Review: Napolese - first experience

Normally, reviewing a restaurant in the first few weeks is a bad idea. They're still working out the kinks, getting their timing down, getting truly at home with the menu. But when the person in charge has been slinging omelets and croques monsieur for years, like Indianapolis restaurant maven Martha Hoover of Cafe Patachou and Petite Chou reknown, one need not delay dining at a new place. Martha's new restaurant, Napolese (subtitle: an artisanal pizzeria), is right next to Patachou's new-ish place at 49th and Pennsylvania, and it is good.

Ben and I went there following a visit to the Tara Donovan exhibit at the IMA (go, if you are at all art-adventurous, please go). We were told that it would be a 30 to 45 minute wait and, after reading over the menu, decided that the wait was worth it. We were offered some drinks; they have Sun King and Bell's in bottles and cans (those quirky Sun King guys), as well as a short list of wines, Italian sodas, more common sodas, and coffee and tea offerings. Ben got the Bell's Oberon, and I got the Sun King Cream Ale. I haven't been in love with any of the other Sun King brews that I've tried, they've been good but not great, tending a bit too much toward hoppiness for my taste. But the Cream Ale is yummy. I'm considering filling my fridge with those canned wonders. In any case, the waiting crowd was jovial and excited to try out the new pizza, so the wait was a pleasurable experience.

baked goat cheese at Napolese

Once we were seated in the cozy space, we'd had plenty of time to review the menu and ordered promptly. The food came even more promptly, which is what we wanted. We started with the baked goat cheese in tomato sauce. With a sauce-free pizza in mind, this dish gave us the chance to try out their tomato-sauce style. The cheese had tiny brown bubbles covering the surface, and the sauce was yummy, with a healthy dose of oregano for flavor. We scooped it all up quickly, smearing it across the toasted bread that accompanied the tangy cheese.

Smoked Salmon pizza at Napolese

As soon as we were done, our salad and pizza arrived, brought by our cheery and just-engaging-enough (read: attentive but not demanding attention) server. The salad, a large pile of arugula, raw mushrooms, nutty parmesan and simple oil-salt dressing, had the right amount of sharpness, though I imagine that a little bit of lemon might have added a nice additional note to the dish. It provided the perfect contrast to our smoked salmon pizza, served sans sauce and with delicious smoky salmon, capers, creme fraiche and little bits of roasted leeks. The leeks were so good that I've been dreaming of dishes to add roasted leeks to for the past five days, pretty much considering my options every 15 minutes. But the real story here, the story that is at the heart of this lovely little pizza place is the dough, the crust, the brown-black bubbles and chewy edges. The pizza is baked in a gas-fired, stonehearth oven. Each pie spends less than two minutes baking with an open flame lending a pleasing toasty taste to the crust. We finished up our meal with a scoop of pistachio gelato, made by midwest-food-mecca Zingerman's. It was the best pistachio gelato I've ever eaten, rich, full of pistachio flavor and without green food coloring, and the second-best gelato I've ever eaten (the best is the chestnut from this great little New Orleans place). I've never been to Italy, so take that with a grain of all-American salt.

Am I going back? You betcha! I can't wait to try eat the Buffalo Margherita (roasted grape tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, basil), the Broken Yolk (classic Margherita with an egg cracked on top) and whatever combinations I come up with that use some lovely freestyle ingredients including fingerling potatoes, wild mushrooms, roasted eggplant and, of course, those leeks. I'm not actually a regular of Patachou or Petite Chou - I appreciate them, but I'm not drinking the kool-aid here (have never actually liked kool-aid). This is just really good pizza, warm and capable service, a nice atmosphere, and a really good menu.