Is there any location in St. Louis where an Italian restaurant can’t sprout? Riccardo’s on Broadway pushes the limits of the possible nearly to the Mississippi River. A sequel to Ricardo’s Italian Cafe, which closed in 2015 after 26 years in Lafayette Square, the new Riccardo’s opened last July in the industrial Near North Riverfront neighborhood north of downtown.

When you park in the lot behind the restaurant’s building, you will double-check that you haven’t mistakenly abandoned your car in a scrapyard. You can’t see the river from this lot, but the thrum of traffic on Interstate 70 and the occasional rumble of a passing freight train approximates its turbid flow.