At Grassi's, spotting the best seats in the house is part of the fun

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Photo by George Mahe

Half a roast beef sandwich with giardinera and half a house salad (green olives are optional, but recommended). Lunch gets no better.

We came to Grassi’s Ristorante & Deli for the chicken Parm, cheese garlic bread, and maybe a roast beef sandwich. Along with it, we found perhaps the most perfect chairs of any eatery in St. Louis. 

Like those chairs, Grassi's is a hidden gem, tucked behind Forshaw at Conway and Lindbergh. The location is felicitous, however, situated near some of the region's most respected private high schools and venerable country clubs, though it seems decidedly odd for a place like Grassi’s.

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Photo by George Mahe

On a late autumn afternoon, service behind the counter is already in overdrive, the line at the cafeteria-style counter moving steadily, interrupted only when a cook must tell a first-timer to take a tray from the rack.The menu’s posted overhead. It’s largely the sort of Italian familiar to and beloved by St. Louisans.

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Photo by Dave Lowry

There's golden-crusted Parmagiana—eggplant, veal, and chicken. Sauces for pasta span tomato sweet red, alfredo, and butter and garlic. Ravioli is toasted or boiled. Bricks of lasagna are hot enough to blister your palate. You want a classic? Try Mary Jo’s Special, boiled cheese ravioli tossed with meatballs. And yes, there's the ubiquitous pasta and broccoli.

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Photo by George Mahe

Photo by Dave Lowry

Sandwiches are a big seller. Some are packed between hefty handfuls of garlic cheese bread. A heap of freshly sliced beef sits on a wooden slab, ready for a dunk in beef jus, then tonging onto warm, fragrant bread. Sandwiches are layered with turkey or slices of salsiccia or some of that crackly crusted parmagiana. Every Wednesday, there's a best of both worlds special: a griddled meatball burger.

And there are salads of iceberg lettuce, crunchy and crisp, mixed en masse, topped with parmesan and the classic tumble of Provel. It’s hard to get excited about an iceberg salad, but you kind of do at Grassi’s. In an age of massaged kale, rocket, and charred parsnips, it's sort of like, “Hey, this is a perfectly lovely salad. Why don't more places serve something like it?” Your order's assembled right in front of you on the line. It’s what cafeterias in schools should look like. Then, balancing your tray, you find your seat.

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Photo by George Mahe

And that’s when you see them: Windsors, reproductions of course, but unusually faithful ones. There are four of them, bowbacks, with graceful crest rails curving in an uninterrupted line, modeled after those originally crafted in New York before 1780 or so. The legs, with their baluster and vase turning, give a feel of lift, the same bulge mirrored in the inside stretcher that affords a feel of light but firm solidity. (A good Windsor of any sort “sits low and looks high.”) Every line, every dimension works in harmony. You perch in that smooth saddle of a seat and can’t resist running your fingers over the curve of the lip. You ease back and feel the spindles almost embrace you.

Photo by George Mahe

Few of the chairs at Grassi’s match, though all of them look comfortable enough. Most of them are filled. Families are gathering. Many diners seem to know one another. Greetings, as more arrive, range from handshakes to an exchange of nods. A trio of cross-country runners fork into plates of pasta glistening with alfredo sauce, as if the notion of concern about calories was a long way in the future. Two older couples meet, both men with snow on the peaks and in high-waisted trousers, the women of that age old enough for muted color tunic tops but young enough that one catches a restrained whiff of Vent Verte. One couple chats as if it’s a first date. Another couple sits in silence as the woman peruses the financial section of the Times and the husband works the crossword.

Sure, there are more chichi places nearby. But over a plate of chicken parm or a meatball sandwich, all slathered in a red sauce fragrant with basil and oregano, it’s clear that Grassi’s is the epicenter of informal dining in these parts. It's simply one of those places with a definitive sense of place, which makes it a place you really ought to try if you are not already a regular. 

Even if it’s just to sit in those chairs.

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Photo by George Mahe