Review: Katie's Pizza & Pasta Osteria in Rock Hill

Those familiar with Katie Lee’s previous restaurant – Katie’s Pizzeria Cafe in Clayton, with which she no longer has a business connection – will feel right at home in her new eponymous endeavor, Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria. The young restaurateur has outfitted her new digs in a Rock Hill shopping plaza with the same eclectic eye toward the charmingly funky-chic: mismatched tables and chairs, some scored from flea markets, some made by her fiance, artist and business partner Ted Collier; movies silently projected over the bar; and various sphere-shaped light fixtures hanging from the ceiling like glowing baubles. The space has a long open kitchen and two window-sized living wall planters that frame the custom-made bar. One of Collier’s abstract paintings hangs on the back wall. Vintage leather suitcases line the front window, as if to suggest that another trip is never far off for the travel-loving couple. Look for their framed travel photos and skydiving certificate behind the bar.

If the décor doesn’t explicitly distinguish the new Katie’s from the old, the name does. The addition of the word pasta – all sorts of shapes dry on little racks around the kitchen – doubles the menu options, while osteria evokes more panache than anything called cafe ever could. The new Katie’s is further distinguished by the unusual – and successful – financing option the couple employed to help launch it, a crowdsourcing campaign that raised $43,000 in donations.

One more distinction: The pizzas are baked in a wood-fired oven. There are 15 pies, all 11 inches in diameter. At first glance they look Neapolitan, but these pies have a denser crust, which can only be described as Neapolitan-American (To be called Neapolitan, there are strict rules about the yeast, rolling and baking temperature.). The oven burns around 800 degrees, which is not quite hot enough to bake a true Neapolitan pie with its characteristic char in less than a minute.
If you like your pizza topped with hamburger and canned black olives, resist that craving because Katie’s is where you can get the Kup’s Egg pizza: extra-virgin olive oil brushed on bare dough then layered with Salume Beddu’s fiama sausage, fontina cheese, forest mushrooms and fresh thyme, and then topped with an egg before the pizza hits the hot stone. The result was a delicious breakfast-for-dinner dish with the sunny side up egg enhancing the flavors of the sausage and cheese. One night there was white clam pizza as the special, a delightful take on the Connecticut classic. Gremolada and breadcrumbs scattered over a mantle of fontina and chopped, briny clam meat added both brightness and additional texture. The best part? A whole littleneck clam, infused with the delicate smoke flavor from the oven, adorned each slice. Another pizza was topped with creamy burrata, a mild, soft cheese made from mozzarella and cream, which Lee sources from The Hill, and a simple sauce of San Marzano tomatoes, Salume Beddu’s excellent finocchiona salami and caramelized fennel. It was just the kind of pizza I could crave consistently.

To be sure, these pies were creative and flavorful, but I was disappointed with their crusts. The lower oven temperature means a longer bake time to cook the toppings, which also dries out the dough before the collar is crisp, resulti/

Nine pastas are available. Black spaghetti gets its name from the squid ink used to make the twisty, squiggly tentacles of pasta that came in a spicy white wine sauce topped with succulent bites of shrimp, mussels and clams. An accent of caviar added bracing salinity, elevating the dish from merely decent to decadent. But the torchio, torch-shaped and penne-sized, fell short; the noodles unraveled from too much time in hot water, a couple of whole sun-dried tomatoes missed the chopping knife and the overall flavor was surprisingly flat, given that oil-cured black olives and pesto were part of the dish.

Similar to the Clayton Katie’s, there’s house-made toasted ravioli stuffed with a mixture of artichoke hearts and red pepper, and served with a pesto dipping sauce. Here, though, instead of Gorgonzola in the mixture, the plump, crispy pillows simply feature shaved Parmesan on top for a more relaxed, subtle flavor. An appetizer of fried artichoke hearts picked up its crispy edges not from a deep-fryer but from the oven, making the burnt leaves too tough to enjoy.

There is a section of the menu dedicated to nothing but burrata. I went with fig mostarda prosciutto and an ice cream scoop-sized portion of cheese. While I detected a hint of the characteristic mustard flavor in the fig mostarda, the predominant flavor reminded me more of a Fig Newton. Our server initially forgot the accompanying crostini, which was no big deal, but when it did arrive, I was surprised that it was actually a crostino. It’s no fun sharing just one piece of toast.

While the beer selection covers local and regional bases well, the wine list suffers from the same limitation I’ve noticed elsewhere lately: $7 glasses of wine that I can find at most grocery stores. Somebody, please thrill me with a house wine that’s both interesting and cheap. What was thrilling, though, was the cherry pie. Tart cherries were balanced with a proper sweetness and the crust was flaky from top to bottom.

Despite the misses, Katie’s hits will bring me back, like that black seafood pasta and Kup’s Egg pizza – even with its overly crisp crust. Judging by the throngs packing the place on weekends, Kickstarter investors or otherwise, I’m not the only one taken with Katie’s vibrant conviviality.

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Don’t Miss Dishes
Black spaghetti, Kup’s Egg pizza, artichoke toasted ravioli

Vibe
Casual, loud and infectiously fun

Entree Prices
$12 to $20

Where
Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria, 9568 Manchester Road, Rock Hill, 314.942.6555, katiespizzaandpasta.com

When
Mon. to Thu. – 11 a.m. to 11 p.m, Fri. ­– 11 a.m. to midnight, Sat. ­– 10 a.m. to midnight, Sun. – 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Brunch: Sat. and Sun. – 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.