The American business entity known as the shopping plaza offers some odd juxtapositions, but Boulder delivers a particularly tasty one: Volta restaurant. With its inviting mix of Mediterranean-influenced fare, it sits hard by Colorado Multisport, a shop serving cyclists and triathletes, and just a stone’s throw from McGuckin’s Hardware, the granddaddy of Front Range DIY stores.
So if you need to pick up post-prandial racing shorts or lag bolts, you are in luck. But there is so much more reason to visit Volta.
Launched five months ago in the old Alba space, Volta is owned by Jon and Eleni Deering. The couple divide the duties: Jon is behind the beverage program. Eleni, with Greek roots, is the roving front-of-the-house presence.
It is a cheery space. Whitewashed walls are adorned with paintings. Light pours in from the western exposure, a glass-fronted stretch behind a generous, L-shaped bar. The floor is a dark blue adorned with small white whorls, akin to what the Aegean Sea might look like from a mile up.
Attention is paid to details. Plump fries, ordered by my starch-fiend guest, came with a ramekin of aioli spiked with smoked paprika and a squeeze of lemon. Salt cellars are metal canisters the size of a snuff tin, filled with pink Himalayan salt. Nice.
Volta is open daily for lunch and dinner. Sunday sees a brunch, plus a “Greek Sunday dinner” offering some standard fare from that country, plus contemporary twists. Yes, you can get saganaki and pastitsio — one of the world’s great pasta casseroles — but there is often a dish of roast lamb with roasted sweet potatoes, sausage, braised cabbage and a mustard gastrique.
Two recent visits rewarded the trek to Boulder and guaranteed return trips.
Daily brunch features limited breakfast fare such as frittatas and a decadent lamb hash, along with sandwich options such as falafel and chicken souvlaki.
One day’s special was a luxurious onion soup, a bowl of beef broth packed with caramelized shredded white onions and golfball-sized parmesan croutons. The rich dish, with great depth of flavor, made me wish it was 30 degrees colder. It was the essence of winter.
Two spanikopita wedges ($10) were almost spicy in their seasonings, packed with spinach and tart feta and laced with tzatziki, the cucumber-yogurt concoction that is Greece’s gift to the sauce world. I liked the sophisticated melding of flavors, and how the golden phyllo dough shattered at a fork’s touch.
The spanikopita also came with the Athenian Experience combo plate ($14). It featured a lineup of skewered lamb (savory though a tad dry), with roast beets, a grape leaf-wrapped dolmade atop tzatziki, cukes, roasted red peppers and skordalia, a creamy dip for crostini made with potatoes, walnuts and garlic. The latter is available as a starter.
Dinner entrees let the kitchen strut, and most evenings the ever-rotating menu features a whole fish. (Redfish on one recent evening, available for one or two.)
A quartet of chile-glazed shrimp ($14) featured plump prawns, head and tails intact but the main body shelled. The chile sauce was sweet and syrupy, and the dish’s sole downside was a parsnip purée that was undersalted and a tad bland, despite the sauce.
But the star was the braised lamb, a succulent bowl of tender, shredded meat piled atop a mix of stewed lentils and crispy kale, topped by a silky dollop of chevre that added brightness to the smoky depths. Opa! Though no need to hurl crockery at the wall, taverna fashion.
Attention is paid to desserts. Yes, there’s baklava. But we fell hard for a lemon pound cake with chocolate mousse and mint honey. Ditto for a moist carrot cake with whipped mascarpone and a lace of carrot caramel.
The restaurant has a well-edited wine list, and the cocktails range from the traditional to interesting house concoctions such as the Aphrodite’s Kiss (Half Moon Orchard gin, local Leopold Brother’s Michigan tart cherry liqueur, white vermouth.)
Despite its location in a college town, the crowd doesn’t exactly skew young. I wasn’t the only AARP-eligible patron, and 20-something diners are likely to have visiting parents in tow. Waiters are fresh-faced, knowledgeable and on the ball. I had to grin at the notion that part of the friendliness of town-and-gown restaurant workers springs from the possibility that any given patron might be teaching their class next semester. Dude, that woman at the four-top is my department head in poli-sci!
It is all part of a pleasant, welcome-to-our-house atmosphere. The Greeks are renowned for hospitality — though they weren’t the most well-behaved guests at Troy — and Volta is a fine addition to the Boulder dining scene.
William Porter: 303-954-1877, wporter @denverpost.com or twitter.com/williamporterdp
VOLTA
Contemporary Mediterranean, 2480 Canyon Blvd., 303-938-8800 voltaboulder.com
***Great
Atmosphere: Light, airy room that draws an eclectic crowd of adult diners.
Service: Youthful energy with a broad knowledge of the menu.
Beverages: Wine, beer, cocktails
Plates: Small plates and starters, $4-$13. Entrees, $18-$30.
Hours: Brunch/lunch: Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; Sunday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Dinner: Monday-Thursday, 5:30 p.m.-9 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m.-9 p.m.
Details: Parking lot
Two visits
Our star system:
****: Exceptional
***: Great
**: Very Good
*: Good
Stars reflect the dining reviewer’s overall reaction to the restaurant’s food, service and atmosphere.
