Riverstone’s Vine & Olive adds sister restaurant nearby with Vicino Neapolitan Type Pizza | Foods Information | Spokane | The Pacific Northwest Inlander

Pizza has returned to Coeur d’Alene’s Riverstone complex in an unintended pandemic growth.

Vicino, which signifies “close by” in Italian, is the sister restaurant to Vine & Olive, also in Riverstone. Vine & Olive’s eating place was shut due to Idaho’s continue to be-property buy, states owner Naomi Boutz, who opened the restaurant in January 2018.

“I was over and above mentally drained,” says Boutz, who provides she had been open up to someday commencing a second restaurant, but not during a pandemic. She blanched when Vine & Olive govt chef Josh Pebbles instructed she search into the former Bullman’s Pizza locale.

But the seed, once planted, took root as Boutz researched the plan. Pizza has fared far better than most cafe concepts throughout the pandemic as takeout proceeds to achieve market place share, she understood. Riverstone will get very good foot targeted visitors, she posited, and Vicino’s could echo Vine & Olive’s soulful tactic, such as a stellar wine listing.

“When I located myself receiving up at 6 am to investigate probable names for the new restaurant, I knew it would be a go,” states Boutz.

Her ace-in-the-gap: Vine & Olive’s chef Pebbles, who at the time labored in Italy, as perfectly as in a bona fide Italian kitchen area stateside, where he realized “the relevance of the protein, hydration, ash levels and fermenting time to come up with a really excellent dough for Neapolita-type pizza,” he says.

The dough is the blank canvas for Pebbles’ creations, from the Margherita ($15) with San Marzano tomatoes to the Bianco ($16) with white sauce, Castelvetrano olives, potato and two cheeses to the Parma ($17) with prosciutto, mascarpone crème, arugula, balsamic reduction and pecorino. The Speck and Peach ($18) attributes dwelling-designed pork tummy, common in northeastern Italy, where Pebbles apprenticed at the Michelin-starred, 300-calendar year-previous cafe Hosteria Giusti.

Pebbles added a handful of appetizers, from his property-built meatballs ($9) and fried calamari ($11) to quite a few salads, like the radicchio with shaved celery, pears and candied nuts ($7/$12) and the Caesar created piquant with the addition of capers ($7/$11).

Sommelier Krista French created Vicino’s wine collection to pair very well with the food stuff, of program, but also to introduce diners to new producers and grapes, she claims. French concentrated on southern Italian wines, eventually representing all of Italy, from Sicily to Tuscany and Piedmont. She lately additional the rustic Aquila del Torre Refosco ($32/bottle), for instance, from an historic grape wide variety indigenous to Friuli, Italy.

“My hope is that our guests will discover wines that are intriguing and at the exact time is not going to break the lender,” suggests French, who ideas to insert Northwest wines featuring Italian grapes.

Stylistically, Vicino is yin to Vine & Olive’s yang, with a dazzling farmhouse really feel — white walls and ceilings accented by an older wooden ground and flat black seating — when compared with Vine & Olive’s grey and earth tones. On the partitions are assorted pizza peels, the outsized wood spatulas that make it possible for the pizza to be slid into and, additional importantly, retrieved from a scorching sizzling oven, as perfectly as pictures from Boutz’s travels in Italy. ♦

Vicino Neapolitan Model Pizza • 2385 N. Outdated Mill Loop, Coeur d’Alene • Open Solar-Thu 11 am-9 pm, Fri-Sat 11 am-10 pm • vicinopizza.com • 208-758-7997

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