St. Louis Eats and Drinks

Pizza in Rome

I'm just back from Italy, with a couple of nights in London to kick things off. And, as usual, the food mainly fell into the category of More, Please. (Like New Orleans, it's not impossible to get a bad meal in Italy, but the odds are in your favor.) Plenty of tales to be told, but choosing at random, pizza in Rome is an easy place to start.

Yes, pizza began in Naples but Rome has taken to it with full abandon, and it's everywhere. Interestingly, there is, in effect, a daytime pizza and an evening pizza, each different. And please note that both of them are eaten by Romans, not just tourists. I dropped by Forno Campo di Fiori, facing the market on Campo del Fiori, (piazza Campo del Fiori, www.fornocampodifiori.com, closed Sunday) and twenty feet from the entrance, two elegantly dressed businessmen were standing, chowing down on some midmorning pizza. After all, when all you had for breakfast was a cup of espresso and perhaps a cornetto, similar to a croissant, you need something for elevenses. 

This daytime pizza, known as pizza al taglia, or pizza by the piece, are long rectangles, more than two feet, with a fairly thick crust. Pieces are cut off to order, easy enough to do with a gesture of the thumb and forefinger measuring to the person behind the counter, the price computed by weight. At Forno Campo di Fiori, they're known for their pizza bianca, which is just brushed with olive oil and a light sprinkling of salt, although the pizza rosso, with tomato sauce, is good, too. Visiting a street market invariably produces hunger pangs; the market on Campo di Fiori is, despite what I've read, mostly aimed at locals and has pretty much no food to eat as you walk except fruit and a guy who, in season, squeezes pomegranite juice to order, so the snack is particularly welcome. And eating on the street is very common here, so don't hesitate.

In another neighborhood, Testaccio, I had some pizza margherita, the classic with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil, in the daytime version, and it was remarkable. Volpetti Piu, via Alessandro Volta 8, just off via Marmorata, has more than just pizza, but it would be hard to get beyond the tangy sauce and perfect mozzarella for me to choose. That visit was part of a tour I took, and there'll be more on that in a further installment.

Why is night's pizza so different? Because it takes a wood-fired oven, and by law, they can't turn on those ovens until 7 p.m. Italians, of course, eat dinner late anyway, so don't bother showing up until around 8; even then, you'll be with other visitors. St. Louisans will be interested to know that these are thinner crusts than even we are accustomed to, and crisper.  

The pizza at Pizzeria da Baffetto 2, also near the Campo del Fiori at Piazza del Teatro Pompeo 18, arrives uncut (but served with a knife and fork - remember most Europeans don't eat it with their fingers) and delicious. I opted for some salami as a topping, sliced very thinly but with a little hit of heat to it. While the pizza was baking, I had fiori di zucca, fried zucchini blossoms, which are filled with a small stick of mozzarella and some anchovy, battered and deep-fried. Glorious, and that was before I realized there was anchovy in there as well, gilding the lily, or, in this case, the zucchini. (There's also the original da Baffetto near Piazza Navona at via del Governo Vecchio 114, www.pizzeriabaffetto.it .) 

 

As a side note, a pleasant conversation with a couple of honeymooners at the next table. She was vegetarian, and I asked about how that was going on the visit. "Fine," she said, "but sometimes I just want a salad, and they're difficult to find." I had just spent a week on a barge trip in northern Italy with a first-rate woman chef working the galley, and the guests and Silvia, the chef, had had a talk about salads, which generally come, if at all, as a side dish to the main course. So I talked about my newfound knowledge, and then she said, "I've gotten a few, at lunch. But they're never dressed. I like Italian dressing. Why can't I get Italian dressing in Italy?"

We talked about the cruets of olive oil and vinegar on the table. These days, it seems to be mostly balsamic, and on the barge, the balsamico was in a spray-top bottle that matched the oil cruet. But "Italian" (picture the fingers doing quotation marks here) dressing? Probably not.

How Late Did You Stay Out?

St. Louis' fondness for nostalgia applies just as much to restaurants as it does to high schools, sports and goofy items on Facebook. Cleaning out Joe's office - and what a job that's proving to be - I found lots of interesting stuff, but one particularly caught my eye. It was a St. Louisan magazine cover story about late night dining, and it got me started thinking. 

Do folks pouring out of spots at 2 a.m. still feel like the world is theirs and they're really the cutting edge, not the slugs long abed, the way we did? Read the link.

Kinder's

Road trip! I suppose there are folks those two words don't cause a slight rise in the pulse rate, but it's no one that I know.  While the apple season is peaking early, there's still a good excuse to drive up to Calhoun County, IL, to buy apples, and perhaps some fresh-pressed cider if you're lucky. Lunch? I've got the place for you. 

And maybe it's just me, but this time of year, weekdays are even more fun, retaining that faint air of playing hookey.

