Restaurant review: Puleo's Grille a happy marriage of Italian, Deep South flavors

Puleo's Grille describes itself as a fusion of Italian and American Deep South cuisines, two cultures that create the most decadent and delicious dishes imaginable.

The Chattanooga location in Ooltewah is new, but this is a chain with three Knoxville outposts and one in Alcoa, Tenn.

My lunch buddy, Rick D'Andrea, is well qualified to assess the Italian elements of just about any menu. Rick's Nonna (grandmother) was a cook for a popular Sicilian restaurant in Manhattan's Little Italy. And Nick paid for a chunk of his New York University tuition as a waiter at the legendary Barbetta, a 110-year-old Manhattan restaurant whose dining rooms look like a Venetian palace. Barbetta serves Piemonte cuisine from Italy's northern region near the Alps.

Puleo's doesn't aim to serve dishes as authentic as either of those two venues. Instead, it focuses on the sort of ingredients lovers of Italian food would enjoy, then prepares each dish so the flavors stand out. You will find the usual staples such as spaghetti with meat sauce. But you won't find a heavily breaded chicken parm drenched in canned cheese. Puleo's respects ingredients too much to smother one with the other.

THE FOOD

Despite the Italian name, there are really just a handful of Italian dishes on the menu, so few that Rick got a little nervous about being jettisoned from his True Italian Taste Tester duties. The menu had a wide variety of steaks, burgers, salads, pizzas and Deep South staples like Southern fried chicken with white gravy.

So while Puleo's may be more -ish than Italian, it never claims to prepare dishes precisely the way a Sicilian or Venetian Nonna might. Instead, it uses ingredients, spices and attention to detail with a Deep South approach to cooking. Some tasty standouts are the result.

Ciabatta rolls were delivered warm to the table. These were big, square pillows of perfectly baked bread, their crispy crust concealing a chewy interior. Instead of butter, olive oil pesto was offered for dipping.

My Palemo Chicken with a side of wild rice was a huge serving. My lunch buddy had already noticed that a true North Italian menu would include delights like polenta, which Puleo's doesn't have. But Puleo's side dish of wild rice was cooked so perfectly tender that it had the creamy texture and nutty taste of polenta.

The grill marks on the $14.99 Palermo Chicken imparted the sweet smoky taste of hickory wood fire. That sort of care and talent is evident all over the menu. The calamari appetizer was also enormous, big enough to be an entree. The fried crust was paper-thin so that the texture and tangy taste of the calamari came through true and clean. A light, savory tomato seafood sauce was there for dipping.

Rick had the $14.99 Chicken Piccata, a sautéed chicken breast topped with flavorful artichokes, capers and tomatoes simmered in wine sauce served over linguine, which he said had a fine al dente firmness. He was pleased to find the sauce was made with limoncello, the light yet intense liqueur made from Amalfi Coast lemons. He said it gave the pasta a refreshing summer-salad quality, with the sweet tomatoes balancing the tangy sauce. His one suggestion was to use less of the yummy sauce and place the rest on the side so the individual flavors of the ingredients popped.

THE SPACE

Puleo's Grille is very close to Exit 11 off I-75, but the road it is on, Artesian Circle, is not clearly marked at its Lee Highway intersection. Just look for a gray building emblazoned Kleen-A-Matic; Artesian runs right alongside it. It is within a short stroll of the Holiday Inn Express & Suites. There's ample parking, even at the busiest bit of the lunchtime rush.

By 11:30 a.m. on the day we visited, the place was filling up rapidly. But the space never felt cramped. Tables and booths are set far enough apart to maintain conversational privacy. There is also a bar, which was doing a brisk business by noontime. While waiting briefly to be seated at a table, another customer confided that the specialty margaritas and frozen drinks - including something called a Frozen Tiramisu (named after the creamy espresso-flavored Italian dessert) - were his favorite way to take the edge off an oppressive summer day.

The soothing interior design is minimalist chic, gray carpet with pistachio walls and what looks like faux exposed pipes along the ceiling to give the space a hipster, industrial warehouse ambiance. The waitstaff is in elegant all-black.

There are no white tablecloths to fret about. But the nice silver and heavy white china inscribed with the restaurant's name makes even a simple roll with olive oil and pesto into an elegant presentation.

The view is mostly of I-75, but the people-watching is fun and the crowd is friendly.

THE SERVICE

Despite the busy lunch rush, we were greeted warmly and seated promptly. Everyone seemed to have an ice-cold water at their tables even before the menus arrived.

Antonio was our helpful and charming server. He always noticed if the iced tea or bread plate needed replenishing without ever being intrusive. He was able to chat knowledgeably about the spices and preparation of the various dishes. His work meshed perfectly with the kitchen's - the appetizer, main dish and dessert arrived at exactly the right time and temperatures.

Given the location of the restaurant on a busy retail and office corridor, I'm guessing most of the customers were like me and needed to get back to work. Yet the servers and staff never made anyone feel hurried or unwelcome. And the check and receipt were both delivered promptly to the table within seconds of being requested.

THE VERDICT

Both of us want to go back partly because there are other dishes we want to try. We were both curious about the ravioli stuffed with lobster and gulf shrimp in a tomato basil cream sauce served over stone-ground cheese grits, which are similar in texture and taste to one of Rick's favorite polenta dishes.

I had promised to share a dessert with two desk-trapped colleagues, but the Chocolate Lasagna may end up feeding the newsroom. It contains no noodles, just two brownies divided by a layer of mascarpone and drizzled with honey and butterscotch liqueur. There was also a Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse Cake topped with Frangelico-infused whipped cream. Hazelnuts and Frangelico - now those are truly Italian. But a quick tally of our calories made it clear that would have to be a delight for another day.

Puleo's is the type of place that can easily become a favorite lunch spot for anyone whose work takes them onto I-75 fairly often. It's convenient, with a welcoming and efficient staff and a setting pretty enough to make it feel like a haven from a busy day but laid-back enough to relax even the most stressed-out among us.

Contact Lynda Edwards at 423-757-6391 or ledwards@timesfreepress.com.