In fact, heaviness doesn't seem to come into play in Capri's talented kitchen. Thankfully. Even the lasagna was like something from a dream, a nodding-off sort of nap you'd have after eating too much mille-feuille. Each layer in the lasagna was gossamer-thin and fine, and so wispy you'd barely expect it even to convey any flavor: the savory Italian equivalent of that thousand-layered French pastry. Far from being as heavy and meat-laden as other lasagnas, this Bologna specialty was a downy display of beautifully handmade pasta and velvety ricotta.
Like my wonderfully al dente tagliatelle, the lasagna noodles are made fresh at Capri every day. The kitchen also makes its own pappardelle, gnocchi and ravioli, and uses De Cecco pasta for other items like penne and farfalle. So while the "pizza" may well no longer be a part of the equation here, the pasta blissfully is.
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Troy Fields
The gnocchi have just the right texture.
Location Info
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11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays.
• Burrata: $8.95
• Calamari: $9.50
• Gnocchi al quattro formaggi: $17.95
• Lasagna: $11.95
• Tagliatelle al salmone: $17.95
• Penne alfredo: $12.95
READ MORE:
• See a slideshow of Capri's bright kitchen.
• Capri, behind the review
Capri Pasta Pizza and More
25602 I-45, #101, 281-298-0055.
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That gnocchi is probably the finest pasta that Capri makes. Just barely covered with a thoroughly rich four-cheese sauce perked up by that blue-veined bite from some pert gorgonzola, the gumball-size potato dumplings have just the right texture: chewy without being gummy, dense without being heavy, fluffy without being insubstantial.
As luck would have it, I found myself eating gnocchi twice in one day last week. Once over lunch at Capri — whose inexpensive lunch specials are yet another reason I wish it was closer to town — and then again at a dinner at Tony's for food writer John Mariani, the Italian cuisine connoisseur and Esquire correspondent who just published a seminal book called How Italian Food Conquered the World. I didn't tell Mariani about the sweetly homespun Capri with its Imola-inspired mosaics, all done by Barbara Coglianese herself; I don't think it's his kind of place. But I did find myself pondering the differences between the gnocchi served at Tony's and those at Capri.
At Tony's, Houston's imperial capital of Italian cuisine, each thumb-size gnocchi is carefully plated and presented with uniform texture and quality. They are all masterfully duplicated identical twins of one another. At Capri, the gnocchi is slightly smaller, less elongated, and has a rough-hewn appearance and feel that almost correspond to the fleshy curve of a hand's palm. The two pastas could not be more different from one another, yet I love them both equally.
This kind of expression through food, especially something as basic as gnocchi, is fascinating, enabling a chef to define a restaurant and its direction with something as simple as the shape of a piece of pasta. I found myself so interested in discussing this idea that, God help me, I started to talk up Capri to Tony Vallone himself, in his own restaurant that same night.
"Have you ever heard of it?" I asked him.
"No," he said with a smile, "but it's a little out of the way."
"You should try it some time," I pressed on. "It's fabulous stuff. The owner is from right outside Bologna, from a town called Imola."
"Ah, Imola!" Vallone replied. "That town is very well known for its food."
After eating Barbara Coglianese's food at Capri, I can see why.
katharine.shilcutt@houstonpress.com
