Review: Gio's Ristorante & Bar in St. Louis

From formal dining rooms to neighborhood red-sauce joints, there’s no shortage of old-school Italian eateries in St. Louis. And last December, John Ruggeri and Dominic Galati added one more to the mix: Gio’s Ristorante & Bar, located in an area of downtown starving for more restaurant options. Before opening his own restaurant in Wentzville, Ruggeri spent 12 years as general manager and head chef with the Galati mini-empire that includes Dominic’s on the Hill, Dominic’s Trattoria in Clayton and the erstwhile Premio. While Gio’s is located in the space formerly occupied by Dierdorf & Hart’s, there’s a twist of irony in that it was also Premio’s old spot before that, proving that you can indeed go home again.

The newly designed street-level space located in the Gateway One building includes a large, expanded bar area with a semi-secluded dining room. A pizza station housing the gas-fired, stone-lined oven sits along the short hallway leading into the main dining room. Gone is the room’s heavy, masculine dark wood; warm Tuscan colors and a lone abstract wall sculpture make for a decidedly sparer, open feel. With its tall, expansive windows, the room offers a magnificent view of the Old Courthouse framed by the Gateway Arch. The bar offers lighter fare such as appetizers, sandwiches and pizza, but the full menu is also available. On dead nights, like one recent Monday, we preferred the bar to the dining room because even an empty bar, with its TVs, gregarious bartender and clubbier ambiance, seems more convivial than an empty dining room where almost too much attention is focused on a lone couple.

The menu is old school, and by old school, I mean, of course, Italian-American style food. The list may look standard, but the kitchen is serious about its pasta, seafood, beef, lamb, chicken and veal. Ruggeri is, of course, no slouch behind the stove, and many dishes rise above the clichéd. My Italian restaurant go-to test dish is spaghetti (Gio’s uses the smaller-gauge spaghettini) and meatballs. This version passes easily: house-made meatballs, natch, but with herbier and more pronounced flavor than the standard polpette; a thick, rich sauce (labeled “gravy,” as some Old World Italians like to say) with less sugar than the typical St. Louis-style red sauce for a more nuanced sweetness. The risotto alla Milanese came topped with two succulent airline-cut grilled chicken breasts, though the sprinkling of “porcini dust” around the plate rim seemed more whimsical than worth mentioning on the menu. Perfectly al dente linguine with pancetta and littleneck clams in the shell arrived swimming in a fragrant sauce of olive oil and garlic topped with toasted bread crumbs.

The antipasto menu features two standouts: pan-braised mussels and asparagus Milanese. The mussels, about 10, arrived in a covered bowl, steaming in a luxurious chunky tomato-based broth teeming with whole kalamata and sliced green olives, white wine, and garlic. Soaking the accompanying garlic bruschetta in that saucy broth was like drinking nectar of the sea. The asparagus dish is something I’ll look forward to from now on: four thick asparagus spears topped with prosciutto and shaved Parmesan, broiled, drizzled with truffle oil and crowned with an egg fried sunny-side up.

I’ve never had a grilled Caesar salad, but there it was, a bundle of romaine lettuce quickly grilled so as to gently wilt the leaves. Even more memorable were the accompanying white anchovies. Milder and cleaner tasting, they are the gentler version of the salty, oily, dark variety found in most Caesar salads. The house salad is good – lightly dressed and not served ice-cold as if made ahead of time and stored in the fridge. Of course, this time of year the tomatoes are mushy and as forgettable as last month’s spring snap.

The dozen dishes from the primi piatti side of the menu are solid, even if not notably ambitious: veal cutlet Milanese, the Italian version of schnitzel, served fork-tender with lemon; a massive 32-ounce bone-in rib eye grilled with rosemary for two; pan-seared salmon with roasted fennel; a balsamic-honey glazed, grilled pork chop – all perfectly fine.

Whereas the dinner menu presents good value, with pastas in the $12 to $21 range and entrées in mid-teens to high 20s, lunch comes off as expensive: $8 to $10 paninis, $16 large pizzas, and a mix of lower-priced and dinner-priced entrées and pastas seems the opposite of most business plans. My $10 small South Side Special pizza was good though, with house-made dough, Italian sausage, wild mushrooms and caramelized onions. Even accounting for the occasional order mix up, servers are attentive – hooray for automatically replacing flatware after each course – and friendly.

With 57 wines from which to choose, offering only 10 by the glass is disappointing. More disappointing is of the 10 Tuscans, only one is available by the glass. Even more disappointing was a strawberry-chocolate cake with a chocolate icing that, rather than melting in the mouth, merely dissolved into little globules. However, the macadamia-tropical fruit coconut cake made up for any gelatinous chocolate frosting.

New and Notable
Don't-Miss Dish: Asparagus Milanese
Vibe: Not as formal as Dominic's; Friday casual is a sure bet.
Entrée Prices: Pastas and risotto, $12 to $21. Entrées: $16 to $42.
Where: Gio's Ristorante & Bar, 701 Market St., St. Louis, 314.241.2424.
When: Lunch: Mon. to Fri. – 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Dinner: Mon. to Sat. – 5 to 10 p.m.