Review: La Piazza in University City

La Piazza is a restaurant with what seems to be urban charm and a neighborhood feeling, all at the same time.  Most diners seem to walk from their homes in the attractive area, just north of the University City-Clayton line. On busy nights, I've also seen potential customers discuss the menu with a staffer, come to a few conclusions, then say, "All right, I'll see you in a half-hour," and head for the door.

On a recent snowy evening, as trees and shrubs seemed to be donning white gowns and pearls in preparation for a fancy-dress ball, there was a pleasant warmth inside, and almost a Dickensian quality at the door as patrons entered, stamping the snow off their shoes, then shrugged out of coats and rubbed their hands together.  

The menu is modern Italian, and extremely imaginative. There are more pizza and pasta selections than meat and fish entrees, and interestingly, the appetizers and preliminary courses displayed more originality and charm, more imagination and flavor.  Soup, appetizers, salads, pizza and pasta were outstanding; more traditional entrees were good, but not quite as good.  

For example, a small dish of olives that arrives for the table is a warm and delightful welcome, but note the flecks of red pepper.  The welcoming gesture also is a statement; for some, a warming; for others, a warning.  By ignoring tasteless California black olives and too-salty Spanish greens, and serving olives that are light-hearted and well-marinated, with a tangy hint of pepper, La Piazza is pointing out that the meal will rise above bland and unimaginative.

The extensive wine list also rises above bland and unimaginative, into a rather pricey area, but there are some lovely Italian, French and American offerings, including a delicious Gigondas and several other worthy and well-priced wines from Provence and the Riviera.  The southern French do superb things with the grenache grape.

La Piazza service is brisk and knowledgeable, and servers seem happy to allow one set of friends to share the delights of a recent trip with another before getting down to the business of dinner.  Another improvement is in the apparent reduction in the noise level.

Hummus is a superior starter, served with warm, crisp flatbread whose rosemary crust is mild and inoffensive.  The hummus, made of white beans rather than the traditional chick peas, is tinted pinkish with what might be some roasted red sweet pepper, and it is livened by a hit of lemon, some cumin and a little red pepper of the not-sweet variety.  It's delicious, with lots of flavors bounding around the mouth, and it's far more successful than the fried green olives, stuffed with spicy sausage and goat cheese.  Salty olives and spicy sausage killed off one another and demolished the goat cheese flavor along the way.  The soup types vary, but if all are as delicious as the chicken-artichoke of the snowy evening, we have much to anticipate. The soup was a flat-out winner, rich and hearty, filled with the flavors of chicken and artichokes and barely spiced.  Many shreds of chicken added to the delight.

The same delightful flatbread that accompanied the hummus is the base for four other appetizers, and reading the simple prose of a list of ingredients makes the palate positively tingle.  Traditional adds olive oil, fresh shavings of Parmesan cheese and a bit of sea salt; classic brings oven-roasted tomatoes, mozzarella and torn basil (and note how much anticipatory pleasure comes from the adjective "torn"?); fig and prosciutto is a surprisingly delightful combination, aided by crumbles of gorgonzola; and spicy chicken sausage brings that ingredient, plus caramelized onions, tomato sauce and herbed ricotta cheese.  Speaking of cheese, evidence of La Piazza's attention to detail and care in composing plates comes to the fore in this course – four dishes, four different cheeses.  A fine idea.

The fig-prosciutto combination was dazzling, with just a touch of balsamic vinegar raising the flavor in the fig paste.  The tomato-mozzarella blend also is perfect as a snack to accompany a drink, and the basil adds its own charming note.  

Salads are equally well-designed, beginning with a wild mushroom ragout in a red wine reduction that really isn't a salad.  It's a good-sized portion of perfectly sauteed mushrooms that are dark and delicious.  The dish could be termed a salad for the diner who does not like salads.  There isn't a hint of green to the dish.  Watercress is a salad vegetable I've always liked; there's a tingle to the tongue that is just splendid, and a fondly recalled childhood memory is my mother making watercress and hard-boiled egg sandwiches for my school lunch.  La Piazza blends the cress with green beans and shaved red onion under a balsamic vinaigrette dressing with a nice hint of Dijon mustard.  A touch heavy on the dressing, but not enough to make a difference for a delicious salad.

