Monday, December 21, 2009
First Bite Porta Via Lands in New Location
Posted by Nicki Wood on Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 6:47 AM
If you had asked me 17 years ago what Bellevue restaurants would still be in business, I would have included Porta Via for its friendly owners and meticulously made food.
Don't call them "just sandwiches" -- the layers were crafted from ingredients obviously carefully selected for pairing, calibrated for flavor profile, and hand-chopped for proper distribution. Olives were minced, sun-dried tomatoes cut into slivers, basil was cut julienne.
Porta Via has been revived by Mehrdad Alviri, brother-in-law of founder Stefano Hugh, and moved to White Bridge Road. The finishes have been upgraded to granite, there's table service, and critically, wine.
Restaurant pizza is usually a disappointing facsimile of the homemade kind, which in a savvy household is made with homemade dough, homemade sauce and individually prepared ingredients scattered reasonably generously over the pizza. That's how we try to do it at home, and also what I found in Porta Via's pizza. Basil, roast peppers, transparently thin salami and a sprinkling of spicy red pepper flakes for the Diavolo.
Porta Via's pizza is the first in Nashville to be VPN, certified Neapolitan, featuring tomatoes grown in the region near Mt. Vesuvius, fresh mozzarella and hand-pressed dough made without mechanical means plus baking in a special wood-fired oven of volcanic rock.
At $12 for a 12-inch pizza, it's, you know, not going to break the bank. The sandwiches are a decided bargain at $5.50 (for the meatball) to $7 (for some panini), made with the same care and attention to detail.
The dish that tugs most strongly at my curiousity, now that the pizza itch is scratched, is the charcoal steak grilled in the Neapolitan-approved pizza oven. That will require a return trip, which is one I'll gladly make.
Comments (19)
Showing 1-19 of 19
Nicki?
I'm stumped. Being a denizen of as far west as you can go in west davidson, I cannot recall ever seeing a place of this name anywhere in this area. Can you offer a timeline of the history of this place?
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Fringe:
Porta Via was in Bellevue from about 1992-2000 (that is just a guess based on my memory). It was in the two-story strip mall that is near to Antonio's on Old Harding Rd. Nowadays I believe that space is a Curves.
Also, am I crazy, or was there also briefly a Porta Via location in the Bellevue Mall?
You are correct. Porta Via was in a little strip in Bellevue for a long time. Then, at some point as the Bellevue Mall was making its downward spiral, they moved to the food court there. But then they disappeared.
I am very excited about Porta Via coming back. I used to go there all the time when I was younger and loved it! The meatball bolillo was my favorite (back when I ate meatballs). My mom loved their reuben. I can't wait to go back and to try their pizza too!
any relation to the old Pizzaria Porta Via that was in Murfreesboro until around 2000?
I sent The Husband out for pizza Friday night after seeing the discussion here. And of course he ran into Chris Chamberlain and The Girlfriend dining in.
I got a simple margherita. I would have liked more basil on it, but, you know, that's the closest thing I could find to a fault. The only thing that could have made it better, I think is dough made from genuine NYC water. And since that's not really practical, I'm giving it to hearty thumbs up.
Also, they suggest you re-heat the pizza when you get home. Definitely do that. It gets a little chewy when it cools off too much. But a couple of minutes at 500 degrees brought it back nicely.
Sally, the meatball bolillo is still (again?) on the menu and is very good.
Lesley, I ate the pizza as soon as we got home, and it was still warm, getting a little chewy, but I liked it that way.
James, not sure if it's related but I do know the original owner opened several locations (there's a little info under the "About Us" tab on the website, eatatportavia.com) So it's possible. How was the food there?
I didn't see anything under "about us" in regards to a former M'boro location. It is likely a coincidence. The food? I wish I had a better memory of it. I liked it enough to make it a semi-regular lunch spot.
Hubs and I ate there Friday night and also ran into Chris C and The Girlfriend! When we came in there was a man standing at their table...I wonder if it was your husband Lesley? Small world, eh?
Beth--if it was a giant red-haired man, that was him! Hilarious! PortaVia was THE place to be Friday night...likely all thanks to that one commenter on the open thread, eh?
