Alex Seidel opens Roca’s in the former Frontroom Pizza in Lakewood

Gone is the wall of local athletics plaques listed here to keep is the stocked salad bar (with sneeze guards). Roca’s, the most current salvation of a extensive-standing Lakewood pizza parlor, opened Thursday for its neighborhood enthusiasts and other returning shoppers.

Earlier this calendar year, Denver restaurateur Alex Seidel (Fruition, Mercantile, Chook, Fudmill) and chef Tim Bender (Comal, Osage Cafe) took around the place that had been occupied for more than 3 many years by Frontroom Pizza. They brought major strategies to update the kitchen and eating area and overhaul the food items menu.

Now Roca’s is formally open up for business enterprise, serving slim-crust, tavern-fashion and thick-crust Sicilian-type pies as nicely as home-designed noodles in typical preparations — strozzapreti alla diavola, spaghetti alla vonghole, for illustration. The setting is cozy and charming, with paper around checkered tablecloths and ample brass and subway tile to come to feel modern.

Go for your beloved comforting pasta dishes, as nicely as for the moderately priced bottles of wine, and keep for dessert, notably thick slices of tiramisu. And go in advance and sidle up to that salad bar, a surprise late-pandemic comeback, and an crucial spared relic from Frontroom. (Seidel’s spouse, Melissa, explained it also reminded her of childhood birthday parties at Pizza Hut.)