Macello on Lake Street

Has anyone been or heard anything about the new Italian restaurant Macello on Lake Street? They were supposed to open last week.

In summary: cool looking place without the food to match.

I went by last night for dinner with my wife. I had read some reviews on other sites and it seemed to have promise. The food is Pugliese, and while I've spent several months in Italy, I haven't been to Puglia, so I can't comment on authenticity.

The place is cool, it looks like you are walking into a dark, closed deli from outside, but behind the curtain is a huge, open room. Macello = slaughterhouse in Italian, and this building was once one, so there are hooks on the ceiling, etc. There are cool painted light globes hanging throughout the room and it has some of the feel of an Enoteca, with wine lining the walls. There's a gorgeous wood burning oven in the middle which lets the perfect amount of smoke into the room (just enough that you can smell it, but it's not bothersome).

We started with a Margherita pizza and then I had a Linguine with mixed seafood while Mrs. Oopy had a Trofiette with shrimp. The pizza looked great, but it just wasn't right. It was roman style (to my eye): very thin, virtually no crust around the edge, charred, but not too overdone. The crust was okay, had a good texture, but no flavor. The sauce was just weird, didn't even taste very tomatoey. The cheese was okay and well-proportioned. Overall, a disappointing pizza, especially relative to its appearance.

My linguine was very good, excellent pasta, just the right amount of spice and flavorful grape tomatoes. The seafood was very good for the price ($18 for the entree), but not high-end (some sand in the scallops, clams were so-so). The Trochiette was only okay, not much flavor in the pasta, the shrimp were nothing special and the sauce didn't do much.

I also had a glass of Locorotondo, a new wine for me, and quite good.

Service-wise, very disappointing. They had too many specials and a short menu, hard to keep track, though I did appreciate the prices being read with them (since entrees on them menu varied from ~12 to ~44). The waiter was fine, though. The issue was the buspersons. Our bread plates disappeared before our first course arrived and they seemed to hovering, ready to take away our plates as soon as we took our last bite.

Overall, we just didn't love the food or service, and with Follia (http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=466) down the street, I can't go back. Also, this may be a cool space, but the people watching at Follia is much better.

I dined at Macello the other night and I have to say I agree with the above poster. It was nice, but I am not overwhelmed to go back.

On the plus side the room is very cool. The barrel ceiling and decor is nice and the rustic wood tables have mismatched chairs. The pizza maker is stationed in the middle of the room so you can watch them make your pizza and tend to the brick oven. The room wasn't very noisy despite the high ceilings, but you could hear the train clattering by when it passed.

The menu was short with several pastas to chose as well as some meat options with sides ordered separately. The server also gave us several specials. We started with a pizza which was a little disappointing. The crust was nice and crisp and there was the right amount of cheese, but the toppings were cold under the cheese.

For the main course I had the shrimp pasta. The short twisted pasta was cooked perfectly, but it was in serious need of a little more sauce or more flavor for the existing sauce. I put on quite a bit of salt and pepper and cheese to impart some flavor in the dish. My companion tried the seafood pasta. The seafood was plentiful and the pasta was cooked well, but again the sauce was a little lacking.

We didn't try dessert, but that included the usual suspects of gelato, sorbet and tiramisu.

Service was okay, but a little confusing. We had one person take care of us at the beginning and then another person showed up to finish. Not quite sure what happened. We had some of our plates disappear as well. They brought us a bowl to put our seafood shells in, but then took it away before we were done so our remaining shells ended up on our bread plate. Our server also kept on spilling our wine when he poured it.

