DineOut Cozy Gourmet Luscious food, lovely casual surroundings– we share one of our favorite Italian haunts: Prego by E.J. Arnell

One night, just over a year ago, I was struck by an urgent hankering for a thin crust brick-oven pizza. After driving around town, I was directed to Prego, an Italian restaurant in the Rice Village. I sat at the bar, sipped some wine, and read over the menu while I waited for my hastily ordered pizza. A comfortable vibe circulated around the room, seeming to enter through all of my senses–immediately I was hooked. Now, when I’m feeling too tired to prepare dinner, but feel awake enough to avoid fast food, Prego is always one of my first choices. It’s a single restaurant with multiple personalities: a relaxing lunch spot, a hip dining outing, a quiet family brunch option, and a Sunday night jazz hangout. What I like best about Prego is that the restaurant’s attitude is casual but the food is gourmet.

During the day, warm sunlight streams through the many windows and lights up the interior. At night, candlelight casts shadows in the warm darkness. Creamy beige walls highlight black and white abstract photos, dark-stained wood shelves display the many wine bottles stacked beside the snug bar area. At the back of the room, a small open kitchen sends active cooking sounds and enticing aromas out into the cozy room.

Prego uses the same menu for lunch and dinner; the pizzas and pastas are fantastic and make a great lunch or add a salad for a light dinner. The thin crusts on the brick-oven pizzas allow the flavor of the toppings to really stand out. The margherita pizza is sweet with whole milk mozzarella, roma tomatoes, basil, and tomato sauce.

The pastas are a good demonstration of the ingenuity of chef and part owner John Watt, who also works the Back Street Café kitchen. The sauces are as varied as the shapes and the ingredients, and will make you want to return until you have had the pleasure of sampling them all. After many visits, I’m still discovering new tastes on the menu. Each dish has its own distinctiveness. If you’re feeling like something light but rewarding, try the capellini (angel hair pasta), tossed with fresh roma and oven-dried tomatoes, basil, garlic, and olive oil. With the complimentary bread you can dip in their herb-infused olive oil, it makes for a quick and healthy meal.

On the heavier side of the pasta scale is the spaghetti with veal meatballs, pancetta, crimini mushrooms, scallions, and marinara sauce. The rich meatballs make this a wonderful grownup version of a childhood favorite. The sauce is superb and lightly covers the perfectly cooked pasta.

The intimate bar is an ideal spot to plunk down, by yourself or with a friend, to enjoy a glass of wine and a sample from the appetizers, which are all very good across-the-board.

The pan-roasted mussels are beautifully mild, the accompanying flavors of corn, scallions, and parsley allowing the mussels to speak for themselves. The wood-grilled Tuscan bread, thickly cut and topped with green sauce is a delicious way to sop up the residual juices.

In the pan-browned potato gnocchi, gooey clumps of mozzarella are mixed in with tangy oven-dried tomatoes and porcini mushrooms–you’ll be dreaming of this dish.

If you happen to be sipping on a bold red wine, you might try instead the raviolini; gorgonzola is stuffed into the pasta pockets and explodes out to join up with the sinful butter sage sauce and sprinkled walnuts. What a combination!

Other must-try appetizers are the corn flour-crusted oysters, lightly sautéed in herb butter with asparagus, black olives, and roma tomatoes, and the potato-crusted lump crab cake with lobster and roasted corn butter. (It is served as an entrée as well with French green beans and parmesan mashed potatoes–divine.)

There are seven types of salad: the Caesar is a fair rendition, but there are more interesting options such as the house salad with greens, artichokes, olives with gorgonzola cheese, or either of the tomato salads.

But all of these delights aside, let’s talk about why Prego has become a favorite dining location: its entrée menu. The risotto is exquisitely prepared, just the right amount of chewiness and moisture. Try the risotto with goat cheese, peas, roasted corn, green beans, mushroom, and asparagus. Or, for a special occasion, try the risotto with lobster, caramelized onions, oven-dried tomatoes, and sherry. Both are tremendous. Well-blended flavors infiltrate the fluffy grains, yet each bite is different from the next with the variety of ingredients.

