Sketch

I’ve been to Sketch a few times but hadn’t really eaten anything there until the other night. Umm yummy. Ok, yeah they have good sangria and lots of wine options; it’s always been a good way to get the wine bar vibe in Sobo, but who knew there was food other than cheese plates?
Well apparently I will have to go back and try some dinner. As it was I made it in time for the late night menu and was treated by a panini with goat cheese, tomatoes and cappicola. Really, how can you go wrong with that?

Hmmm… some gfriends and I went to Sketch after reading it won Westword’s Best Neighborhood Italian Restaurant in Denver. I had been to Sketch before and thought it was overpriced and underwhelming, but was excited to try the new «Best Neighborhood Italian Restaurant in Denver» menu.
First of all our waiter was pretty meh. Not terrible, but I am guessing this must be the second or third job he holds down. We asked him a few questions about the menu, a couple that he got right, and one that he responded, «I have no idea» to. Two salads came out with no dressing, and it seemed like we had to ask for everything before it was offered (bread, grated cheese, salt and pepper…)
The gnocchi was good, the risotto was pretty good and the angel hair pasta was pretty bland. All of it needed more salt, pepper and grated cheese.
I think I would have been OK with the meal, had the bill not been as steep as it was. Plus if you are going to charge that much, please don’t have some man that looks like a total stoner bring your food out; it just doesn’t make sense. Also there was only one dessert available, that was described in a very half-​ass way.
I don’t mean to be so hard on Sketch, but I think the Westword award and the price just had me expecting better tasting food and more professional service. There are much more delicious places in Denver.
(Oh god, plus the music was weird and the people next to us were screaming. No thanks.)

Been coming to Sketch for a few years now. I was one of the first customers and I will continue to come back.
They’ve added a nice dinner menu.
Always have good wine selections, and the best sangria (white or red) in Denver.

Dear Sketch,
Thank you for being two blocks from my house. Thank you for having a lovely patio for daytime drinking and an incredibly seductive evening ambiance. Thank you for having delicious Prosecco. thank you for having attentive servers.
hey. thanks.

The last two times I was here for happy hour I have arguably had the worst customer service ever. In with a group, and not only did they forget to bring out my friend’s order, when they finally did (about 45 minutes later) they didn’t bring her a spoon for her soup. Fork and knife yes, but no spoon. She ordered a second entrée and they forgot that completely. The last time I was here, we were the ONLY people in the bar. I’m not kidding– it probably took them at least 15 minutes to take our drink order. Forget about getting them to come back to get food or even a second appetizer. This place is smaller than my apartment, so how can you miss the only two people when you have about 10 tables? (if that)
The bonus: the sangria here is divine. If I have patience and some time to waste, I’ll be back…

I am hesitant to write this, because I think it one of the cities bests secrets.
I had one of the best dinner her for Valentine’s Day.
Pasta housemade and cooked perfectly, salmon couldn’t be better, polenta crusted pork tenderloin… DELISH!
Tuesday is «date night»…amazing prie fix menu. I highly recommend you check their FB page to see the upcoming menus.
Just dont tell too many people :)

This place is great! Super cute inside quaint outdoor patio. They serve espressos and alcohol. The sangria is delicious and a great deal during happy hour. I go for happy hour more than anything, I haven’t tried the food yet.
Always great service! Go check out happy hour and sit at the bar or outside!

Sketch does well as a neighborhood wine bar, nothing more and nothing less. We’re walking distance from the south broadway strip, and thought we’d give it a shot. As you’ve probably picked up from the other reviews, the Sangria is fantastic. Our server also came through when we asked for a recommendation for an interesting red. Fantastic service all around, really.
The chartucherie included very tasty cheeses, though the meats were a bit over-​priced. Their risotto wasn’t really a risotto at all, it was more rice in a broth. Meh. Pasta was homemade though, simple and delicious.
Overall, this is a very solid neighborhood choice, but probably not worth a trip all the way across town, at least for dinner. However, happy hour sangria here combined with dinner at one of the other south broadway establishments could make for an excellent evening.

