RESTAURANTS: Pizza-and-salad crowd goes gaga over ZaZa
By Jack Schnedler (Contact)
LITTLE ROCK — ZaZa already needs more tables and chairs to handle the throngs descending upon this stylishly casual salad and pizza spot since it opened last month in the former Heights Theater along Kavanaugh Boulevard.
Dealing with a torrent of customers is a challenge most any new restaurant would beg and grovel to be facing. The crush of business after a delayed opening speaks in part to the eager anticipation that awaited the latest endeavor of Boulevard Bread Co. maestro Scott McGehee. He’s the business partner of on-the-scene protege John Beachboard in the professedly eco-friendly enterprise emphasizing locally grown foodstuffs.
The instant success is also driven by generally high-quality food and good-value prices, which are quickly building a faithful flock of regulars for ZaZa Fine Salad + Wood-Oven Pizza Co. That’s the slightly precious full name of the place, where sweating chef Beachboard can often be seen laboring beside the stacks of hardwood kindling that fuels the circular 700-degree oven. Hot enough for a guest appearance in Dante’s Inferno, the awesome oven bakes a pizza in three to five minutes.
“I’m still regularly running out of pizza dough,” says Beachboard. “We are currently making six times more dough each day than our original projections. We really had no idea that ZaZa would be such a ‘dine-in’ destination. We thought we’d do a lot more take-out, but it seems people like the space, and they likehanging out in it.”
On order from Italy are more tables, along with more of the molded plastic chairs that a full-figured reviewer at a weekly publication called “a bit narrow for some of us.” The added seating will be squeezed into the two indoor levels and the outside patio of the former Lucchesi’s location.
Meanwhile, crowd-averse customers can follow this guideline from Beachboard: “The only times we haven’t been busy, and I’m not joking, are 10:30 to 11 in the morning and 2:45 to 4 in the afternoon. Other than that, it has kind of been a madhouse.”
There are no table waitersat ZaZa, a name Beachboard says was chosen “as something we could say over and over again, and not get sick of. A friend reports that ‘ZaZa’ is somewhat risque in Brazil, but that’s neither here nor there.”
First-time diners are told how to navigate the ordering process by a smiling staff member at the gelato station just inside the main entrance. Waits in line are likely for the salads, made to order by employees laboring sometimes frantically behind a counter stocked with dozens of ingredients.
Diners can customize their salads, a process the printed menu optimistically describes as “simple” - given the abundance (amounting almost to a plethora) of options. The basic $4.75 salad allows any combination of four greens (baby field greens, romaine, baby spinach, arugula) and one of 15 dressings. Each additional vegetable, fruit, cheese or“crunch” costs 50 cents, with choices ranging from sugar snap peas and pepperoncini peppers to candied pecans and wonton crisps. Meat additions are priced from $1 (bacon, anchovies) to $3 (grilled rib-eye, wood-oven roasted shrimp).
It’s simpler to choose one of 10 “ZaZa favorites” salads, also made on the spot. Freshness and generous proportions were hallmarks of all four commendable selections sampled on recent visits: The Greek ($7.50), Nicoise ($8.25), The Asian ($8.25) and The Baja Shrimp ($8.75). Salads are served in handsome black bowls and can be accompanied by free Grissini breadsticks, a crisp grace note usually to be found at the silverware rack on the ground floor.
Pizzas can be ordered by going straight to the cash register just beyond the salad line. This is thin Napoli-style pizza, which Beachboard learned to make at Alice Waters’ legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif. It’s a relatively ascetic pizza compared to the typical American version loaded with tomato sauce and cheese.
Brought to the table on wooden paddle boards, the 12-inch pizzas are crisp and light on the palate. Most are attractively garnished with halved cherry tomatoes, arugula and parmesan shavings. Still a work in progress, basedon several pizza orders, is the even distribution of toppings.
Prices run from $8 for the basic Cheese pizza with San Marzano tomato sauce and mozzarella to $11.50 for the Barbecue Shrimp or Chicken.
Recommended choices include the House-Made Italian Sausage ($10.50) with garlic, caramelized onion and red bell pepper; the Quattro Stagioni ($9.50), with segregated toppings of roasted mushrooms, olives, artichoke hearts and prosciutto; and the Atomica ($10), fired up with zesty tomato sauce, capers and Sicilian anchovies.
ZaZa makes its own gelato (small cup $2.95, large cup $4.50), touted on the menu as having “less than half the fat and twice the flavor of traditional American ice creams.” Delectably Italian enough to evoke a stroll through a Roman or Florentine piazza, the gelato is offered in as many as 20 flavors, with Limoncello and Straciatella (chocolate chip) being personal favorites.
A nicely chosen selection of six white and six red wines is priced from $6.50 to $10 by the glass, $22 to $36 by the bottle. Big spenders can splurge on two reds: Petra Super-Tuscan (an Italian blend) for $76 or Reynolds Family Market Stag’s Leap (a Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon) for $82.
On the food menu but not yet being prepared are two pricey entrees: Steak ZaZa, a 38-ounce (!!) Tuscan ribeye for $38.50,and Shrimp ZaZa, 24 ounces of the wild-caught crustaceans for $32.50.
ZaZa’s decor includes hardwood floors, a large communal table near the entrance, a flatscreen television on each level and an Xbox Guitar Hero rig tucked into an upstairs nook for video-game devotees.
Aiming for crowd control, Beachboard proffers this stipulation, which may well run contrary to human nature: “Wedon’t really let people reserve seats while their friends and family go through the line, as that is not the way the flow works. People walk in and see all the tables full and a long line of people. But by the time you’ve ordered and received your salads, beer and whatever, tables have opened up.”
Somewhere in Italy, meanwhile, those much-needed reinforcements of tables and chairs are being manufactured.
ZaZa Address: 5600 Kavanaugh Blvd., Little Rock Hours: 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m.
Friday-Saturday (also noon-7 p.m.
Sunday once beer/wine permit for that day is obtained) Cuisine: Salads and pizzas Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D Alcoholic beverages: Wine and beer Reservations: No Wheelchair accessible: Yes Carryout: Yes (501) 661-9292
This article was published Friday, June 13, 2008.
Weekend, Pages 67 on 06/13/2008
