How Sweet It Is

If you read the menus of the two restaurants side by side, you will notice some striking similarities. Both have antipasti formats with separate sections for the verdura, carne, and pesce. They even have some of the exact same vegetable items, like the Sicilian roasted cauliflower and an anchovy-and-garlic dip called bagna cauda. Saba, a traditional Italian dressing made with grape must reduction, also appears on both menus, as do beets and mushrooms. On his innovative "Pizza Otto" menu, Batali has a fenne-and-bottarga pizza and another with taleggio. His "Classica Pizza" menu features marinara, margherita and romana.

I am thrilled for the most part to get a chance to eat Mario Batali-inspired Italian-American food in Houston. But it is worth noting that the eccentric pizzeria called Otto hasn't gotten the same kind of critical acclaim that Batali's flagship, Babbo, rates.

"Otto has average pizzas, good pizzas, excellent pizzas and odd pizzas," according to The New York Times, which gave the restaurant two out of a possible four stars. To his credit, Wiles has learned from some of Batali's mistakes, especially by cooking the pizza in a hot brick oven instead of on a griddle, as Batali does at Otto.

There are plenty of quasi-traditional Italian restaurants in Houston, so it's refreshing to see Batali-style Italian food here, or at least a good imitation of it. After a shaky start at Otto, Batali changed the concept to make it less of a pizzeria and offer more pastas. I suspect Marco Wiles will make similar adjustments at Dolce Vita.

None of the pastas on Dolce Vita's menu resembled the ones I saw on Otto's, and all of them were wonderful. The spaghetti with clams and ceci was a garlicky plate of spaghetti with whole clams in their shells and garbanzo beans, one of the best plates of spaghetti and clams I've ever had -- and this isn't even clam country.

The potato-based gnocchi were fluffy and light and served in a simple ragu. Paccheri with tomato, basil and reggiano was a simple, elegant dish of the oversize tube pasta we used to call "sewer pipes" in my youth, topped with lots of tomato sauce, basil and parmesan. I got the nightly special on my final visit -- an order of meatballs topped with arugula and parmesan. I playfully put one of my meatballs in the bowl with my dining companion's tomato-sauce-covered paccheri. This is as close to spaghetti and meat balls as Marco Wiles is ever going to get, I told her.

Dolce Vita has only been open a month and a half, and while it still has a few bugs to work out, the place is already on the short list for the best new restaurants of 2006. What a joy to have a smart, fun place to eat affordable Italian food in Houston.

One of the kinks they need to iron out is bad timing on the part of the waitstaff. In Italy, the waiter wouldn't think of bringing your pasta to the table while you were still eating your antipasti. There is a set order of service -- first antipasti, then pasta or soup, and afterwards a second plate of meat or fish. You can add a pizza or a salad or whatever you like, and the waiter will make sure that you get to enjoy each course at a leisurely pace before the next arrives.

On my first visit to Dolce Vita, we were seated downstairs at the high-visibility line of tables set uncomfortably close together by the bar. Thank god the table next to ours was empty, because our waiter delivered every single item we ordered at the same time. And there was no way that two vegetable antipasti bowls, a large wooden cutting board loaded with sliced mortadella, a pizza, a salad, and the plate of pasta were all going to fit on the little-bitty table for two we had been crammed into.

The waiter had to use the table next to ours to make room for all that food. My dining companion was mortified by the stares we got from the wine sippers around us. We must have looked like quite the pigs.

On two subsequent visits, I ate upstairs in the dining room and very carefully spelled out the order in which I wanted the food delivered. And both times, I was rushed anyway. The pastas arrived before we were done with the appetizers. And twice I had to wolf my pizza because the busboy took away the pizza plate as soon as I picked up the last slice.

Somebody needs to explain the concept of "slow food" to Dolce Vita's overeager waitstaff. The food is too good here for the hurry-up-and-eat vibe you get as soon as you sit down.

The sweet life can't be rushed.