meal and she just laughed.
The food took forever…
I got the baked rigatoni. Very dry. And tiny. And I ordered the full for $ 16 thinking I’ll take some home. Nope. I will say, the one meatball they give tasted great.
Boyfriend got the lasagna. He said it was just okay. We ordered a side of fettuccine Alfredo. Warning. Do NOT order this dish. It’s nothing but butter. When we told the waitress, she said that’s how they do it there. Like someone else said, garlic bread was tasteless and way too hard.
Friend got eggplant parm, which he also said was bland. He also got the artichoke hearts. Also bland.
In end, the waitress knew we were unhappy and said sorry but didn’t offer anything to compensate. Bad business.

I want to give this place a 4 star review because the food was some of that good-​heavy-​cheesy-​carboloaded italian and our waitress was super sweet and attentive. The reason I am giving this place a 3 star review is that the picture frames that I sat next to were dusty and there was considerable water damage inside the prints.
Edit: the more I think about it, the more I think this place is a solid 3 star place.

I should probably write two separate reviews, One for the dinner and other for dessert, because I felt like they were from two different restaurants.
Dinner was uninspired and mostly edible. I got a side of ravioli (that as standard comes with no choice of sauce) what? So I chose my side of sauce (Alfredo) for an additional charge since I am not a fan of dry pasta. The alfredo was a liquid and that is the most redeeming quality that it possessed. No flavor or yum factor, or yuck factor just a blah white bowl of white. I also order a side of polenta, it was a large brick of fried polenta mixed with a seemingly bushel of parsley (to be fair I am terribly biased on that because I can’t stand the stuff). Garlic bread was hard and uncomfortable to eat and bread had (you guessed it) no real flavor. I was pretty disappointed considering the restaurant’s motto.
Dessert…hooooooooollllllyyyyyy moley. I want to eat their crème brûlée 24-​hours a day. Perfection absolute perfection. Chocolate chip canoli were a tad petite and with the serving at 3… could have been more generous. But solid all the way around. Delicate but still crunchy, not soggy. Filling was light and rich with excellent mouth feel.
Had a ghost pepper caramel off their in house made chocolate (flavors rotate) great flavor, wished it had a bit more heat but not lacking by any means just a personal preference.
Overall I would eat all of the desserts offered here in a heartbeat but couldn’t recommend someone eat dinner.

Great place! Intimate setting and fun appetizer of seasoned popcorn. The personal pizza was tasty, the sausage risotto flavorful, and the tiramisu some of the best I’ve ever had (other than my husband’s own recipe, of course). The service was a little slow, but other than that, we had a good time.

Great food & atmosphere.
I have started going to the Saucy Noodle more often and every time is great.
There’s usually a wait at dinner, which is great as it means people like going there.
The last experience I had had about a 20 – 30 minute wait. We ordered some house chianti at the bar while waiting. When it was mentioned that we were hungry the bartender went to the kitchen to grab an order of bread sticks and homemade marinara. She didn’t have to as she was very busy. Great customer service.
When seated shortly thereafter our waitress came and greeted us and let us know it would be a few minutes as she was serving several tables. This is a minor yet very important thing as she didn’t make us wait just to say hello.
I ordered ½ baked rigatoni with arabiata sauce & meatball. The half order is huge and could definitely be shared. On top of this you get fresh garlic bread (vampires beware!)
But wait you get a dinner salad with every meal and its not just iceberg lettuce with tiny carrots & cabbage. There are tomatoes, carrots, black olives, celery, pepperoni, mozzarella cheese, and your choice of homemade dressing whether Italian, ranch (my fave), blue cheese or a few others. This comes with one of their delicious bread sticks.
I always take leftovers home and have a full belly and happy heart.