Pasquini’s continues Colacci’s tradition

LOUISVILLE — When Melinda and Tony Pasquini open up their new Louisville restaurant this month, they’ll be continuing a family tradition — no, make that two families’ traditions.

Denver-based Pasquini’s, which is located at 1310 S. Broadway and at 17th and Humboldt, will open mid-March at 816 Main St. in downtown Louisville. For 45 years, people from Louisville, Boulder and Denver have been coming there for Colacci’s spaghetti and pasta. Now add pizza to the menu, a new interior, some new, young energy, and the traditions can both

continue.

Melinda Pasquini, 25, was 8 years old when she began making pizzas at her family’s restaurant. “It’s kind of like breathing for me,” she says with a laugh. In 1986 her parents divorced, and her mother, a teacher, walked away with the restaurant. Brother Tony began managing it because her mother didn’t want to stop teaching. Melinda also taught for while before considering medical school. “But I loved the business, and I love my family,” so she, too, was lured into the restaurants full time. (The family owns Pasquini’s Baking as well.)

Tony had been looking for a third restaurant site, mostly in Littleton, his sister reports. “But it was so commercial there — so many chains,” she says. “He wanted to find some kind of community. He loves finding neat, old buildings that need fixing up, and he’d been looking at Colacci’s for a while.”

And therein lies another family tale. Mike Colacci, patriarch of Family No.2 in this story, opened Louisville’s Blue Parrot in 1918. His son, Anthony Colacci opened Colacci’s down the street in 1955 and ran it until the late ’60s, when his ex-wife, Rita Colacci Byrd, and their daughter took it over.

During the ’70s and ’80s Louisville boasted four restaurants in which the Colacci’s had a hand: In addition to Colacci’s, there was Luigi’s, Pasquale’s and the Blue Parrot, which burned down in 1988. The family sold Colacci’s in 1993 to Jack Hunt, a Colorado Springs native who had been managing a restaurant in Montana but wanted to move a little closer to home. Hunt then sold it two years later to Gail and Eric Dixon, a young Michigan couple who had actually met while working in a restaurant before moving here, but had never owned their own.

Local newspapers reported that the Dixons reportedly found it a tad stressful to raise their two young children while running a restaurant.

Imagine. But that’s good news for Melinda and Tony Pasquini. “We function best under stress,” says Melinda. “We get bored really easily.”

So they must be happy running two restaurants and a bakery while remodeling another location. They’re putting in wood floors, new vinyl booths and mosaic tables, handmade by friends, family members and employees. The location on Broadway in Denver, their first restaurant, was “small and funky,” says Melinda. “Now we just love that look.” It’s eclectic, she says, and they’ll be replicating it in Louisville.

The menu will be the same: pastas, pizzas, calzones, salads, appetizers — plus their homemade ravioli and desserts from their bakery, “which are pretty exquisite,” Melinda says.

She hopes to have an area where children can make their own pizzas. “We always let them play with the dough. And when it’s slow and we have an extra person, we’ve helped them make pizzas in Denver,” so they’d like to add pizza-making to the Louisville location on a regular basis.

She’ll also be serving Rita Colacci Byrd’s original spaghetti recipes. Byrd served her spaghetti for 53 years at the Blue Parrot and Colacci’s. Long-time residents will be happy to know the recipe — and the family traditions — live on.

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