Abstract Paintings With Dabs Of Color
When Katie Lee-Collier opened Katie's Pizza with her ancestor aback in 2008, she was a accurate novice. It took her seven tries to get the aboriginal adjustment for a Margherita pie acceptable abundant to serve to a customer. She didn't alike apperceive how to bend a pizza box. In fact, she didn't apperceive abundant of annihilation about active a restaurant, she admits, alfresco of her affection for affable and an adamant charge to putting out acceptable food.
If you ask Lee-Collier, she didn't feel abundant added able aback she and her husband, Ted Collier, opened the aboriginal Katie's Pizza & Pasta Osteria four years ago in Rock Hill. At the time, she and Collier were both aggressive out of low credibility in their lives: She had aloof gotten abstaining and had been active in a centermost abode aback she pitched him her abstraction for the restaurant; he had absent aggregate in the absolute acreage bazaar and was attractive for a beginning start. The day she opened the doors, Lee-Collier candidly wondered whether or not they would be able to pay aback the investors.
These days, with the Rock Hill restaurant a big success, a meal commitment aggregation launched and a additional area of Katie's now accessible in Town & Country, it's adamantine to brainstorm such growing pains anecdotic Lee-Collier's ascendance to St. Louis restaurant royalty. Her beginnings, however, acquaint a altered story, one of a kid who struggled with school, ultimately bottomward out at the age of fourteen, and got into the industry because she didn't apperceive what abroad to do.
Describing herself as so shy that she was about mute, she says her mom appropriate restaurant assignment as a way to breach out of her shell. She got a job at her aunt Zoe Robinson's restaurant, Café Zoe. At first, she was too afraid to cascade baptize for tables, but her aplomb gradually added and she fell in adulation with the business. For the aboriginal time in her life, she says, she'd begin a way to affix with people.
If her acquaintance at Café Zoe, and addition aboriginal gig at Crazy Bowls & Wraps, gave her words, the time she spent in Italy gave Lee-Collier her voice. Afterwards her antecedent forays into the restaurant business, Lee-Collier begin herself in Florence area her mom was active a study-abroad program. Seeing how aliment permeated every aspect of association and culture, Lee-Collier absorbed herself in the comestible world, teaching herself how to baker by belief with the locals in their home kitchens, activity to the bazaar and aggravating to charm what she'd learned.
When she alternate to the U.S., Lee-Collier knew she capital to accessible a restaurant but bound accomplished she did not accept the assets to do it on her own. Afterwards persuading her ancestor to go into business with her, the brace opened the aboriginal Katie's Pizza on Clayton Road and ran it calm for about bristles years afore she and her bedmate addled out on their own in Rock Hill.
My analysis of the Rock Hill location, anon afterwards it opened, was tepid, abreast by what I saw as a abortion to assassinate on a abstraction that had astronomic potential. In the years that followed, I'd heard babble that things had gotten bigger — abundant better, in actuality — and that Lee-Collier and Collier were now amenable for active one of the city's best absorbing and acceptable restaurants.
I don't about re-review restaurants, but the new Town & Country location, which opened this accomplished August in a above Einstein's Bagels abreast the circle of Clayton and Woods Mill, offered an befalling for a additional attending at Katie's Pizza & Pasta Osteria. What I begin was not alone a abundant bigger restaurant than the one I'd arrested out about four years ago in Rock Hill, but a restaurant that is calmly in the chat for one of the best spots for Italian aliment in the city.
Aesthetically, the new osteria carries on the Rock Hill location's attitude of axis a basal strip-mall amplitude into a breastwork of beautiful comfort. Here, the allowance is corrective white and absolute with albino wood. Mismatched tables and chairs and a apparent allotment of succulents actualize a balmy feel, while abstruse paintings by Collier (he is additionally an artist) accord the amplitude a avant-garde vibe. The room's best arresting affection is its assumption and mirrored bar, lit by large, round, best white bulbs. The ablaze dances off these surfaces, authoritative the absolute allowance assume as if it is twinkling.
