An Italian restaurant finds a welcome second home in Midvale

This article is excerpted from the Utah Eats newsletter, compiled by Kolbie Peterson, The Salt Lake Tribune’s food and drink reporter. To get the full newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday, become a subscriber by going to sltrib.com/newsletters.

Hello, Eaters!

Craving some Italian food, I visited Midvale last week to check out the new location of Napoli’s Italian Restaurant, at 7640 Union Park Avenue.

Now, I haven’t visited the Napoli’s in South Ogden, at 4015 Riverdale Road, so I can’t compare the two locations. But I thought the Midvale eatery had come together really well in the one month it’s been open.

The interior was beautiful without being “too much,” with curved leather booths, horizontal paddle fans on the ceiling, lovely lighting shaped almost like clusters of grapes, and photography and art on the walls.

To begin our meal, my dining companion and I ordered the burrata caprese (more on that below).

For my main course, I ordered the pesto Genovese ($25, pictured above), which is made with casarecce pasta, grilled chicken, diced tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes and pesto cream sauce, and topped with feta cheese.

This pasta dish was out of this world, with perfectly bite-sized pieces of tender chicken, light acidity from the tomatoes, and bursts of flavor from the pesto and feta. Loved it! It was so creamy and rich, I ate half and took the rest home for a tasty lunch.

This is a part of the valley I don’t visit very often, and Napoli’s was well worth the trip.

Live deliciously,

Kolbie

Dish of the Week

For this Dish of the Week, I couldn’t not pick the burrata caprese from Napoli’s Italian Restaurant. This little appetizer packed a wallop, flavor-wise, and I enjoyed tasting how all the different ingredients worked together. Drizzled with balsamic, the burrata alone was so fresh, and so tender and beautiful in its texture, that my dining companion said it was like a savory dessert, and I had to agree with him.

Plus, getting to take bites of the burrata with a bit of cherry tomato and pesto, then going back for more bites of burrata with a bit of kalamata olive, was just sensory heaven. We might as well have been eating dessert.

Food News

Openings:

• The Bout Time Pub ‘n’ Grub in The Gateway, at 169 S. Rio Grande St. (upstairs, next to the Megaplex Theatres), has rebranded itself as The Bruce Scottish Pub — with a grand opening set for Thursday at 4 p.m. It features traditional pub fare and favorite dishes from Scotland. Hours are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily.

• Houston TX Hot Chicken is celebrating the grand opening of its new location in Murray at 6161 State St. (in the Fashion Place mall parking lot) on Saturday, noon to 3 p.m., according to a news release. Complimentary original hot chicken sandwiches will be given out to the first 200 people, and there will also be a $1,000 “Houston, We Have a Problem” spice challenge contest (with waivers required), a $500 food challenge, and an exotic car meet, the release said.

• Mamachari Kombucha, a kombucha brewer based in Salt Lake City, has opened a new taproom styled like a Japanese tea house at 333 W. Hope Ave. (1400 South), just off 300 West. Owner Amy Stott, who’s of Japanese descent, told me they have kombucha, water kefir, sparkling water (a new product that just launched), kombucha smoothies and local products available in a “cute sit-down space.” There’s also free tasting available.

• Pearl Milk Tea Club has opened a new location in The Gateway, at 152 S. Rio Grande St., Salt Lake City. Pearl serves a variety of boba teas and smoothies. The Gateway spot joins the chain’s two locations in Ogden.