Unauthorized

Located in an apartment complex on the east side of Boulder, Colorado, with an almost local pub feel, Basta offers up classic pizzeria fare while making heavy use of its wood burning oven. It's hard to go wrong here, and from the appetizers to the desserts, everything is beautifully done, with clean, rich flavors and good presentations. On this evening, we started with a half dozen oysters, followed by a brilliant salad of roasted root vegetables. While the oysters were so-so (I had just come back from having loads of oysters at Le Dôme, in Paris, and that's a hard act to follow), the roasted root vegetable salad was perfectly dressed and a total knockout dish. A meal in its own right, it included just about every root vegetable out there and was loaded with flavor. This was followed by a beautifully done thin crust, white pizza that was covered in bitter greens and lightly charred sausage. All of this was washed down with a gamey, slight wild and certainly rich bottle of 2009 Muga Rioja Reserva. Possessing a smidge of Brett in its saddle leather, herb, graphite and black cherry styled bouquet, it is a sexy, youthful red that should continue to evolve gracefully for at least another decade or so. All in all, another fine meal at this Boulder pizzeria.