Outside of Italy and a little closer to home, sits Zia’s Italian restaurant. One of the numerous Italian restaurants on the Hill, Zia’s tops the list as one of the best. They take a blend of fantastic food and superb service to please customers every night.
Zia’s, located at 5256 Wilson in the center of the Hill area, provides people of all nationalities the Italian cuisine they crave.
The preparation that goes into each dish at Zia’s shows their belief that superior cooking takes time. The fact that they have been serving hungry patrons in St. Louis for more than 16 years, proves that they do it right.
A trip to Zia’s might not be a trip to Venice, you won’t walk away hungry or disappointed.
The menu might differ a little from the outside cafes in Italy, but the true cooking artistry combined with enough garlic to make an Italian mama proud are still present.
The Zia’s salad ($4.95) provides the ideal way to start off the dinner. Not only does the salad contain hearty portions of iceberg and romaine lettuce but also ham, artichoke hearts, green olives, provel and parmigiano.
A zesty Italian dressing with a sweet aftertaste tops the salad. The house dressing might prove the best part of the dish. If you fall in love with the flavor, bottles of dressing are available for purchase.
The calamari fritte ($6.95) takes fresh calamari and deep-fries them to a golden crisp. For those who are unfamiliar with calamari, it is squid. But don’t let that scare you away from sampling it.
The tasty dish will become a favorite of yours, if given a chance. A lemon butter sauce accompanies the well-drained calamari.
The rest of the menu at Zia’s includes mouth-watering selections of pastas, steaks, chicken, fish and sandwiches. A tough decision of what to try follows the menu. Rest assure that no matter what you pick, there is a good chance that you will walk away happy.
A tasty choice from the pasta category is the tuttomare ($11.25). Linguine is a great pasta by itself, but when you merge it with shrimp, crabmeat, clams, mushrooms and a garlic cream sauce the linguine becomes a masterpiece.
Zia’s paints a picture of perfection with their version, and the dish will definitely tantalize your taste buds.
Zia’s likes to serve their cannelloni ($9.95) in twos. Two kinds of meat, beef and pork stuff the tender noodle. Two kinds of sauces, red and white, top the cannelloni, ensuring that customers get their daily double.
Worth savoring with every bite, the cannelloni competes with the tuttomare for best pasta choice.
The mudega ($18.95) takes a lightly breaded steak and serves it charbroiled to your specifications. Provel cheese and a white wine lemon butter sauce top the steak. The tender steak was cooked to perfection and the white wine sauce added the extra moisture the dish called for. The only bad part was the high price of the 8 oz. steak.
With over seven different chicken dishes, chances are high that something will appeal to you. The classic parmigiana ($12.50) offers a boneless breast of chicken and lightly breads it before baking it in a marinara sauce.
Fresh-grated parmigiana cheese and provel cheese and marinara sauce cover the chicken breast. You cannot go wrong with a classic, especially this one.
The dessert menu changes each night, enabling patrons to have a fresh, different choice each visit. New selections of specialty coffees and a full bar and wine menu are also available.
The incredible service at Zia’s ensured that the meal went off without a hitch. All the courses were brought out in a timely manner and the water glasses were kept filled.
Zia’s accepts all major credit cards, and for those who like going at the last minute, reservations are not needed. Saint Louis University students will find a tasty meal and a pleasant time awaiting them at Zia’s.
Most of the prices are in the range that college students can afford. The only problem that might occur is a desire to go back to Zia’s again and again.
