A new seafood restaurant with a familiar name just launched on the outskirts of landlocked St. Louis. After a soft opening last week, Napoli Sea (1450 Beale) is serving dinner seven nights a week at the Streets of St. Charles. Napoli Sea marks the fourth restaurant from the Pietoso family (following Café Napoli, Napoli 2, and Napoli III). Here’s what to know before you go.
The Atmosphere
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Napoli Sea is the first “smallish” restaurant in the Napoli stable, says owner Tony Pietoso. In fact, the space was almost too small. “We loved the space,” he says, but seating only 37 in the main room and 20 at the bar was “only marginally viable,” he added, so a 24-seat mezzanine was added. “It ended up being just as cozy and comfortable as the rest of the space,” he says, and doubles as a space for private events and parties—a revenue-generating added benefit.
Guests enter by pulling on a 7-foot harpoon door handle, which opens an imposing 9-foot door replete with a porthole window. Atop a white-and-grey granite bartop is one of the more creative draft beer systems in town: a curved, cast-iron pipe anchored by a bronze diver’s helmet, an homage to Pietoso’s grandfather (nicknamed “Doc”), who was a member of the non-tactical amphibious UDT (Underwater Demolition Teams), predecessors of the Navy Seals.
Shadows of swimming fish are recessed into a drop ceiling above the bar. Beyond that, there’s a static wave of blue-and-white LED lights. To one side, flanked by a pair of hanging lights that resemble buoys, is a 10-by-5.5-foot vertical video board showing sea-themed drone shots from around the world. There are “days and days of videos,” as Pietoso describes it, courtesy of his brother, Todd, owner of In Home Solutions. “I’m pretty sure that one couple was so enamored, they booked a trip while they were sitting at the table.”
To the right of the bar, a series of two-top tables flank the front windows. Outside, sea creatures are painted on the underside of the deep-blue awning, one of many clever design details. Above the prime bar seat (table 10) is a large, vertical installation from local painter Zach Smithey (who’s also a shipping container home builder). The 81 seats, configured into a small footprint, has a fairy-tale evoking “just right” feel to it. There’s so much to see, even before turning your head.
When you do, you’ll notice table lamps that change color, a chandelier that conjures a fisherman’s net, and an image of a giant sea tortoise swimming across one wall and two octopi (painted in coral and pink, two of its camouflage colors) that join tentacles on parts of another. “The wall needed something but was so chopped up that traditional pieces wouldn’t work,” Smithey says, “so Kye and I came up with something appropriate that did.”
Having a smallish restaurant allows for new-school design mixed with old-school touches, such as table-side finishing of dishes and no TVs. “There’s plenty going on here without needing them,” Pietoso says. “In our minds, they’d detract from the experience.”
The Menu
Executive chef Jon Berger, who oversees all the Napoli restaurants, wrote a concise but comprehensive menu, in which the focus is on a handful of “catch of the day” items, displayed to the customer on a tray prior to ordering.
“We used to do that at Café Napoli, and I happen to like the ever-changing presentation,” Pietoso says. He adds that despite St. Louis’ landlocked status, the Napoli restaurants “go through fresh fish so fast that the quality remains super-high, as good or better than some restaurants in Florida.”
At Napoli Sea, fresh fish entrées are served with one of four sauces, including Sauce Vierge, made with lemon, olive oil, sundried tomato, capers, and fresh herbs. Besides the rotating offerings, the menu includes oysters from both coasts, charred octopus, a seafood roll, pancetta-wrapped shrimp, caviar, and a shrimp and clam chowder with a puff pastry top, as well as a cold seafood platter with oysters, shrimp, and jumbo lump crab. (The three-tier $260 Grand Tower adds more of the same, plus king crab, tuna cones, and ceviche, made from fresh catch whitefish.)
Standouts include an octopus appetizer (cooked in a water bath for 6 to 7 hours at 300 degrees, then cooled and char grilled); Sorrento Salad (iceberg, egg, tomato, avocado, and crabmeat inside a fried onion ring); Tuna Crudo; and a non-seafood item, Chicken Valdostana (stuffed with prosciutto, fontina, and spinach, then baked, sliced on the bias, and napped with white wine sage sauce).
Fresh pasta is also available and served three ways: Rotolo (rolled fresh pasta, cut jelly-roll style and baked with goat cheese, pesto, and spicy pommodoro sauce), Paglia E Fieno (fresh straw and hay pasta with veal ragu, lemon, capers, and toasted breadcrumbs), and a seafood risotto.
A mobile cart (fashioned from a mechanic’s toolbox, no less) is used for tableside finishing of Dover sole, Bananas Foster, as well as what may become the signature dish: the aforementioned seafood risotto, finished inside a 45-pound wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano. Inside a 45-pound Parm wheel half, the cavity is ignited with Everclear, and hot risotto is added, stirred, and scraped, introducing some of the heated cheese to the already hot dish. “We have three finishing carts on hand. We may need more,” quips Pietoso.
The cocktail menu leans into tequila and mescal (both popular at Napoli III as well). Several of the cocktails have themed names (“Doc” of the Bay, The Hardhat), while others are just plain fun: The Mariner (made with Grand Marnier), Basil Basil Smash (made with Basil Hayden bourbon and muddled basil), and the popular lemon vodka-based Oyster Shooter, which comes in a Tajin-rimmed mermaid glass. A lighter, spritzier version of the Italian Negroni—Negroni Sbaghiato—is also garnering a pre-summer following. “I’m not a fizzy guy, but I’m a Negroni guy,” says Pietoso, “and I love that drink.”
The Backstory
Tony Pietoso and his sons Ande and Kye had been talking about opening a seafood-based restaurant for several years when the success of Napoli III (also located at Streets of St. Charles) nudged them into action.
“The amount of oysters and shrimp, lobster, and crab cocktail that we sell at [Napoli] III is insane,” Kye Pietoso told SLM last summer, “so we already knew that seafood sells there.”
When the 2,200-square-foot space opened next door, the trio jumped on board. Tony recently remarked that Napoli III was so busy immediately, “we joked that we needed to open another restaurant, which we ended up doing.”