Romaine, spinach and Bibb lettuce are the bases for other salads, and the La Piazza kitchen scores again with slightly different dressings, the ingredients juggled here and there for the best flavor combinations.

And don't forget the pizza, served on an oval wooden platter.  There are nine different ones, but instead of being split, 5-4, the way the Supreme Court usually is, these are unanimously good, or unanimous in terms of everything we tried.  Spicy shrimp with leeks was a delight, and so was two kinds of mushrooms and spinach-and-feta cheese.  The crust is somewhere between cracker-thin (think Imo's) and normal-thick (think many others), but it's tasty, light and just slightly chewy.  Pepperoni and mozzarella is a classic type, as are tomato sauce and mozzarella, or sliced yellow tomatoes and mozzarella.  Roasted eggplant and capers also provide serious temptation.

Over the years, both the Guru and Mrs. Guru often have spoken – even preached, by some definitions – of the truly excellent pasta dishes in St. Louis Italian restaurants, and La Piazza is no exception.  Again with nine selections, which must be in some sort of numerological continuum with the pizza, the dishes we sampled and the ones we just read about all were imaginative and exciting – and delicious, too.

One menu change since the restaurant's beginnings may be in the lasagna.  Early on, it was described as "neighborhood" lasagna, and arrived as something right from a home kitchen, a dish that was amazingly home-style, dished up by Mom, who didn't care about perfect plating.  The adjective has been replaced by "traditional," and I must admit I don't know if the dish has changed.  I hope it has not, or at least that the several cheeses, fresh-tasting tomato sauce, spicy sausage and delicious noodles are the same as they were.

But the wide pappardelle pasta, usually served with duck or game sauce, comes with a classic Bolognese, or tomato, sauce, heightened with chunks of beef, veal and lamb for a wonderful blend of flavor and texture.  Mussels, pancetta and shiitake mushrooms are served over linguine noodles with a garlic-saffron sauce, and lobster is offered with risotto or with the pappardelle.  The pastas we sampled, by the way, were slightly al dente, or just a bit chewy, and the sauce was in proper proportion.  To us, sauce is applied lightly, adding flavor to the pasta; it is not dumped on top to drown the noodles.

As noted earlier, everything to this point was splendid, and a number of dishes were impeccable.  And that's why shortcomings in the entrees brought a shock.  Osso bucco was undercooked, served long before it was sufficiently tender and flavorful, and the garlic mashed potatoes that came alongside appeared to have been reheated, but not enough. They were cool, and tough mashed potatoes are a real disappointment.  Grilled asparagus was delicious, but a couple of asparagus spears could not rescue the dish.  Roast chicken was tender and certainly satisfactory, but lacked imaginative seasoning, leaving flavoring to a mushroom-marsala sauce that was very good, but insufficient. Garlic mashed were better, but not better enough, and there were some vegetables, mentioned on the menu and by the server as "seasonal."  Q:  What's a seasonal vegetable in January?  A:  Anything you can buy at the grocery store.  Can't we just say "vegetables," or better yet, use their names?

The outstanding entree came as sauteed sea scallops wrapped in serrano ham, a delightful dish where flavors mixed and matched perfectly.  The dish was improved by a spinach-portobello hash that was absolutely brilliant in flavor and texture, heightened by a glorious lobster sauce.  The deep flavor of the mushrooms was complemented perfectly by the spinach, and the whole thing became heavenly with a bit of the scallop, cooked to the perfect point so as to be sweet and tender.

Winter desserts, bread pudding or "fallen chocolate cake," which is the molten chocolate cake made almost everywhere, are satisfactory, though there was a salty back taste to the bread pudding – on two occasions – which was odd.  However, come summer, when "seasonal" means something, the folks at La Piazza may – please! – bring back a special from last summer, a mixture of fresh berries and ricotta cheese, with some honey drizzled on top.  

That was a first for us in St. Louis.  It was delicious, simple, elegant and brilliant.