Run of the Green Mill

In 1957, my parents became engaged over spaghetti and meatballs at an Indianapolis joint called the Milano Inn. When they told the story, which was typically unromantic — my father grabbed my mother’s hand under the table, shoved a diamond ring on her finger and said, “Well, that’s over with. Let’s eat” — they remembered that they drank Chianti and, oh yes, there was a pizza on the table. Pizza was considered a side dish then, like garlic toast or an extra meatball. And cheap, too. Why not? It wasn’t anything special: a thin flatbread crust spread with tomato sauce and sprinkled with a handful of grated hard cheese.

A decade later, when national franchise operations like Pizza Hut were turning the lowly Neapolitan flatbread into a complete dinner that could be delivered hot and gooey with melted mozzarella, my father shrugged in amazement and said, “Who would have thought pizza could become big business?”

Not just big business, but one that turned a peasant dish into something with more incarnations than Madonna: thin crust, deep dish, stuffed, grilled, rolled, on-a-stick, New York-style or Chicago-style or the obscenely greasy squares that became a staple of American high school cafeterias.

I was recently in Rome, where I saw pizza (and Diet Coke, Marlboro cigarettes and Snickers bars) everywhere. At one neighborhood pizzeria, behind a glass counter, a dozen or so pizza choices were topped with ingredients as varied as julienned potatoes and ham or ground sausage and canned pineapple or fresh tomato, mozzarella and basil or hunks of roasted squash. I found them to be no better or worse than anything I’ve tasted in any American food court.

But pizza, I’ve learned, is just pizza, whether it’s on Rome’s Quattro Cantoni or Overland Park’s Reeder Road. Sure, things have grown more complex since the basic cheese pizza my parents ate 44 years ago, but have they really gotten better?

I wondered about that after sampling the “award-winning” pies at the four-month-old Green Mill Restaurant and Bar in the Holiday Inn off 87th Street and I-35. It’s the newest installment for a Minneapolis-based chain, and at first glance the place wouldn’t seem to have much going for it. Visually it’s absolutely dreary. Despite the tiled floor near the smoky bar and the reproductions of vintage French advertising posters hung on the walls, it looks like any suburban hotel dining room. The menu, however, is more elaborate than a typical hotel restaurant’s, with pizza as its claim to fame. Green Mill’s kitchen hand-tosses pies in deep-dish, thin-crust or double-crust versions and loads them up with lots of cheese. (There’s a decent selection of pasta dishes, steaks, fish dinners, burgers and salads as well.)

I first learned of the restaurant from a reader’s letter extolling the pizza as the best she had ever eaten. I was especially intrigued because the restaurant’s name — The Green Mill — hardly evoked images of Italian cuisine. But the name predates the menu: The original Green Mill Inn started as a Depression-era soda fountain in St. Paul, Minnesota; pizza didn’t bow on the menu until years later.

So I dragged along the fussiest pizza critics I know, my two goddaughters — ages nine and twelve — who are passionate about the dish. We were escorted from the hotel entrance through the bar into a dining room with only one other occupied table. The girls got kiddie menus (the placemat-as-coloring-book variety) and three crayons each, and our host handed me the vinyl-covered adult version. A few minutes later the grim-faced young server made the first of her brief, erratic appearances to take our order. After that she was practically a phantom, materializing only to deliver plates of food. If we asked for anything (a straw, for example), she simply vanished until we finally stopped waiting for whatever it was we had requested. (Even getting a check proved to be an ordeal.)

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Since the “Build Your Own Stuffed Pizza” required thirty minutes of cooking time, I ordered an appetizer. But the Alamo Nachos proved to be as dreary as the room itself. The heap of red, blue and golden corn chips seemed inconvenienced by a spartan amount of melted cheese, little cubes of barbecued chicken and, at the pinnacle, a scoop of “freshly made guacamole” in an unappetizing shade of umber.

“It’s turning brown,” sniffed Alexandra, who refused to sample even a plain chip from the pile.

Our salads turned out to be a better deal: The half-order of the Caesar was huge, and the house salad, dusted with sunflower seeds, came drenched with dressing — just the way a nine-year-old likes it.

When our wayward waitress made one of her rare appearances to deliver our pizza, the atmosphere improved dramatically. The stuffed pizza was extraordinarily beautiful, with a golden, flaky crust as intricate as a wicker basket, pepperoni and sausage neatly tucked inside like the contents of a gift package. Inside the croissantlike crust was lots of cheese — but no sauce. That came on the side, in a white bowl filled with a fragrant, herb-flecked tomato “dipping sauce” that tasted remarkably fresh and hearty. The kids and I loved the pie.

Next time, however, I took two grown-ups. Connie, Greg and I had a completely different experience, thanks to a savvy veteran server, Danny, who took control of our evening like a cruise ship’s social director. Friendly, witty and attentive, he was hip to the wine list (which is limited to a dozen or so vintages, but all from respectable vineyards). His suggestions on menu choices weren’t as neatly on the mark, however, and Connie was glad she’d ordered a glass of Hess Chardonnay to sip with the appetizer that Danny had extolled: a crab and artichoke concoction baked in a garlic cream sauce and, unfortunately, enough crispy breadcrumbs to stuff a turkey. Topped with a rubbery mesh of melted cheese, it was so difficult to eat that we finally gave up on it.

Dinner choices were much more pleasant. Greg was impressed with the Pasta Pavarotti, a dish of penne noodles, sun-dried tomatoes and thick chunks of chicken in a rich cream sauce. (If I had sampled more than a few bites, I’d be as fat as Pavarotti.) Connie, always the rebel, ordered a cheeseburger — which was nearly as big as a pizza. She turned more of her attention to the DiCapra Pizza’s thin, crackery crust topped with goat cheese, mozzarella, parmesan and juicy spears of steamed asparagus.

Mesmerized by that pizza myself, I kept snagging pieces of it between bites of my grilled sirloin, which had been brushed with a Jim Beam marinade and heaped with grilled onions. Unlike the flavorless, soggy “medley” of baby carrots and broccoli and the undercooked but garlicky baby potatoes, the DiCapra Pizza made an excellent side — one my parents might have appreciated.

The Green Mill’s showiest dessert is also its most peculiar: an “Inside-Out” sundae with the outside of the glass dipped in hot fudge. It’s visually absurd and completely lacking culinary value. Inside the glass, vanilla ice cream is stuffed with defrosted strawberries, whipped cream and nuts, a dopey concept that goes to show looks aren’t everything, even when they should be. But I suppose it doesn’t matter at a restaurant where the pizza is more attractive than the décor.