We had a couple evenings during our trip to Steamboat Springs last year where the weather was beautiful for outdoor dining. That was before we had a 50 degree temperature drop in daytime highs and it started to blow and snow. One of those evenings we were able to dine al fresco at one of the better and more established restaurants in the area, Mambo Italiano.
Mambos - as it's known to the locals - has been a popular new world Italian restaurant in Steamboat Springs for about 20 years. Doug McNicoll, who was a commercial realtor/restaurateur, founded Mambo Italiano in 2000 - named after a famous song originally sung by Rosemary Clooney. But the modern day Mambos got its spark in 2011 when noted chef Hannah Hopkins moved to town.
Hopkins' husband Kevin had a job opportunity in Steamboat that would uproot the family from their small upstate New York village where Hannah had a thriving restaurant and catering business. She had been featured on the Food Network program Chopped and developed a following of food enthusiasts who would come to the small town of Mahopac, NY to dine at her restaurant - Dish Bistro and Wine Bar.
Pictured at right - Hannah Hopkins. Photo courtesy Bésame.
Kevin Hopkins took a position as a consultant and legal counsel for a company specializing in environmental projects. He took it on himself to send out a number of Hannah's resumes to restaurants in Steamboat Springs, and it just so happened that Doug McNicoll was looking for a new executive chef. After selling her restaurant and moving to Steamboat in 2011, Hannah McNicoll took over the kitchen at Mambo Italiano.
In 2015, McNicoll decided to move back to the Twin Cities to pursue business interests and to purchase an established Italian restaurant by the name of Amore Victoria, which happened to be my favorite Italian restaurant in the cities. (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Amore Victoria, now known as Amore Uptown.) McNicoll had offered to sell the restaurant to Hannah Hopkins, but his price was too high for her to do on her own. That's when she enlisted the help of local developer Jeremy MacGray.
MacGray had been a fan of Hannah Hopkins' cooking techniques since she moved to Steamboat four years before. Hopkins and MacGray were able to get together in the partnership and they purchased Mambo Italiano in late 2015 with Hopkins as executive chef/managing partner. In 2017, Hopkins was joined by Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef Joe Campbell naming him as the executive chef of Mambos as she and MacGray were looking at other culinary opportunities in the area.
Earlier in 2017, a longtime Mexican restaurant closed their doors down the street from Mambo, and MacGray and Hopkins partnered to take over that building and turn it into a Modern Latin-inspired restaurant by the name of Bésame. (Click here to read the Road Tips entry on Bésame.) And last year, MacGray and Hopkins teamed up for a third restaurant in the area - a breakfast/lunch bistro by the name of Yampa Valley Kitchen. Joe Campbell continues to have the title of executive chef in all three restaurants.
We didn't have reservations when we walked up to the hostess stand on a warm evening with smoke in the air from nearby forest fires that had flared up a few days before. The hostess said that indoor dining was sold out for the evening and it would probably be a 45 minute wait for a table on the outdoor patio. I deferred to my wife on that one and she was dead set on having dinner at Mambo that evening. She didn't mind the wait.
Since their bar area was off limits, we just decided to hang out in the patio area that featured arbor beams over the decking with strands of white lights hanging from the beams. Some tables were under umbrellas that made them socially distanced for the outdoor dining.
I wandered inside to use the restroom and as I walked in the door it turned out the open kitchen was just in front of me. There were high-back chairs at a counter just on the other side of the kitchen and I thought for a moment that it would be pretty cool to sit and watch the staff at work preparing meals. I almost asked our hostess if we could sit there, but then I realized that no one else was sitting at the counter which probably meant they weren't allowing people to sit there.
Toward the street front side of the restaurant was the bar area. The had a couple tables set up toward the front window and a couple high-top tables along the corridor across from the bar. Since they weren't allowing people at the bar, the top of the bar was used more of a "catch-all" place to store glasses and bar supplies.
It turned out our wait was much less than the 45 minutes we were initially told - it was more like 20 minutes when the hostess came over to us and directed us to a table along the walk way that they had set up for al fresco dining during the pandemic. Everyone at the restaurant - including my wife and I - were masked up as was the case with every place we went to during our trip to Steamboat Springs. Once we were seated at the table, we could remove the masks.
Our server that evening was Michelle, a nice young lady who came over to say "hello" while we were perusing the menu. We started out with a couple adult beverages - a Tito's vodka and cranberry for my wife, and I had a pint of an IPA from Stone Brewing Co. that they had on tap.