Not that I am pressured to write this, but I really appreciate when acknowledgement is given to a Unilocal review. Especially a not so good one.
I have actually been back to Sketch a few times since my first visit in late ’09, but didn’t write about it. On my birthday, I went back to have some good wine and chill out and had the fortune of meeting JD. If you don’t know JD, just walk in the door and ask for him and consider yourself taken care of…
JD recognized me, which now I feel like a supasta!!! As most of you that read my reviews (when I actually write them), it’s all about the service for me. Well, Sketch has a GREAT wine selection. I settled for a nice bottle of Pinot Noir at the bar and enjoyed a pretty damn nice evening. Thanks to JD for the GREAT service including conversation and of course the wine was AWESOME.
If you are in the neighborhood (Colorado), stop in and enjoy! You will not be disappointed.

Hello Sketch! I want to love you… I want to love you… I want to love you…
but…
First off, for those of you who are checking out this review and considering Sketch as a viable dinner option — go elsewhere. It’s not a place for great food.
For those about to indulge in a drink…
I live about three blocks from Sketch, and haven’t been wowed yet. I do absolutely love the ambiance — but have not had great experiences with the staff.
Last time we were in, the server actually rolled her eyes at my friend’s wine selection. My friend hadn’t exactly ordered the house red — in fact, she hadn’t ordered the cheapest vintage on the list by a long shot. It was strange, as the selection was actually a good wine. Whatever the issue, staff should be trained well enough to address their problems with menu offerings to the relevant staff, not the customers.
Over the night, I watched this particular staff member do her share of snorting and eye rolling… hopefully just a bad night. We all have those, but for now, I have to say… I’ve experienced (much, much) better.

Happy hour all day Wednesday! What a nice suprise!
My co-​worker raves about their sangria so I had to get that. Wow. Really good and strong! Super nice staff. This place isn’t overly anything, it just is, which is nice.
Only down side is the lack of food on the menu, but for the sangria, I’ll go back.

Lovely wine bar with other spirits as well. Might be my favorite SoBo location. On a Saturday night it was busy, but not packed. Nice selection of wine and Scotch. But not so pretentious that they don’t serve PBR.
The server was friendly, personable and reasonably attentive.
The cheese and salami selection is decent, the presentation is very amateurish. It looks like my roommate of twenty-​five years ago, Drake, designed the presentation.
I loved the music they played, with several songs by Bill Withers (ohhh yeahhh) And the seating was very comfortable and borderline swank.
Here’s my tip to the fellas. If you want to meet a copious amount of nicer quality ladies, go to a wine bar (and read a book first, so you have something to talk about) Women like wine and the whole wine bar cachet. On the night I was here, it was 3 – 1 ladies to gents. In fact, though I am a married man, I was in attendance with two lovely single ladies.
Fun place, I’ll be back.

Dear Chef Sean Yontz, your house-​made pickled cucumbers are the most tongue-​tantalizing, taste bud shivering, mouthwatering fruit I’ve ever tasted in my three decades of life.
Sincerely, a German + Norwegian North Dakota girl (we know pickles)

I wanted to pass along what’s on their «dinner» menu. I had a helluva time trying to find out this information online, since their website is very cryptic.
– Four or five kinds of panini, with various combos of meats and cheeses.
– Meat and cheese platters, that come with crackers only.
– Various little nibbleys like olives, almonds, etc. (In my opinion, these should come with the cheese or meat platters anyway and should not be extra charge)
I don’t believe they have a full bar — beer & wine was all I saw.
Nothing really substantial — this is not a place to come for dinner.
Wine list was OK, nothing great. The atmosphere is very blah — not inviting at all. Dirty chairs, haphazard decorations. Oh — and the cheese on our cheese platter was COLD. Big no-​no. Not somewhere I’ll return to.

Rating the quick breakfast sandwich I got after I worked out. An egg white with cheddar on sourdough then pressed on a panini press. For $ 4, what a great quick breakfast!
There was someone else there enjoying a latte, so I think they are trying to be a fancy coffee shop in the mornings.

This was going to be my go-​to wine bar. It was going to be the place where I camped out with my computer or a good book and sipped coffee or wine as the hours ticked away. But those fantasies were dashed after my first visit to Sketch.
I’ll just put it out there right away: there was a hair in my wine. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, and while I was fishing it out, the server noticed. He came over and promptly replaced my glass with a new one. He said, «There’s no fur in this one!» Eww. A few minutes later, my friend noticed something floating in her riesling: not hair this time, but a pink ball of sweater-​like fuzz. She also fished out her intruder, but didn’t say anything to the server.
We decided to order sandwiches, and since it was panini Tuesday, they were two-​for-​one. I had an amazing sandwich with caramlized onions, roasted red peppers, and aged cheese. I was enjoying every bite until I saw another piece of «fur» (as the server called it) in the uneaten half of my sandwich. Needless to say, I was done. The server brought us our bill, which had no adjustments to it despite our unsettling experience there.
I’m not sure if they let dogs roam around the kitchen or what was going on, but hair in items that I am supposed to ingest is unacceptable.

