The Railyard
Address: 301 Grand Ave, Laramie, WY 82070
Website: https://www.railyardrestaurants.com
Country Represented: Italy
Specials:
Bruschetta Bread
Crisp, toasted bread layered with garlic, basil, ripe tomatoes, and a touch of onion—finished with a drizzle of balsamic glaze. Simple, bright, and built on the kind of flavors that feel like a summer evening in Italy.
Gnocchi & Sausage in Vodka Sauce
Pillowy potato gnocchi tossed with savory Italian sausage in a rich, velvety vodka sauce. It’s comfort food with a passport—bold, creamy, and impossible to put down.
Spinach & Ricotta Ravioli
Delicate ravioli filled with spinach and ricotta, finished in a butter and sage sauce that lets every ingredient shine. Light, elegant, and quietly unforgettable.
Tiramisu
Layers of espresso-soaked ladyfingers, mascarpone cream, and a dusting of cocoa. A classic Italian dessert that’s rich, smooth, and just the right amount of indulgent.
Michael Zawcanella,
UW Chemistry student
Sooo good! Buonissimo!
"Go make play". These are the first words we would hear tinkling in a Tyrolean accent through the old screen door where we had just arrived.
We knew that when we visited my Dad's Aunt - Our Nona- who lived only about 3 blocks from us, she would want to visit Mom and Dad first and then let us enter later. That was fine with us.
When we heard those three words we would all-there were five of us from age 3-13-dash to the end of the wooden porch and turn over the number 3 galvanized tub which had been covering our treasure trove of marvelous toys since our last visit.
There were old cast-aside cooking pans, dishes, ceramic cups, utensils and old Campbell soup cans. These were all scooped up and headed on a rush for the giant sand pile near the chicken coop.
The chickens always seemed excited to see us and squawked about wildly in their wire coop.
But we did not pay them much attention. We had important work to do. Soon we were building villages, roads and tunnels in the moist but warm sand.
We were lost in that world until we heard "mangia" shouted from the porch.
Then it was a mad dash to the kitchen where the aromas of Knidelli and the accompanying gravy accosted us and plunged us into another delightful world. Nona was always all smiles standing there at her wood cook stove, watching us enjoy.
Nicole Beumer, Administrative Assistant at LCCC in Laramie
Ravioli from Scratch
I have two flavors / smells that will always remind me of my grandma and some of my favorite childhood memories. My grandpa was from Italy, so my grandma learned to cook true Italian food from his sister, my great aunt Rose. Every Thanksgiving as soon as the car door opened on my grandma's block, all you could smell was marinara sauce and Italian sausage. The sauce was from scratch and she cooked the sausages and homemade meatballs in the sauce the entire day before, then cooled them overnight to separate the fat. Then in the morning she'd put them back on the stove to slowly heat up. The other is the smell of anise pizzelles. My grandma started making them in October, along with her zucchini bread, and the smell of anise would fill everything for weeks. No one went to grandmas in November or December without leaving with a paper bag of pizzelles and a loaf of banana bread! My cousins and I all make pizzelles every year to remember her, and we've even made her from-scratch raviolis a few times.
Lacie Kirlin, ART Class: “From First Meal as an Immigrant to Perfection”
My Nonna was born and raised in Vicenza, Italy, which is about an hour Northwest of Venice. If you ask her about food, she would tell you, "I was never much of a cook." She once told me the story of her first week living in America. My Nonno (who was an American in the Army) was gone at work, and my Nonna wanted to do something nice for him while he was gone, so she tried to cook a pizza. Supposedly, it was the worst pizza either of them had ever eaten, but that didn’t stop her. She cooked and cooked and cooked, every night, until her cooking tasted like her mom's, my Bisnonna.
Resilience and love make my family's food delicious. Nonna taught my mom and her sisters the effort she put into cooking, and they all passed it to me. We never learned recipes—just basic steps—so each woman in my family edits dishes to fit her own personality, love, and determination. We may all make the same dish, yet none tastes the same. Food reflects the chef; its taste varies with attitude and passion.
My drawing reflects a memory or emotion more than it does art: potatoes, a ricer, my pasta maker, a bottle of Chianti. When I look at it, I can almost smell starch and flour from the patsa, the basil, garlic, and tomatoes from the sauce, and how they combine into a beautiful melody in the air. It connects me to peaceful memories—the sound of my Nonna laughing at my Nonno’s jokes, my aunts arguing, water boiling. It gathers my family, our food, and our love.