Macello
1235 W Lake St
Chicago

I had dinner here last night ( quite a food day for me after the loop lunch), and after reading this thread I see not much has changed since the fire. The room is exactly as described and the pizza not changed at all. It is a real shame because the wood fired oven is gorgeous. We had to ask for more than the sprig of basil they put on the wafer thin margherita. It needed cooked a little longer. The crust just isn't right. The taste was good though, the sauce and the cheese were well balanced. We also had a stuffed artichoke that was stuffed with parm and bread crumbs and cooked in the wood oven. It was delicious and probably the best bite of food we had, a piece of lemon would have put this over the top. I had a twisted pasta that was slightly over cooked with Pomodoro, swiss chard(they were out of the noted arugula) and burrata. This was okay. Al dente and some red pepper flakes, may have given this some more flavor. Jman had the lamb casserole and he said it satisfied his lamb need. He's not a big risotto eater, so that kind of took a bit of the dish away from him. For dessert we had the mini cannoli, but the star of the plate was the ice cream. OMG it was kind of indescribable because I have never had anything like it before . It was buttery, vanilla, honey, I don't know what else, but the waiter said it's a Puglian specialty. It was delicious. We fought spoons over it. All washed down with two bottles of Rocco dei Morri, a double espresso, and a sambuca.

So, all in all it was a very affordable meal. $124 for two. The waiter and the service was exceptional. They are having a grand opening party on Jan 28, and everyone is invited the owners said. We met all three while we were there. I don't know that this is a destination place, but it felt homey and the owners were very nice and genuinely wanted to know how we felt about everything. It's an easy bus ride out of the loop, so I think we'll return. The waiter raved about the filet and said it was the best thing on the menu. Too bad we got that info after we already ordered. They are on open table, so resos are very easy.

My latest kick is eating lots and lots of Neapolitan-style pizza...I love spacca, new-guy-in-town Forno Rosso, and the other usual suspects in this category are all great, but I still love to try new places in the name of research....so, I dined at Macello after a reading an (old) Dolinsky review claiming it was top 5 in the city for Neapolitan pies.

Upon arriving, I had super high hopes. The space, as others have noted, is absolutely gorgeous!

Old vintage detail on the bow-truss ceiling, cooler-flap entry door, great lighting/decor - and my, oh my, their pizza oven is gorgeous - full of character and clearly custom built by a mason - not off an assembly line...



We ordered a few appetizers, and a pizza to share.
1st - Barese Sausage - with bietole e fava beans - cooked in their wood burning oven.
Looked nice upon arrival, and I liked the idea of the soft flavors of the fava bean being countered by a punchy/well seasoned sausage - except the sausage had no flavor, which ruined the dish.

Our other appetizer was Carciofi Ripieni | stuffed artichoke. A few bites of this were good - some strong parmesan cheese/garlic bites were definitely tasty.

On to the pizza, the reason we came:
We ordered a Pizza Bianca - fresh cherry tomato, mozzarella, E.V.O.O, basil, & arugula

The pie looked fine,( the arugula was quite excessive - perhaps by design), but this was different than most other "Bianca" pizzas I have had, with the use of cherry tomatoes (thus no longer being "bianca", no?) and the excessive amount of arugula on top of the pie. I also noticed that
a) it was pre-sliced
b) no char on the underside of the crust (bubbled/charred on top, just not underneath)
c) the center of the pie was quite firm - not soggy/soft as is tradition with these pies
This pizza had more of a cracker-crust feel than Neopolitan (not sure if this was a problem with the way they are cooking it, or the crust dough itself). I did hear the manager/head server tell some kids that the pizza oven was piping hot - about 550 degrees (which is a bit low for this style of pizza). This made any charring simply hard/crispy rather than chewy with that toasted flavor that I love so much in these fast-fired pies. Toppings were fine, average restaurant depot quality ingredients.

To sum it up:
I would bring a group back here for a fun lively wine-soaked night out. They have a menu full of other italian dishes (meat/cheese/pasta) that seem hard to mess up. I wouldn't order the pizza again (or the other apps we had), but would try other dishes now knowing the ingredients aren't top-quality. The room is large, well-designed, and comfy. The pizza oven in the center of the space is just awesome, however - the quality of the food didn't live up to the expectations set by the decor.

Next up - probably today for late-lunch " Elio Pizza On Fire in Addison

PS - I did take some delicious house-made cannoli to-go that I happily munched on while driving home (and the cappuccino they made us to go were great too).