Truffles

Truffles is a good example of a restaurant in its middle years that just keeps chugging along. That's not, in this case, a pejorative. It keeps reinventing itself, time after time, personnel change after change, and manages to keep going. That speaks to the consistency of the experience. This crowd - at least the one in the dining room - doesn't suffer change lightly. Truffles is in the heart of Ladue, the old-line upper-crust suburb that is as Establishment as it gets, and the diners are frequently denizens of that zip code. (The busy bar, with its patrons in expensive denim, seems to draw from a wider catchment area.)

Early in the week, things are often quiet enough to enjoy a conversation without shouting, but on busier nights, the architecture of the dining room seems to concentrate, blur and replay every syllable. So much for the alleged tip-toeing hush of wealth. But service, almost without exception, is exactly what would be expected in such a plate, quiet and attentive.

This is American food, both for the cautious and more adventurous eater. Plenty of steaks, Dover sole that's been a fixture since the place opened, duck and lamb and, even on the dinner menu, a hamburger. Appetizers and sides get rowdier, and show the New Orleans influences which first appeared in the post-Katrina years and now return under chef Brandon Benack. An order of Plaquemines Parish oysters were grilled and topped with a little bacon and manchego cheese. (Recent weather may mean other oysters will appear, but grilled oysters are a new classic all over New Orleans now.) And a bowl of gumbo, its deep, coppery color promising the complex layers of flavor from more than just the roasted chicken and sausage it contained, was deeply satisfying.

New Orleans' version of barbecued shrimp aren't grilled, they're cooked in a rich, spicy butter sauce that holds the juices of the lightly cooked shellfish. Traditionally served whole, they're messy to eat and demand plenty of bread with which to sop up the succulent sauce; indeed, the shrimp are mostly just an excuse for that nectar. Truffles' come peeled, except for the tail, to serve as a handle, and the head. Now, shrimp heads are like crawfish heads. The fatty debris therein is deeply succulent and there's a reason why "Ya gotta suck da haids" is advice given and emblazoned on t-shirts throughout crawfish country. Ditto the shrimp, if you're game enough, and these guys are so huge , it's wasteful not to. The sauce was properly flavorful, a little cream added to give more body. But much of the sauce was way, way too salty. Not all of it, since the very center of the plate's sauce was not so painfully salinated. I have no idea why, unless someone was salting after plating the dish, but it came close to ruining what would have been an exemplary dish.

Leaving the Louisiana trail for entrees, the lightly smoked duck is served with a cherry sauce that's only a little sweet, making a nice balance. Alongside was perched a muffin-shaped rosemary-gruyere bread pudding, almost a stuffing that hadn't been cooked inside the duck, light and good for wiping up dabs of sauce, and a little green salad with some toasted chopped hazelnuts sprinkled on.

Cauliflower and artichokes complimented immense sea scallops, the artichoke hearts diced and gently braised in white wine. The scallops had been seared on only one side, the other side remaining pearly white, thus achieving both a moist tenderness and slightly chewy crust. I didn't get to try a (monster-sized) hamburger, complete with cheddar, bacon and caramelized onions, that one of my pals succumbed to, but the fries, sprinkled with parmesan cheese, were first-rate.

Bananas Foster, another New Orleans tradition, is made to order, although not at tableside, but at a buffet mid-dining room. It's a very traditional version, butter, brown sugar, rum, creme de banana cooked together with slices of banana, all served over vanilla ice cream. To my way of thinking, it should be heavier on the bananas than the ice cream, but that's just my quirk. After all, I can get vanilla ice cream any time. It's the sauce and fruit that make the dish. A round of yellow cake brushed with rum, then topped with pineapple and an Italian meringue was technically well-executed with the cake a fine texture and very tender. But it lacked oomph beyond its nice visuals, more polite than exultant.

Truffles continues to be proud of its wine list, both deep and wide in its holdings. This is the sort of list that the curious-but-budget-conscious can find some interesting stuff at the low end. The trick is to look at the uncommon offerings, from lesser-known locations or grapes. Why? If a house is proud of its wine list and has been choosing carefully, there's a reason that these unusual choices are there - they're good enough to be picked by trained palates and won't embarrass them to a wine lover who's interested.

And now they're doing lunch again. Large dining room, low noise levels, slightly out of the way - seems like a perfect business lunch site.

 

Truffles

9202 Clayton Rd., Ladue

314-567-9100

www.todayattruffles.com

 

Lunch Tues.-Fri., Dinner Tues.-Sat.

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: No

Entrees: $24-$49

Gobblestop Smokehouse

Pig-free barbecue shop? Pretty much unheard of in these parts. But some pretty tasty stuff is comign out of Gobblestop Smokehouse in the also-not-'que-notable neighborhood of Olive and Fee Fee. Take a look at it here.