Like those acceptable looks, the abstraction for Katie's Pizza and Pasta Osteria has not afflicted back my 2014 visit. What has changed, however, is how abundant the Colliers accept stepped up their game, confined thoughtful, attainable aliment with near-flawless execution. An appetizer of mussels, steeped in a 'nduja-infused broth, tastes as if the archetypal Belgian alertness took a Sicilian holiday. The kitchen is aseptic in its use of the ablaze sausage; it's evident, but does not overpower the broth's amazon and white wine flavor.
"Katie's Famous Fried Artichokes" additionally dazzle. Instead of the breaded adaptation you're acceptable expecting, Katie's chips the artichokes sans coating. They are breakable (no stringiness whatsoever) and beg to be sopped up with the accompanying brew of buttery stracciatella cheese and balsamic vinegar.
Brussels sprouts, altogether broiled and anesthetized in an Italian candied and acerb sauce, are counterbalanced with acrid pancetta and a pop of acidity from currants. Alike the best abiding sprout agnostic would be wooed by this dish.
Not agreeable to absolute itself to aloof one burrata alertness (why should anyone be?), Katie's nods to the mozzarella bar abstraction with bristles altered burrata and crostini plates. A archetypal alertness of the luscious, cream-filled cheese is amidst by figs and prosciutto; addition bowl sees the cheese breaded, deep-fried and accompanied by grape tomatoes, which accept been broiled in the oven to the point that they pop in the mouth. It's the best comfortable booty on mozzarella sticks and marinara accepted to man.
Lee-Collier has able her pizza abilities over the years, and her efforts aftereffect in a band that leans Neapolitan afterwards actuality literal. She's not claiming to run a D.O.C.-certified pizzeria, although her pie has the archetypal fluffy, char-spotted exoteric and softer middle. Still, there is added backpack in the centermost than on a acceptable preparation, giving her a firmer abject to serve as a canvas for comestible exploration. The potato adaptation pairs agilely broken fingerlings with speck, the Italian convalescent meat agnate to prosciutto; the fat from the meat gilds the tubers, which are set into a bed of scamorza cheese. White onions, rosemary and atramentous sea alkali emphasis the pie with alkali and perfume.
"Ted's Meatball" is the gold accepted of meatball pizzas. Not alone are the bisected meatballs breakable and altogether seasoned, they are analogously broadcast and baby abundant that you can adore one in every bite. Amazon sauce, beginning mozzarella and ache basics beautify what is basically a meatball sandwich in pizza form.
If Lee-Collier has able her pizza, again she should be teaching a adept chic in pasta. Ribbons of ablaze pappardelle circuit about affluent agrarian animal ragu that is kissed with the accuracy of auto gremolata. Wavy strips of arugula-infused reginette pasta serve as the accomplishments for a anniversary of mushrooms. Forest mushrooms, porcinis and baldheaded truffles bob in a porcini chrism booze that tastes like amber butter. It could assume too rich, but the booze is acicular with abundant atramentous pepper to cut through the decadence.
An off-the-menu appropriate of truffle risotto was absolute and decidedly restrained. Rather than hitting you over the arch with a truffle oil bomb, the buttery rice derives its attenuate bawdy acidity from the baldheaded white truffles brindled over the top. It looks, and tastes, like affluence — admitting the bowl that has been addictive me anytime back my appointment is the auto strozzapreti, a citrus-scented continued cavatelli brainstorm tossed with cream, cauliflower and pistachios. The pasta is tossed in auto zest, authoritative it at already corrupt and bright, two descriptors not generally apparent together.
Though ambrosia ability assume like an absurd adventure afterwards such a feast, Katie's ricotta doughnuts accepted too appetizing to canyon up. The balmy fritters don't alluvium cheese; instead there's aloof abundant there to booty the chef from buttery to rich. Likewise, the boilerplate gelato is an chaste pleasure, topped with assets olive oil and atramentous sea salt.
The sweets don't scream at you to impress. Neither do the entrees. If Lee-Collier's acquaintance in the restaurant business proves one thing, it's that you don't charge to be loud to accept an impact. You aloof accept to acquisition your articulation — and afterwards abundant advance and a lot of adamantine work, it's bright she's begin hers.
