Lockwood Avenue in Webster Groves may be the busiest street in town for restaurants this summer. (SLM devoted an entire article to it earlier.)The latest flurry of activity involves the former Olive+Oak space, at 102 W. Lockwood, as well as its next-door neighbor, The Clover and The Bee.
On Wednesday, O+O Pizza will open in the Olive+ Oak space, and Clover will take on a more unified feel, says co-owner Mark Hinkle, offering the same café-style menu for breakfast and lunch dailybut closing for dinner service. Both restaurants will be open for patio dining and pickup orders only.
In January, when SLM announced that Olive+Oak would be moving several hundred yards to the west, to 216 W. Lockwood, vague plans for its unnamed successor were also announced. Mike Risk, the current executivechef at The Clover and The Bee, would also spearhead what would become O+O Pizza. It was suggested that some of Clover’s Italian-style menu leanings would move to the new space, and indeed they have.
One of the best-kept secrets in town had been the dinner menu at Clover. “I never understood that,” Hinkle says, “because everything Mike did there was so well-executed. People would rave about his food," which was no wonder considering the 12 years that Risk spent at Trattoria Marcella working alongside Steve Komorek. "Maybe they just wanted it to be their little secret.”
Hoping to offer something a little different, Hinkleand Risk began tinkering with a cross between Roman pizza (known for its thin, crispy crust and minimal toppings) and New Haven–style pizza, a coal-oven fired pie that originated in Connecticut. The classic New Haven “tomato pie” consists of a Neapolitan crust, tomato sauce, and grated pecorino cheese.
O+O’s pizza dough uses flour from both pizza styles—a regional wheat flour from Janie’s Mill and a finer, lower-gluten 00-flour used for Neapolitan pies—which are then fed through a dough sheetertwice, rather than being tossed before shaping. Sheeting and docking (perforating) a pizza dough reduce the occurrence of large gas bubbles, which can distort a pie. “We wanted to see blisters, not huge bubbles,” explains Hinkle.
Photo by George Mahe
To assure that the crust has a consistent crunch throughout, the cheese is added first,then the sauce, then the toppings. Another distinguishing characteristic is the quality of the ingredients used: the cheeses—Parmesan, pecorino, Mozzarella Di Bufala, and burrata—are all imported from Italy. The pizza sauce is made using DiNapoli San Marzano Style Plum Tomatoes, a premium supplier. The cased pepperoni (from Ezzo Sausage Company) is the kind that cups up when cooked. And the star of the show is another Italian import, Fior di Latte, for "flower of the milk," a semi-soft cheese made in the mozzarella style from cow’s milk rather than from Mediterranean water buffalo. "It's what we use instead of mozzarella," Hinkle says, "exclusively."
The pizzas are fired at 520 degrees in a gas-burning oven with perforated nickel decking that produces a uniform crispness and char. The result is a pizza with some unusual qualities thatstill seems familiar.
“We put in a lot of thought, research, and experimentation,” says Hinkle. “We sourced the absolute best ingredients, and we bought the best oven for this style of pie."
The menu, which is offered only for takeout or patio dining, includes five pizzas and two daily specials. The base pizzas are the tomato pie, the white pie (olive oil, Fior diLatte, pecorino), and the O+O Original (sauce, Fior diLatte, pecorino). The base pizzas can be embellished with a large array of toppings—fresh basil, mushrooms, spinach, meatball, burrata, hot honey, Taggiasca olives, Prosciutto di Parma, Pancetta Tesa, mortadella, hot honey, plus 10 more.
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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
A six-pack of beef-stuffed t-ravs get a flavor boost from Pancetta Tesa and fontina cheese.
While it’s tempting to say that pizza will be the main attraction, considering the name—and it may well be—Risk has assembled a solid roster of provensupporting dishes. The most unusual might be the corzetti, with rock shrimp, beech mushrooms, tarragon, spinach, and rose butter broth. The name is derived from the corzetto, a 14th-century Genoan coin. Risk stamps the thin pasta rounds with an embossing tool. TheCaesar salad arrives with a steak knife, which might be a surprise—until you see the size of the buttered, baked, and cheesed croutons. It's as fineand whimsicalas any Caesar salad in town. Two other musts:Risk's fried calamari (with pickled vegetables, garlic, lemon)and Parmesan) andagnolotti (with burrata, dried tomato, garlic, pink peppercorns, and butter).
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The roster of co*cktails (all $12) features such creations as a frozen Calabrian paloma and a blood orange Mai Tai made with Bruto Americano. A Hibiscus Spritz is made withgin, hibiscus, lemon, prosecco, whilea Black Manhattan is composed ofrye whisky, Averna, amaro nonino, and bitters.
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When the dining room opens, patrons will notice that the footprint has remained the same, while the color palette has not. Midnight blue wood trim has been supplanted with a less formal, Tyrrhenian Sea aqua with pops of warm yellow. Illumination comes from drop-down pendants, not bare bulbs in tracks. Stained wood planks have replaced the dusky bluetufted banquette backs. The soffit above the bar received a similar treatment, while the bar front has been veneered with tongue-in-groove pine. Two windows were installed in the kitchen wall,so kids of all ages can watch fresh pasta being cut and extruded. The space nowfeels more like a casual Italian bistro than the slightly more upscale restaurant that it replaced.
The casual,inviting atmosphere extends to the outdoor dining areas, a scatter of 25 seats in front and an additional 30 on a back patio that’s anchored by a wood banquette set against the building. Umbrellas, shade sails, twinkling light strands, and galvanized metal tubs planted with colorful ninebark welcome guests to the city’s newest hidden patio.
Initially, O+O Pizza will be open only for patio dining and pickup orders. Hours are 5–9 p.m. on five nights and 5–10 p.m.on Fridays and Saturdays.
Don’t look for any exterior markers for O+O Pizza signage just yet, though. “We didn’t get the Olive+Oak signage up for months,” admits Hinkle. "This time,we hope to have all the renovations complete within a few weeks."
