To celebrate the completion of my first year of law school, my wife and I decided to go out to eat. I wanted to eat somewhere on The Hill, which is St. Louis’s version of Little Italy. We have a place we normally go, but I wanted to try some place different. After looking online to find a place, we decided to dine at Zia’s.

Upon first entering, I had high hopes. When you walk into the restaurant, you immediately go up a few steps into the bar area. The room looks great and it has plenty of seating. The tables are nothing to write home about, but they look decent enough. Beyond the bar, the rest of the restaurant was confusing in its decor. Some of the features made it seem as though the restaurant was going for upscale. The wood finishing was beautiful but the combination of gray paint and the dim lighting made the wood disappear. Also, the 1-inch ceramic tile and the slatted closet doors made it appear that the restaurant was going for a diner look. For aesthetics, Zia’s was definitely lacking a cohesive style.

Immediately, we ordered an appetizer of calimari and a long island iced tea. The calimari lacked flavor. Some lemon juice would have helped. It was plated with two lemon wedges, but this was not enough to bring out the flavor in the ample portion. Overall, the appetizer was average, as was the drink, which lacked strength and had too much sour mix.

Next, we had the basic dinner salad. This was the best part of the evening. The house dressing was extremely good. An oil-based dressing, combined with some fresh red peppers and plenty of cheese, made the salad extremely flavorful.

Unfortunately, the salad did not make up for the extreme lack of quality in the entree. You would think an Italian restaurant would at least know how to make a good cream-and-butter based sauce. This was not the case. The sauce tasted like it came out of a jar. Further, the seafood included a few small pieces of shrimp (which were adequate - nothing great or terrible)…and imitation crabmeat. No restaurant should ever serve imitation crabmeat in a pasta dish.

Overall, I give Zia’s two stars. They get one star for the salad and one star for decent service.