City Pages Review
La Grolla… the Definition of “Ideal Upscale Neighborhood Italian”
City Pages Review
By Dara Moskowitz
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Warm, welcoming, and garlic-scented. If there were an encyclopedia of restaurants, La Grolla would be the one pictured under the heading “ideal upscale neighborhood Italian.” Servers are cheery, confident, and a joy to work with. Rib eyes in Roquefort sauce are tender, caramelized, rich, and, in essence, a party on a plate. Lunches are budget priced. And while the restaurant isn’t all that rigorously Italian (skip the unfeeling osso bucco), it excels at the restaurant-only treats (gorgeous calamari) you want when you’re on a cozy date or part of a more jolly celebration.
The enormous outdoor patio is a summertime charmer, a perfect place to put a bottle of Pinot Grigio in a chiller and contemplate the fact that the same moon that beams upon Italy beams on your own lucky head. |
 Image by Trish Lease People-pleaser: Shari and Jon Emerson enjoy La Grolla’s accessible upscale Italian dishes. |
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The first time I walked into La Grolla the night was cold and wet, and inside the room was hot with laughter, bodies, the smell of garlic, and all the steam a good time generates. Over time, I’ve determined that sometimes you can judge a book by its cover: La Grolla is a good time, with a little red wine and a little garlic.
And, you know, a few duck pot stickers and some beef tenderloin in a pineapple teriyaki glaze. Which is to say that La Grolla isn’t too orthodox about the whole Italian thing. And if you are, if you choose to be one of those sticklers who can’t forget that, say, panzanella means “bread salad,” and find it odd to order panzanella and get instead a salad of mixed baby greens topped with a few cucumbers and a chopped tomato vinaigrette, well, if that’s the kind of uptight schoolmarm you are, you can just go suck on an egg. Because La Grolla knows what people want more than you do, and they’ve got the packed tables and happy jolly dining room to prove it. So why don’t you just crawl into your parched bed with your copy of the Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, mmm? Why don’t you? There, that’s what you deserve. The rest of us will be over in St. Paul eating rib eyes in Gorgonzola sauce, washing them down with bottles of rich California Zinfandel, and pitying your stick-in-the-mud heart. Italian. $$-$$$, Outdoor Seating, Romantic, Vegetarian Spoken Here. |
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