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Mama mia, it’s Mia Rosa
• by Michael Renner • Photo by Josh Monken
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There’s another new Italian restaurant in town, an occurrence that can make most St. Louisans yawn. But Mia Rosa – Phil Noe’s new eatery in The Grove, that increasingly popular strip of Manchester Avenue running through Forest Park Southeast – offers something different from the standard St. Louis red- and white-sauced pasta dishes. Noe named Mia Rosa after his Italian mother, but that’s where all family influence ends. For starters – and there are a lot of starters at Mia Rosa – there’s the emphasis on cicchetti, small plates of beautiful food made for sharing (think Spanish tapas for Italians). Next, there’s the space: three side-by-side sleek rooms painted in chocolate brown and glazed gold tones accented with the big, bright Van Gogh-esque canvases by local artist Fern Taylor. The rooms are separated into an entrance-bar area with dining tables (where, alas, smoking is allowed at the bar), a middle dining room, and a third dining room featuring the gleaming open kitchen where Noe and an assistant chef quietly, confidently dish out small plates, large plates and flatbread pizzas amid the occasional shooting flame.
Having honed his skills at Kirkwood’s Blue Water Grill and SqWires Restaurant in Lafayette Square, Noe knows his way around seafood, calling Mia Rosa “coastal Italian cuisine.” That’s a lot of area to cover, but the kitchen manages to cover the bases with dishes like Florentine salt cod; prosciutto-wrapped monkfish; lots of oysters, mussels and shrimp; and even seafood mousse stuffed into porcini ravioli. All the noodles are made in-house, except for the ravioli sheets, which are from Mangia Italiano. One night it was a special of angel hair pasta tossed in a cream-based, chunky tomato sauce and topped with a small portion of the best-tasting sea bass I’ve had in a while, the meaty fish grilled to a crispy exterior with a deliciously moist interior that was more like the texture of beef than fish. That monkfish alone was worth the trip: a thick fillet wrapped in prosciutto, pan seared, sliced into three sections and served atop fregola – a rarely seen pea-sized pasta – sauced with basil pesto, roasted red pepper and white wine. Simple and delicious, as was the rich combination of tagliatelle with seared scallops in a porcini mushroom sauce.
Larger appetites are satisfied by hearty dishes like osso bucco, a nice-sized meaty serving whose only disappointment was the accompanying undercooked white beans. Riffing on the classic Sicilian dish, beef braciola was a handsome combination of salami, spinach and Fontina rolled in a thin strip of beef atop a small mound of more sautéed spinach. Roasted pork loin – a thick, 3-ounce portion, again deliciously juicy on the inside – paired well with the sharply contrasting flavor of the accompanying black cabbage. For those with single-focused palates, all cicchetti are available in entrée portions. The one flatbread pizza we sampled, topped with house-made salsiccia and sweet onion, was delicious. (Others are available, including smoked salmon and basil cream cheese; artichoke heart, basil and goat cheese; and grilled mushroom and Gorgonzola.)
The mostly Italian wine list runs 27 selections available by the glass, bottle or “more,” a glass and a half of wine served in a Weeble-like carafe that wobbles but won’t fall over. It’s great fun to play with while waiting for your next dish, especially if you’re not terribly good at pacing your small plate orders. (My strategy: Never order everything at once; order more while finishing the current round. It may keep servers running, but it guarantees a well-paced meal.) While the dessert menu is concise, there are enough interesting tidbits for which to save room, notably the changing house-made sorbets such as banana and lemon-black pepper.
Opening a new Italian restaurant can be an ambitious effort. With Mia Rosa’s innovative, creative approach, yawns become smiles.
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