The best food transports you. Where Volta transports you is to a long, green lawn on the side of a lake for a reunion of friends and family on a late spring day. You can smell it — in the drink and in the food, and in that place in your mind where the senses create memories, there are herbs and wine and warm air.
It’s possible I’m just thinking of the Lake Tahoe party in the beginning of Godfather, Part II.
But no, it’s there. You can start with something Volta doesn’t make in house, but that you’ll be hard-pressed to find on any menu elsewhere: retsina. It’s an ancient, dry white wine that’s been made in Greece since before the common era and that has a distinct flavor of pine that you either love or hate. It’s a drink born out of necessity, like the IPA, as wine barrels were sealed with pine tar to keep oxygen out and the wine from spoiling. Even though technology soon rendered the practice moot, the flavor was popular enough to continue the story of retsina.
No wonder, retsina is a perfect olfactory opener for the herby, gamey and grassy nature of Greek fare — at least the dishes I recently had. Spanakopita, a flaky pastry loaded with spinach, feta cheese and herbs, came in two lunchbox-style triangles next to pickled red onion and a simple salad dressed in olive oil and lemon. The mint hit the nose but not the tongue, the filling was savory and the whole thing was textured perfectly.
Sometimes you just get the right dish with the right wine at the right time. On the recommendation of our waitress — and the service at Volta was exceptional — I paired a big Nero D’Avola with the braised rabbit pasta. It worked. The rabbit had been slowcooked on the bone, and shreds of its light and dark meat formed the base of a hearty and balanced ragout. The ragout — carrot, green onion, crushed red pepper, olive oil — topped with sharp cheese was set atop bucatini, the long, thick noodle with a hole in it. In fact, it felt like a spin on the homey and classic Italian dish bucatini all’amatriciana.
But dear God did this dish pan out. Slight heat, incredibly tender meat; savory and bright at once. The dark fruit and bold pepper in the wine rounded out one of the best bites I’ve ever had in Boulder.
Which made it hard to find room in the stomach for the lamb moussaka, but that too went down without a fight. The layered dish starts on the bottom with grilled eggplant, on which ground lamb is placed, on which a béchamel of goat cheese, butter and egg yolks are placed, and then the whole thing is given some high heat to set and topped with capers and tomato sauce. It was a fine thing. The brightness of the capers and a subdued gaminess breathed life into a dish that I just imagine botching the heck out of at home.
The food is well-executed, the service is great and the interior is smartly designed, though it does look like there should be a go-go dancer behind a big, blue-tinted window into the wine cellar that immediately draws the eye. Or at least some fish.
But the real power of Volta, again, is in its flavors. I end the dish with another recommendation — a French anisette that tastes like Scandinavian-grade salty black licorice. I drink it with loukoumades (Greek donuts), which are giant, fried dough balls. It brings me right back to last year’s Boulder Greek Festival where jovial Greek men and women came by with endless retsina and anise liquor, plates of lamb and donuts and seafood scattered around, folk dancing and string music abundant. The big green lawn, the late spring day. It lives in the mind, and Volta brings it to your plate.
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