The menu at Mambo was an eclectic mix of Italian specialties, pasta dishes, artisan pizza and sharable antipasto and small plate appetizers. A chopped salad, a Caesar salad and a traditional Italian salad were also on the menu with additions such as grilled balsamic-glazed chicken, grilled shrimp or fried calamari were available for an upcharge.
We were looking through the menu when Michelle brought our drinks and a plate of baked bread with a bowl of pickled garlic cloves swimming in a mixture of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The bread was crusty and crunchy, and when dipped in the olive oil/balsamic vinegar mixture it fully absorbed the liquid. With some of the fresh pickled garlic spread on it, it was heaven on earth. Pickled garlic has a tendency to be on the spicy side and this was no exception.
One of the first things that we saw on the menu were the mussels in a white wine and butter sauce. We ordered up a bowl of those from Michelle and asked if she could bring some more of the crusty bread out with it. The mussels were - well, mussels. Some were meaty, some were small, some didn't open. The white wine and butter sauce was infused with chopped basil and garlic, and when you dipped the bread into the mixture the taste sensation was over the top. We were careful, however, to not over-do the bread as we didn't want to fill up too quickly.
For our main entree that evening, I was torn between a couple of pasta dishes. The first one was their classic fettuccine alfredo in which you could add shrimp, chicken, pancetta or peas to the dish for an upcharge. I was thinking of going with the pancetta and peas to add to the dish. But I ended up getting the tagliatelle in a bolognese sauce. It featured thick house-made tagliatelle noodles mixed with a red meat sauce consisting of ground locally-raised beef and Italian sausage. The dish was topped with shredded Grana Podano cheese.
My wife selected the halibut piccata - a thick piece of halibut that was pan-fried with capers in a saffron lemon butter sauce. It was served on top of a bed of a summer squash/rosemary potato purée. And when I had mentioned something about the fettuccine alfredo, my wife started to think about that. It turned out that Mambo had a small side dish of fettuccine in the alfredo sauce that she could order. She was in heaven with her dinner choices.
My tagliatelle and bolognese was simply delicious. The thick tagliatelle noodles were cooked perfectly, and the combination of the ground beef and ground Italian sausage in the red sauce was a perfect pairing. The Grana Podano cheese brought it all together with its forward, yet creamy, flavor. My pasta dish was outstanding. I got a glass of the True Myth cabernet to go along with my dinner. It was a full-bodied red that was a great partner with the bolognese sauce.
My wife was more than happy with her halibut piccata. It had a lot of flavors going on all at once and she said the fish was fresh in taste and the summer squash/potato purée really anchored the savoriness of her dish. She also got a glass of wine with her dinner - a sauvignon blanc from the Tramin winery located in the Alto Adige region of northeastern Italy. She said it was light and delicious, and a good choice to go along with the halibut piccata.
Unfortunately, she could only handle a couple bites of her fettuccine alfredo as the halibut piccata was very good and very rich. I had a couple bites of her fettuccine to see how good it was, considering that was my second choice. While the fettuccine alfredo was very good, I was very happy with my choice of the tagliatelle bolognese.
Even though my wife was full, she wanted to try one of the desserts Mambo had on their menu. I was interested in the white chocolate cheesecake, but my wife thought she'd blow up if she had a bite of that. We decided upon the tiramisu. It was served in a bowl that looked like a martini glass. The top of the tiramisu was a thick layer of cocoa powder that - we felt - completely overpowered the taste of the tiramisu. I don't know if that's how they normally serve their tiramisu, but that was way too much.
I normally don't like to have espresso at night, but since we were on vacation, I thought that I could handle a nice nighttime buzz. And the fact that they had Lavazzo espresso, one of my favorite types. When Michelle initially brought over the tiramisu and the espresso, as she began to take the tiramisu off the tray, the weight shifted and she dumped the espresso. The table top was a metal grate and it went right through, almost catching my wife. But my wife's cat-like nimble quickness allowed her to move away without nary a drop on her clothes. Michelle was horrified and completely embarrassed. She comped the dessert and the espresso for us against our protests. She did a fine job in taking care of us that evening.
The dumping of the espresso was the most dramatic event during our visit to Mambo Italiano. Overall, we were entirely pleased with the food, service and the dining experience. I will say that it was a little strange to be seated at a table that was in what is the normal walkway to the front door of the restaurant, but with all the pandemic restrictions going on we've learned to take things in stride. I thoroughly enjoyed my tagliatelle pasta with the very good bolognese sauce, while my wife was more than happy with her halibut piccata with the summer squash and rosemary potato purée. I will say, however, that the mussels were just "OK", and there was too much cocoa powder on the top of our tiramisu. But the entrees we both had trumped any bad experience we may have encountered at Mambo Italiano.
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