Coppa Osteria and Brooklyn Athletic Club Reviewed

The Houston Press' Kaitlin Steinberg reviews Coppa Osteria, the latest restaurant at Rice Village's mixed-use complex Hanover. Steinberg says that the kitchen still has a few kinks to work out, but she compliments the dishes and chef Brandi Key's menu and hospitality. "In spite of minor slip-ups in the preparation, the food at the osteria is the end product of Key's inventive takes on Italian cuisine, which elevate often-commonplace dishes like meat-lover's pizza to the carnissima — arguably the best combination of meat, cheese and dough in the history of those ingredients. Hopefully Key will start serving the pizza with scamorza cheese already on it, but for now you have to order the cheese as an extra topping, and I highly recommend that you do so." [Houston Press]

The Houston Chronicle's Alison Cook dishes on New American spot Brooklyn Athletic Club, praising the salads, fried pickles and gnocchi but lamenting the desserts and highly touted burger. Cook writes: "Like Eleven XI, the not-dissimilar New American spot I reviewed last week, Brooklyn Athletic Club is a strong one-star restaurant with the potential for two stars. Perhaps it is a little closer to realizing that potential, if only because the menu is so much more focused than that of Eleven XI. But both places give diners creditable versions of familiar standards in slightly modernized dress." [Houston Chronicle]

Coppa Osteria [Gary Wise/ Flickr]