Now that we’ve lived in the Sketch hood for about a month and go here for happy hour at least twice a week, I must express my undying five star love for this place.
I still have not moved off of the sangria. It’s delicious and dependable and a must for pre-​drinking before ANYTHING. The staff is awesome. They have $ 2 ham/​cheese plates (or just cheese if you prefer) that are the perfect little nibble to go along with sangria.
It’s also air-​conditioned in here and our house is not. It’s like a happy little sangria oasis.

I had a great experience at Sketch. I have to give a shout out to JD, the super-​cool bartender who was also handling the dining room and patio. Despite all that responsibility, he had time to chat, to make recommendations (which I urge you to consider – he knows what’s good), and make sure you have a full glass. Even when I clumsily sprayed my entire glass of tempranillo on the bar (and the white-​shirt-​clad Meredith – so sorry!), he cleaned it up, refilled my glass, brought club soda for my friend, and took an order from a table of three in quick succession. He was charming and was key in making my visit a good one.
Loved my tempranillo. JD also sold me on the house sangria. It’s not a by-​the-​books rendition of Spanish sangria, but it is delicious nonetheless. We also ate some great cheese, which was even better when paired with balsamic vinegar and figs at JD’s recommendation. I can’t wait to go back for more.

This review contains TMI. Go study a foreign language or play with your kid or babe if you want to spend your time more constructively.
The bottom line: A great deal, with fine wine, in a neat place? Nope. Four stars? Nope. Nice people? Yup, but the next time I wanna go to a wine bar it’ll be Caveau during HH, and not Sketch. However, having said that, here’s what I think of Sketch:
To start out positively, there was one thing I really liked about Sketch: the server/​owner was a great guy and brought samples of wines he’d recommended, as well as correcting his mistake with the cheese order and leaving behind the extra/​wrong cheese selection.
That said, Sketch is not in that comfortable or inviting a space. It’s not that it’s all that bad. It’s just not anything special. Also, some of the food is over-​priced for what you get. Finally, while the wines were OK, their HH policy wasn’t. The better wines and small plates were not discounted. The only things «on sale» were what were described as boxed wines and PBRs. You don’t go to a wine bar for a glass of boxed wine or a PBR.
Now, about the value you get. While the owner was informative and generous, the pours were not, and made what looked like reasonable prices on the menu, actually over-​priced when they were served.
There are 25.4 ozs in a 750 ml bottle of wine. Experts differ between pegging the average restaurant serving of a glass of wine between 5 and 6 ozs. At Sketch, it’s definitely at 5 oz or below. A generous pour these days is at 6 ozs. Under their current policy, by serving 5 oz-​and– under glasses, they’re shrinking your pocket and increasing their profit by 20 or so percent.
There were 3 of us. The bill for 2 glasses of wine each and small plates totalled $ 137. The service was great (until the end when they forgot about picking up our check for over 10 minutes and we had to bring it to the bar, and then remind them about it 10 minutes after that), but we tipped 20% cause we liked the guy. That meant that we spent over $ 160 for a couple of glasses of wine and not that much food for 3 people.

My very first piece of advice is sit at the bar and not a table. Your service will be exponentially better from my experiences. Plus, the bar has these super cool 2 seat bar stools so it’s kind of like sitting in a love seat at a bar.
Sketch’s atmosphere is warm and welcoming. The lighting is soft, the space is open and the colors are muted. There is a giant wall of wine and liquor taking up most of one side of the inside. There is a tiny patio where people go to smoke when it’s uncrowded.
Megan and I shared a bottle of champagne that was pretty affordable. The bartender kept it on ice just behind the bar in front of us which was a nice extra touch. We also had some cheeses, meats, apples, figs, and almonds as a sort of dinner. Over all this is a really great place for a nibble and glass of wine with friends or dates.