Louie (on DeMun) 1-25-25

I would give this place a 4/5 stars. 

Just north of St. Elizabeth's hospital on DeMun nearWashington University looks like an area that would be restaurants and bars full of college kids.  But Louie is not frequented by college students.  It is full of upper class white people.  

The parking stinks in the area.  We drove around for a bit and happened to snag a spot on the street but had to park on 4" of ice left over from a storm 3 weeks ago.  

The restaurant is long and narrow.  It was overly warm in there, dark and difficult to read the menu, and quite loud and hard to hear. (Wow, don't I sound like an old person!)

One of the waiters (a big guy with a man bun) seems to be a favortie of many of the people who come here often.  He is greeted with big hugs.  He was our waiter.  He was fine but I didn't feel the need to hug him, LOL.  

We started with a cocktail and were given some foccia bread and olive oil.  It was OK.  The bread was cold and almost too tall.  The spices (a lot of pepper and oregano) on top of the bread were nice.  

Mike decided he wanted to try several things off of the menu, so he told the waiter, we were going to order more food than we could eat and take all the leftovers home.  Of course the waiter was happy.  We each had glass of their house cabernet which was Caburnio from Italy.  It was pretty good for $13 a glass. 

So, we each ordered an appetizer.  Mike ordered a margherita pizza and I ordered the grilled octopus.  I think Mike's order ended up being better.  The pizza was good.  The octopus was good, but it was only a couple of pieces of actual octopus and a lot of chick peas and fried potatoes.  Because it was so dark in there, I didn't discover the potatoes until I cut into them.  I thought they were octopus.  

For dinner Mike got the papardelle bolognese.  It was good, but I do think almost $30 is a bit steep for a rather small pasta dish.  

I got the chitarra with tomato basil sauce.  I'm not a huge basil fan, so it was good the basil was in large leaf form and I could just pick it out.  The pasta was like really fat buccatini or spaghetti.  It was just a little al dente and it was good.  

For dessert we split the carmelized honey ice cream sandwich.  I don't know what was in the actual cookie part but I tasted the honey and something fruity, like orange.  It was good and just the right amount for us to split. The cruchy bits sround the outside were some sort of homemade frosted cereal.  They were a yummy addition.