Munch goes to Gianna Via’s Restaurant & Bar
The early 1990s were a simpler time. Barry Bonds was whip-thin, Ross Perot was running for president (and also whip-thin), pimply young men smelled of Curve and Drakkar Noir, and there was an Italian Oven on every corner. The 22nd such Pittsburgh-area establishment opened in the Strip District in early 1992, and truly, those were the (bottomless) salad days for the casual chain. Among my rough cohort — born in the ’70s, children of the ’80s, raised on meatloaf and 8-bit Nintendo and mill-town mythos — there was no finer dining experience than the Oven, no more sumptuous appetizer than the fried zucchini and horseradish dip ($3.25!), and no better way to spend a Tuesday evening than watching local magician Mike Super entertain the blue-hairs and high school derelicts over a plate of pasta and clam sauce. (Plus my buddy Brad Zana worked there and would sometimes slip me some free grub.)
Well, times change, nostalgia spots fade, and America churns by like an army of steamrollers, knocking down all the Italian Ovens, rebuilding them, and knocking them down again out of sheer culinary spite. The Latrobe company, with more than 100 locations at its height, went public in 1995, filed for bankruptcy in 1996, relaunched, re-cratered, and today, most of the former Italian Ovens (with a few exceptions) are something else.
One of those something elses is Gianna Via’s Restaurant & Bar in Whitehall, which takes the place of the new-and-improved Italian Oven that opened there six years ago. Same ownership, but as of 2012 there’s a new name, and a newly renovated bar, and a new menu. But guess what? They still have the same old fried zucchini ($11 in the dining room, but all appetizers are half off at the bar). Just a real mountain of it, zucchini slices the size of a backsaw, meant for sharing with friends and loved ones. Some prefer zucchini bread, or maybe a squash salad, but in my mind, this is zucchini’s true calling: to be battered, fried, dressed in Parmesan gratings, served with dipping sauces and stuffed into my cake hole.
Speaking of appetizers, it’s tough to find a menu these days, Italian or otherwise, without beans and greens in the appetizer section, so why fight it? Beans and greens are done right here (escarole, not spinach, no egg or meat, $8) just veggies simmering in some spiced chicken broth, served with a slice of crusty Italian bread.
The menu has a nice pizza section, divided into red sauces pies and white pizzas. The white mushroom pizza was a winner, with shiitake and crimini and portabella slices, plus some crispy red onion ribbons, plus a whiff of garlic and truffle oil on a doughy, bubbly crust ($9 for four slices). Busy, but not fussy.
Munch’s stomach was getting full, but I’m a slave to conscience first, stomach second, and my conscience wouldn’t let me leave before ordering from the pasta section. Lobster and shrimp ravioli ($17) is a stand-out plate, five overstuffed ravioli buried in vodka sauce, a bit sweet and a bit spicy, made in house.
The bar has a small but respectable tap list, with a few interesting options as of last week, including the tart, shandy-like Illusive Traveler Grapefruit Ale ($4, scoring 81 out of 100 on the Beer Advocate website). Not quite a beer, but not a bad choice on a warm spring evening.
While the bar space has been renovated, with a 10-seater marble bartop and five flatscreen TVs suspended from the walls, the dining room (and the banquet center in the back) appear mostly unchanged from their most recent Italian Oven days. It’s a big space, 3,500 square feet, and while it has the look of a “fast-casual” dinette (Panera being the prime example), the “fast” has been more or less stripped of the business model here, mostly because it was a narrow niche to begin with, in search of a customer base.
In Pittsburgh, that prospective base — people who wanted pasta in under 10 minutes — never really materialized the way Italian Oven 2.0 hoped it might. Gianna Via’s gives Pittsburgh what it evidently wants: another sit-down neighborhood Italian place in city already swimming with them. Nostalgia wins again, it turns out.
Gianna Via’s, 5301 Grove Road, Caste Village Shops, Whitehall. Information: 412-8826500 or www.giannavia.com. Open seven days.