James, your memory is correct. Owner Mehrdad Alviri says PortaVia had franchises for a while in Murfreesboro, Hendersonville and Atlanta. The franchise owners all eventually sold out and retired or did other things.
I will have an item about PortaVia in my Food Biz column Monday in the City Paper.
If I didn'y have a planned dinner at City House Sunday night and had a bunch of their pizza, I totally would have tried Porta Via out as well. I'll probably give it try before the new year though.
We hit Porta Via tonight. Got there around 5:45 and secured a table right away. Within 15 minutes, all tables were full and there was a wait. We each had an insalata mista (very fresh, cold, DRY mixed greens with shaved parm and a really good balsamic vinegarette) and we each ordered a pizza. I had the diavola and he had the margherita with added sausage and mushrooms. I really liked the finocchina (peppered salami)on the diavola - it was sliced very thinly, which helped to control the grease factor often encountered with pepperoni. The bones (outer crust)had a nice tang from aging the dough, I assume.
I saw several other entrees coming out that looked yummy...we are 5 mins away from Porta Via and I see us becoming regulars.
Wellll... couldn't wait for any responses yesterday regarding this place so we went - we got there around 3-ish and could not figure out why in the world there were at least 15+ staff scurrying around. There were 3 tables of patrons including ourselves. Then I read the comments here and it all makes sense.
Those little char spots on the pizza crust are called leopard spots.... When you watch that fellow take a hunk of dough out of the bulk fermenter and get it into a round in a matter of seconds and then see your pie go in and out of the oven in less than 2 minutes you know you got the real deal. From a craft pizza making perspective this place is very interesting.
Last question: Is this place owned or run by the same person that is involved with Hot Kebabs? There were some really familiar faces on the staff..
@on the fringe: You are correct, Mehrdad also owns Hot Kabobs. Additionally, he used to be part owner in "Say Cheese" that was located in Bellevue Center (and thriving until the mall decided to kill it).
I got my first taste of working in the restaurant business working for him at Say Cheese. It inspired me to go to culinary school and eventually move into fine dining. He was great to work for, and I'm glad to see that he is still succeeding and that he has managed to get Porta Via back, which was definitely one of the best places to eat in Bellevue in it's heyday.
Watching Mehrdad from a short distance gave me a perspective that he is a seriously good person. And I'll be Bach~~!
Tried this place a couple weeks back right after it opened. I thought it was good, but was not a huge fan of the crust as it appeared burnt. It is quite possible this is what they are going for with the wood oven, but I just was not impressed. Also it is super bright for dinner (maybe just a bit dimmer on the lights). Not trying to hate just friendly suggestions...
Thanks for your posts on this restaurant. My wife and I are going to drop in on Thursday on our way across this long state. We lived in Naples for two years and in Sardinia for two years. The $12 price is well worth it even though we used to bring home four pizzas for about $12 US when we lived there. I am so looking forward to a genuine Neapolitan pizza after nine years. Surely wish Memphis would get a certified VPN pizza place. The pizza diavola is screaming for me! Will post a short personal review next week sometime.
Got takeout though the place seemed pretty hopping for a Monday night. I arrived just as the pizzas were being handed off to the bar/takeout counter, but when I got home (5-7 mins later) the pizza was not hot, more like lukewarm. Maybe it sat before it came to the takeout counter.
Before reheating -- I had a bite or two & thought it was a tad chewy though it was not hot. Reheated & we thought the ingredients were quite good (did the Diablo & a pancetta/onion [somewhat carmelized])though the crust, leopard spots & all, was still a bit of an effort.
We also enjoyed a taste of gelato -- tiramisu & a sugar free raspberry.
Not sure what exactly to make of the seemingly chewy crust, but we will certainly make a couple of trips before writing off a decent pizza place in W Nashville with high end ingredients!
The pizza crust was pretty good, actually, but rest of our meal was... different.
We ordered a margherita with pancetta on one side, and it showed up with the pancetta on a separate plate, fat, white, and raw. Our waiter insisted that it had been cooked, so I went ahead and ate it, but it wasn't really all that appealing. Can't comment on our salad, it never arrived, but they took it right off the bill with no argument.
I suppose we'll go back, if only to see what happens when we order something else.
