DeMun restaurant Louie is esteemed for its wood-fired pizzas. But beyond the charred crusts topped with premium cheeses and seasonal vegetables, the menu holds a few hidden gems, all united by the kiss of the grill. The grilled dishes at Louie are a celebration of Mediterranean flavors and encourage us to expand our conception of what Italian cuisine can be.
Arguably, the most famous grilled dish hailing from Italy is Tuscany’s Bistecca alla Fiorentina. This simple dish is all about a high-quality T-bone steak, seasoned with just salt and pepper, and served rare. Louie’s take on grilled steak is more complex – it’s less “beef on a plate” than the traditional Tuscan take. It uses beef tenderloin, a prized cut that takes skill to cook correctly. “You get a nice char on the outside,” Louie chef Sean Turner says. “It’s super soft and tender, but if there’s no char or crust on the outside, it can kind of be a weird textural experience.”
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Herbs are all over Louie’s menu, and this dish is no exception. The beef is served with crispy roasted potatoes and a bright, herbaceous salsa verde that packs a briny punch from capers. The dish represents Louie’s slightly unorthodox willingness to blend Italian regional specialties together. Italian food as a whole is so deeply regional; the lines between Tuscan and Neapolitan cuisine, for example, would not ever cross. Yet here, Louie takes a Tuscan dish and serves it with a sauce from Northern Italy’s Piedmont in a regional collaboration that shouldn’t work but does.
As a peninsular nation smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean, many regions of Italy, including Campania, Puglia, Sicily and the Veneto, are more likely to eat seafood than other types of meat. Louie’s spin on grilled octopus takes inspiration from the South, incorporating soppressata, a cured pork popular in places like Puglia and Campania. The fatty, cured pork adds depth to the very lean octopus. “It definitely helps balance out the whole dish in your mouth, the way it hits your taste buds,” Turner says.
For a boost of spice but not heat, Turner adds in Calabrian chiles; this smoky pepper reinforces the flavor from the grill. To achieve the perfect chew on the cooked octopus, chefs first gently sous vide it for five hours. Once it’s cooled and rested, it hits the grill. “We get a little bit of char, which helps the texture on the tender octopus, just enough to get a little color and crisp on the outside,” Turner says.
As much as Louie respects Italian tradition, the restaurant is also willing to throw the rule book entirely out the window. The Mediterranean is a vast, diverse and interconnected place, and there’s no better reminder of that than Louie’s grilled pork chop. Chefs combine a classic preparation – a pork chop brined in rosemary and molasses – with an unexpected condiment: chermoula. This North African sauce popular in Libya and Morocco is made with cilantro, citrus, garlic, olive oil and other spices. “When we look at the Mediterranean, we try to remember places that people don’t think of,” Turner says.
Chermoula is typically served with fish and seafood, but Turner found it quite natural to pair it with grilled pork. The protein, particularly when brined with molasses, can trend toward the sweet side, so an assertively acidic sauce blends neatly into the dish. For further evidence of Louie’s unrelenting creativity, witness the dish’s other accompaniment: shishito peppers. This pepper, which hails from China and Japan primarily, might seem like an odd choice for an Italian restaurant, and yet, eaten with the other parts of the dish, it makes perfect sense. Shishitos naturally have a slightly citrusy flavor that further reinforces the brightness of the chermoula.
Chef Sean Turner.
As a city, 911 takes its Italian food seriously, and as a whole, it’s bound to tradition. Old-school red-sauce joints on The Hill have been doing things the same way for years, and their success is very much deserved. Perhaps this context of stalwart orthodoxy to Italian classics makes a place like Louie that much more special. While there’s nothing wrong with the classics – they are beloved for a reason – it can be refreshing to dine at a restaurant that doesn’t feel bound by structures. Louie’s grilled dishes pay homage to Italian customs but reinterpret them in their own way, showcasing what modern Italian cuisine can be.
Louie, 706 DeMun Ave., Clayton, Missouri, 314-300-8188,
