West First Wood-Fired Pizza

Flavor: Grains in their finest guises
Ambiance: Like stepping into an Ikea catalog

There are no prerequisites for being one of my reviewing companions. (Conspiracy theories aside, I don’t seek out diners who bear blood grudges against Asheville restaurants or have lost their taste buds in a tragic accident.) I pretty much look for cheery, omnivorous folks who have the discretion of a high-class call girl and no obvious aversion to my telling them exactly what to order.

And, almost without exception, these partners-in-critique look for the bathroom. They usually sneak off while I’m taking my third painfully slow swallow of soup, trying to discern whether it’s nutmeg or mace I’m tasting; or staring at a plateful of roasted vegetables, committing its colors to memory. I rarely notice they’re gone till they return, proclaiming, “You have to see the bathroom.”

There is always good, basic information to be gleaned from a restaurant’s bathroom. As Anthony Bourdain writes in his news-you-can-use culinary exposé, Kitchen Confidential (HarperCollins, 2001), if an eatery can’t be trusted to keep its public bathroom clean, heaven knows what’s happening in the walk-in. But bathrooms have lately become the restaurant equivalent of a tattoo: The kitchen may have an off night, the hostess may call in sick, but the bathroom gives restaurants a chance to forever seal their identities in marble—or brass, ceramic tile or chrome. Asheville is home to a thesaurus-worthy array of restaurant bathrooms, with decors designed to convey every adjective from ascetic to zany.

The bathroom at West First Wood-Fired Pizza in Hendersonville isn’t especially exciting, by local standards, but my dining companions emerged with an Ancient Mariner-like compulsion to tell me about it. “Go,” they said. “Go now.” Apparently it was the hand dryer that had them all aflutter: West First is one of the first restaurants ‘round these parts to install an energy-efficient hand dryer so powerful it comes with a danger sign affixed to it. The stats on these roaring machines seem better suited for a military jet than a humble bathroom appliance (which may be why a flick of the dryer’s “on” button sends most users lunging for their air-traffic-control wands): Warm air rushes through them at hundreds of miles per hour, seemingly threatening to remove your skin along with any pesky water droplets. Timid types may want to pack a washcloth.

But even without the benefit of fancy, futuristic hygienic technology, West First would probably still be blowing its customers away. The brand-new venture from Flat Rock Village Bakery owner Scott Unfried and baker Dave Workman, formerly of City Bakery, is turning out some downright incredible pizzas, pastas and desserts. I first ate there the night sun set on Passover—and an associated eight-day abstention from all leavening—and its offerings outpaced even my delirious recollections of the deliciousness of chametz.

West First was literally built on bread, with the resounding success of the Flat Rock enterprise—a tiny bread-and-pizza bakery tucked into the back of a cutesy Flat Rock gift emporium that caters to parents of summer campers—providing the impetus for the restaurant’s creation. Appropriately, fresh bread is the first appetizer listed on West First’s well-edited menu. But there’s no way for anyone set on ordering a starter to avoid the crusty ciabatta: The dips and soup are served with near-Biblical portions of it (a nice, churchy echo of the gorgeous stained-glass windows that frame the airy dining room).

West First’s stellar bread is like the whole-grain version of MSG: It manages to enhance every dish. None of the trio of dipping sauces—tahini-heavy hummus, tapénade or roasted garlic cloves (which is really neither a dip nor a sauce, but looked lovely plated alongside the Mediterranean entries)—was a solo standout. But when the almighty bread was glossed with a thin veneer of all three elements, the dish became a terrific opening course.

The bread similarly transformed a lackluster minestrone into a robust tomato sauce, and single-handedly saved a goopy rendition of goat cheese, spinach and artichoke dip. Spinach-artichoke dip, which over the last few decades has become a pub-grub staple, is too often an exercise in thawing. West First’s attempt tasted admirably house-made, with large leaves of spinach woven through the creamy dip. It also matched nicely with the Brooklyn Pennant Ale, available on tap.

Our server became befuddled when we ordered a pitcher of the Pennant, first clarifying we’d have to order a draft beer—perhaps there are some snobs who like their bottled beer emptied into a pitcher so it can breathe, but none of them were at my table that evening. Reminded it was indeed a draft beer we were after, she scurried off to the handsome, curved bar to inquire whether such a thing was available.

It wasn’t. And while it’s not unusual to encounter service mistakes at a restaurant gearing up to celebrate its two-month anniversary, service at West First consistently struck a wrong note. Our server—who was presumably among the best the front-of-the-house had to offer, since she was training a new recruit—was very enthusiastic about the menu, but repeatedly made basic errors like not broaching entrée selection until long after our appetizer plates had been cleared, always serving the men first, and announcing their cappuccino maker couldn’t make lattes. (When we ventured that it probably could, she gushed, “You’re so worldly!”)

But West First is one of those places where it seems petty to focus on the service. Focus instead on the salads: The menu offers a choice of a perfectly dressed house salad dotted with sun-dried cherries and an olive-rich Caesar. Or move on to the pizzas, all of which feature a rich crust of wheat.

There’s an economy of ingredients at work at West First: The tapénade makes a quick costume change for the puttanesca pizza, and the goat-cheese pizza would likely seem redundant to anyone who began their meal with the goat-cheese dip. But with 10 beautifully composed pies from which to choose—from a gorgonzola-basted potato to a prosciutto-and-arugula pairing—there’s surely something on the menu that should work for you.

West First has a tendency to mute its boldest ingredients: The flavors of strong cheeses and olives strangely recede aboard their pizzas. But there’s satisfaction to be found in subtlety, and all of the pizzas we sampled were spot-on successes.

Still, nothing—nothing—matched the perfection of the handmade pasta. The ribbons of papparadelle don’t need to be swaddled in roasted red-pepper sauce—and surely there’s no call for the garnish of corn niblets; the pastas are fresh and fantastic.

West First offers a short dessert menu, including a forgettable cheesecake and a delectable ice-cream sandwich featuring high-quality vanilla ice cream and thick wedges of dense, chocolately brownies. Perhaps it’s no wonder that the world’s most amazing hand dryer (at least according to my guests) would emerge here first: This is a restaurant obsessed with heating and baking, and with doing it spectacularly well.