For an Italian restaurant, Prego has an incredible selection of seafood offerings, some tossed with pastas or on their own. The Mediterranean shellfish soup–their version of bouillabaisse –is filled to the brim with lobster, shrimp, mussels, clams, oysters, calamari, and scallops swimming in a tomato-saffron broth. This is for seafood lovers only (and rich ones too–it’s $19.95). The seafood is lovely and tender; however, the night I sampled the shellfish soup, I experienced an unpleasant aftertaste and feel that it is to be avoided.

Highly recommended would be the lasagna with veal meatballs, cheesy with rich tomato sauce and great with their bread; or the parmesan-crusted veal scallopini, tangy, crunchy, and fulfilling with the accompanying veggies, garlic mashed potatoes, spinach, and artichokes. Both are my standby dishes if the specials, always including fresh fish, don’t sound appealing.

I haven’t felt the need to venture into their category called "Pecan Wood Grilled Selections." My read is that these items are on the menu for people who don’t feel like true Italian food, but are with someone who does. They grill a collection of pork, chicken, fish, lamb, and beef and twist the ingredients to resemble Italian fare, like adding Chianti-mustard sauce to beef tenderloin.

Just in case you are feeling full just from reading this, know that when the server flaunts the gorgeous-looking dessert tray it’s impossible not to order something. Like the dinner menu, there is something for everyone’s palate, and the desserts are prepared in-house daily. One of the meekest-looking desserts just happens to be one of the best, the panna cotta. Intense flavor is packed into this cream-based custard, served with fresh berries. Naturally they have tiramisu, with a spongy bottom that is thicker than most, a beautifully creamy center, and a dusting of cocoa on top of the marscarpone cheese. I could explain the nine others, but they are worthy of a first-hand viewing.

Sunday brunch at Prego is truly a combination of breakfast and lunch, with eggs crossing over many barriers to find themselves in unfamiliar, interesting territory. Try the brunch pizza, which has a thin crust with tomato sauce, prosciutto, mozzarella, and an egg that is cracked on top before the pizza is slid into the brick oven. The egg comes out gooey, which is perfect for dipping the crispy edges of the pizza into the soft yolk. Make sure you ask for a well-done pizza if you like hard eggs.

Of the two frittatas on the brunch menu, I tried the one with pancetta, fontina, and scallions, served with flavorful but soft, roasted rosemary pesto potatoes. The pancetta and scallions end up on the bottom, with the fontina covering the entire top with parsley sprinkles. Despite the flavor of the pancetta and the scallions, it still seemed a little bland. Salt and pepper really helped–which is the way with eggs–but I was made to feel like a goof for asking for the non-existing ketchup. It may be an Italian restaurant, but hey, it’s breakfast in America.

Also for Sunday brunch they offer cinnamon French toast, an oven-roasted pancake or parmesan crepe that comes topped with a seafood armoricaine sauce, and a couple of pastas and calzones. The regular menu is available for brunch, as are the daily specials, which tend to be a little heavy for the early hours.

Prego’s strength truly lies in the food, but this award-winning restaurant has received acclaims for both the food and their wine list. Money Magazine called them Houston’s best-kept secret, and the Wine Spectator gave them their award of excellence for the past three years. Fortunately, the amount of national attention hasn’t caused them to become pretentious or sloppy. Use your mood to choose your food, and try Prego when you’re feeling up for something downright delicious. n

Prego, 2520 Amherst (in the Rice Village), 713/529-2420. Opens Mon.—Fri. at 11:30 a.m., opens Sat. & Sun. at noon. Mon.—Thur. & Sun., open until 10 p.m. Fri. & Sat., open until 11 p.m. Live acoustic jazz guitar by Ray Wilson, Sundays from 6:30—9:30 p.m.