A review of the Pastaria restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri.
On a recent trip to St. Louis, we decided to only eat in restaurants we hadn’t eaten in before. We were staying in the Overland area, so we were looking for restaurants more centrally located, not downtown. After reading several reviews, we settled on Pastaria in Clayton. We arrived there around 6:30 on a Sunday evening and found street parking easily. When we walked in, we realized that it was packed! I was still on Tennessee time and so that felt like 7:30 to me and I was starving, so we grabbed the last two seats at the counter. Kind of awkward and right on the end, but we loved it. We had a great view of their wood fired oven and the stoves. Watching the chef’s work was fascinating. I’m so glad that we didn’t sit somewhere out in the restaurant!
Our waitress, Tiffany, was excellent. She answered all of our questions and took our order quickly. My husband ordered the Wood Oven Roasted Chicken. I ordered the Italian Ramen. We split a mixed green salad. They split the salad for us and it was perfect. A nice spring greens mix with pears, walnuts and goat cheese.
It did take a while for us to get our food, but we didn’t really mind. We were watching the chef’s work, the pizzas being made and of the goings on behind the counter. We kept trying to guess which chicken in the oven was going to be my husbands. When the food came, it was more than worth the wait. My husband’s chicken was fantastic. It was a large chicken breast with part of the wing. It was smokey with crisp skin, but still moist inside. It was served with a bread salad of toasted bread, cucumbers, tomatoes and pickled red onions.
My Italian Ramen was incredible. I could eat this every day for the rest of my life. The broth was insanely rich and flavorful and almost thick from the grana padano cheese. The ramen noodles, perfectly chewy and the chicken, smoky and tender. Topped with a perfectly cooked soft egg and fresh basil. I was going to try and get the runny egg yolk food porn shot, but I knew that once I put my spoon it it, I was going to be all about the eating, and not about the photos. I want to try and make this at home. It was like chicken noodle soup kicked up several hundred notches.
Next time we go to St. Louis, it’s going to be hard to stick to our only new restaurant rule, because this ramen is going to be calling to me.
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