La Vallesana

Years, decades, ago, when my kids were little, a Sunday afternoon run to Velvet Freeze on Gravois, with its giant ice cream cone standing proud, was an occasional treat they still remember. All these years later, I visit Cherokee Street, not so far away, and either with family or alone, slip into Neveria la Vallesana CK 's free-standing ice cream shop for a paleta, the handmade Mexican ice pop. Paletas now have a sort of street chic, like food trucks, with the glossy food magazines talking about them and sometimes giving recipes, but this was before that. A neveria, by the way, is an ice cream shop. And more about paletas in a moment.

La Vallesana began in what was originally an ancient gas station that then became a Dairy Queen back in the day when walk-up-windows were the standard. It morphed from that into, as I recall, a generic soft-ice-cream stand and then into la Vallesana, a crowded little Mexican restaurant with food that fit the neighborhood, not the drive-thru. I believe the small storefront across the street came later. A few years ago, they expanded the dining room, created a covered outdoor dining area, and the corner really began to come alive.

A couple of recent visits with the next generation of eaters along for the fun, proved to be satisfying, and not just because it's great to see kids trying new things and wolfing them down. The lack of fancy-schmancy was just fine with them. They weren't dismayed by the lack of a liquor license or whining that there weren't chips and salsa plunked down on the table. Small restaurants have to be taken on their own terms, a variation of Pollack's First Law:

Restaurants set their standards by the way they price themselves.

And it's particularly nice that a restaurant so authentic is so welcoming and open to folks from farther afield than their original clientele.

Guacamole is, not surprisingly, first rate, cool, slightly chunky, thoughtfully seasoned, with warm chips. The house salsas are a red, sharpish and smoky, and a jade-green, spicier and more complex. The tacos here are the simple corn tortillas, soft, topped with meat, chopped white onion and cilantro and sided with a piece of lime for squeezing over. Those same meats appear on tortas, fat, wonderfully messy sandwiches on a toasted Mexican roll.  (Photo at bottom of column.)The spicy shrimp version wasn't incendiary, had plenty of shrimp in a smoky chipotle sauce, along with the avocado, refried beans, cheese and salad-ish stuff that are traditional. (Still tasty after a night in the fridge, too.)

Quesadillas are fatter than the flat ones usually seen; ours, stuffed with asada, grilled strips of beef, flared open with considerable panache, giving an appearance of a giant soft taco with a flour tortilla. Alongside came more guac, sour cream, lettuce and tomatoes, to play with as desired. The beef was lean and as close to tender as inexpensive, well-done beef can get, a little chewy, yes, but full of savor. Enchiladas wear a green sauce that's wonderful, the citrus notes from its tomatillos dancing merrily across the nose and tongue. We opted for lengua, or tongue, and carnitas, or pork, after reassuring Cesar, the server that, yes, we'd eaten tongue before. The rookie eater would have found nothing dismaying in tongue, which is closely-grained, un-fatty, and mild. (It's a muscle, none of the texture or flavor differences associated with organ meats.) And while the lengua was good, it was the carnitas that cozied up to that sauce and said, "Oh, honey, do we belong together or what?" The richness of the pork and the slight acidity of the sauce were a perfect match. Even chicken fajitas, normally a safe and boring choice, satisfied, the meat still moist, the onions and peppers freshly cooked.

When one of us ordered a Coke, it was a Mexican Coke that appeared, and I was curious about what the young relative would say when I explained that it was made a little differently. "I can taste the difference," she said. "The sweetness isn't the same." Shows promise, I said to myself. La Vallesana also has aguas fresca, the fruit-and-ice drink. The strawberry tasted like fresh strawberries, creating much buzz at the table.

And then there were the paletas. They, too, are made with fresh fruit, often leaving them slightly chunky. More than chunky, in fact, was a strawberries-and-cream rendition with rich vanilla ice cream holding big chunks of fresh berries, dramatically handsome. Pineapple with chili was the color of a ripe mango, very spicy and a little salty, the astonishment of biting into something frozen and slowly realizing this was chili-hot quite a mind game. (Mango and cucumber both also come in chili variations, at least intermittently.) Blackberry, a dark mauve in color, was seedless but otherwise clearly the real thing, and coconut kept good-sized bits of the flesh in its mixture, making for more fun. Even the chocolate went the extra kilometer, with cinnamon and a little heat that the young lady holding the stick didn't expect but found herself enjoying. There's also a case of housemade ice cream flavors, but I never seem to get farther than paletas.
Service ranges from attentive to a little more casual, but it's usually easy to flag someone down, especially inside. And good explanations are available, although the menu is completely bilingual with a section particularly explaining meat choices.

Don't go expecting Tex-Mex, don't go expecting chain resto-food, don't go for drinking rather than eating. Just go.

 

La Vallesana Tacos & Ice Cream

2801 Cherokee St.

314-776-4223

Lunch & Dinner daily

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Outside only

Smoking: No

Sandwiches and Entrees: $5-$13

SoCo Gyros

How nice to find a destination-worthy small family spot in an area that has mostly franchise food. Yes, there are exceptions in South County, but this is a spot we'd go out of our way for. You can read about it here.