We were back in the Iowa City area visiting relatives this summer and we decided to stop at a place in downtown Iowa City that we'd heard about, had driven by many times, but had never been to. For a late lunch, we decided to stop into Basta before we headed back home to the Quad Cities.
Basta is one of three restaurants that have been developed by Jack Piper and James Adrian. Those restaurants include the highly popular Jimmy Jack's Rib Shack and the (now-closed) Atlas. (Piper and Adrian sold Atlas in the summer of 2016. The new owners kept it going for 9 months before shutting it down and rebranding the restaurant as St. Burch Tavern.) Piper and Adrian were friends growing up in Burlington, IA and both went to school to school at the University of Iowa. After college, both went their separate ways to work in restaurants - Piper to Park City, Utah and Adrian to New Orleans. Piper worked at the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, while Adrian worked at the prestigious Commander's Palace in New Orleans.
Adrian and Piper ended up together working at a restaurant in Boulder, CO and longed to get back to Iowa to open a restaurant in Iowa City. They initially started Atlas in 2002 and then followed up with Jimmy Jack's Rib Shack in 2005.
While at Atlas, Adrian and Piper had a young chef working in the kitchen by the name of Brady McDonald. McDonald's brother was studying in Italy in 2004 and had visited his brother during that time. Brady McDonald was blown away by the Italian food that he ate and immediately became enthralled with all things Italian. In 2008, McDonald took a sabbatical from Atlas and went to Florence, Italy to work in a Michelin-starred restaurant for a year. He came back to Iowa City and convinced Adrian and Piper to open an Italian restaurant next door to Atlas. With McDonald as a partner in the venture, the trio opened Basta in 2011.
Basta is located on Iowa Street just down from the Old Capitol in Iowa City. (see map) We were able to find parking on the street since it was a Sunday in the summertime and it was the summer semester when a fraction of students are on campus. I was sort of surprised at the old world Italian feel that Basta exudes. The tiled floors couple with the tin ceiling panels between the dark wooden beams on the ceiling really classed up the place. There was patio seating in front of the restaurant, but it was sort of spitting rain out and we decided to sit inside.
The young lady who was the hostess that day tried to seat us in the bar area. The seating opposite the stately bar featured tables with banquet benches and metal chairs. I hate banquet seating and the metal chairs looked uncomfortable. I immediately asked to be seated elsewhere. She took us just over the wall from the banquet seating and pointed out a table. My wife asked if we could be seated in the upper level, three steps up from the main floor. The hostess - somewhat exasperated with us at that point - sat us at a table along the barrier from the lower level. I could tell she was somewhat pissed as she sort of threw the menus on the table in front of us.
Picking up the menu, I immediately saw that they were still on the brunch menu until 2:30 p.m. It was a bit after 2 when we had walked in. I looked over the brunch menu and found nothing that really jumped out at me. Our server that afternoon - a pleasant young lady by the name of Piper - came over to greet us. I told her that we really weren't interested that much in the brunch menu and wondered if she could bring us the dinner menu. Piper said that it would probably be a half-hour or so before we could order and I told her that wouldn't be a problem.
In the meantime, we got a couple drinks to while away the time. My wife got her normal cranberry and vodka - Grey Goose - (she has exquisite taste in vodka thanks to my younger sister), and I got a bloody mary and a Kona Big Wave. When Piper brought the drinks, my wife's cranberry and vodka was nearly clear. My wife immediately questioned this and Piper went to check. Turns out they use white cranberry juice at Basta. And she was fine with that after a taste.
I was thinking of something along the line of pasta, but it was tough to not notice the large steel-plated oven in the front back corner. A noticeable char from years of use blackened the front of the oven. The pizza was sure tempting, but so were the pasta dishes on the menu.
The spaghetti bolognese was the first thing that caught my eye on the pasta section of the menu. It featured a beef, pork and pancetta bolognese ragú over a bed of spaghetti noodles. The shrimp fettuccine and the grilled chicken alfredo also sounded pretty good.
My wife was having some trouble coming to grips with getting pasta. She thought about the roasted Atlantic salmon, but that really didn't trip her trigger. I noticed she kept looking at the pizza oven and I finally asked if a pizza would be good. She said, "If you want pasta, that's fine. But I'm starting to think about a pizza." I said that I could easily switch from pasta to pizza.
Piper came back and said that since it was close to the time that the changeover from brunch to dinner was going to take place, she could take our order early. I told her that we were thinking of getting a pizza and she said, "Oh, well, we do pizzas during brunch, so that's not a problem."
We ordered our usual sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza. My wife needed some greens, so she got the beet salad that came with arugula, gorgonzola and pistachio nuts. Since we were the only ones getting pizza at that time - and it cooks quickly in the wood-fired pizza oven - my wife had taken about two bites of her salad when the pizza was delivered to our table.
The pizza looked great, but it also looked like the pizza maker had added some additional toppings to it. It appeared there were basil leaves, cauliflower and artichoke hearts to the pizza. I was fine with all that as long as we didn't get charged for the extras (we didn't). And it wasn't bad, actually.
Overall, the pizza was very good. It had a thin-ish crust with a stout circle of thicker crust on the outside. It was laden with copious amounts of sausage, pepperoni, sliced mushrooms in a sweet and tangy tomato sauce with dollops of fresh mozzarella cheese on top of the concoction. I don't know if the pizza chef was confused or if he had added the other toppings by a mistake. But the added ingredients didn't detract from the flavors of the ones that we had originally order. In fact, my wife sort of enjoyed them. (Most recently, she has been keen on ordering vegetarian pizzas and having them put Italian sausage on them as an addition. Those kind of pizzas actually taste pretty good!)
We were both impressed with our initial visit to Basta and sort of surprised that we hadn't tried the place before this. While the hostess was sort of pissy with us, Piper was a wonderful server. The pizza was well above average in quality and flavor, and it looked like the selections of pasta were interesting enough to where we would have to come back at some point.
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