Fine Italian

I'm from New York, and am thus a snob about Italian/pizza, and am always on the lookout for places where you can feel the Italian love (typically mozzarella grease or olive oil) oozing from the food. I recently found Lucia in Wicker Park, which was BYOB and delicious. Antico Posto in Oak Brook was also surprisingly good, Va Pensiero in Evanston is great, and I've heard only good things about A Tavola in the Ukrainian Village.

If anybody has recommendations for a place to get a great Italian meal without breaking the bank, I'd love to hear. I know Harlem Ave. is known for its Italian restaurants, but that's all I know about it. I believe I've read about some good places on Oakley in Little Italy, but again have no specifics. I prefer smaller places, but if it's good I'd love to hear about it no matter what the size. Many thanks.

Lucia Ristorante
1825 W. North Ave. Entrance on Honore St.
773-292-9700

Antico Posto
Oakbrook Center Oak Brook, IL 60521 (630) 586-9200

Va Pensiero
1566 Oak Ave., Evanston, (847) 475-7779

A Tavola
2148 West Chicago Ave, Chicago, 60622 - (773) 276-7567

On Harlem: Agostino's

In the "Heart of Italy" (oakley): Bruna's and Bacchanalia

At about kostner and irving park: Sabatino's.

hope this helps,
ed


Agostino's Ristorante
(773) 745-6464
2817 N Harlem Ave
Chicago, IL 60634


Bruna's Ristorante
(773) 254-5550
2424 S Oakley Ave
Chicago, IL 60608

Bacchanalia
(773) 254-6555
2413 S Oakley Ave
Chicago, IL 60608


Sabatino's Restaurant & Lounge
(773) 283-8331
4441 West Irving Park Rd
Chicago, IL 60641

I haven't been to Lucia for a long time, but I would agree with your assessment. Lucia hasn't received much discussion here. Care to provide some more detail regarding what you like about it? I always liked the fact that you sneak past the kitchen, and are eating in a converted living room that still really looks like somebody's living room (granted, somebody who likes Mediterranean murals on his walls). That intimate feel, plus the quiet, friendly and competent service, were always highlights. And they served a very good carpaccio, and a squash or pumpkin filled ravioli in burned butter that was a decadent little delight, a perfect alchemy of sweet, salt, fat and starch.

The preceding list is strong. I once did a rundown of 30 or so red sauce Italians on the BLTH board, but it seems to have been stricken, damnatio memoriae, which is fitting. I'm a little suspicious of your definition of Italian love, but I think I know what you mean. Italian is vital in Chicago, more so than people realize. It's just not in an easy walk from tourist areas. Sort of like Polish, which is nearly invisible until you're in a neigborhood where English is a tertiary language.

For higher end Italian, Spiaggia, Caffe Spiaggia and Merlo are the oft cited choices. I have heard that Coco Pazzo, no longer chained to the NYC group, has had a rebirth. Its sister, Pili Pili is "Rivieran" or whatever, but Nice was in Liguria until last week.

I wonder, when was the last time someone visited the Chicago branch of the Milanese chain Bice?

JeffB wrote:I once did a rundown of 30 or so red sauce Italians

Jeff,

Is this the list?

Enjoy,
Gary

JeffB on 1/30/04

Bruna's
Sabatino's
Gennaro's
Damenzo's
Tufano's
Club Lago
Stefani's
Bertucci's Corner
Bacchanalia
Ignotz
Fontanella
RoSal's
Viaggio
Washington Gardens
Salerno's
Oggi
La Scarola
Sorrento's
Bombacino's
Francesco's
Calo
Orso's
Dave's

Sure is. And now I see it's a little weak. I mean, there are all sorts of Harlem Ave., Norwood Park, Berwyn, etc., etc. places missing. It was a start. Stefani's RIP.

...always on the lookout for places where you can feel the Italian love (typically mozzarella grease or olive oil) oozing from the food...

I'm not sure how this fits in with the notion of "fine Italian", which makes recommendations problematic, but like JeffB, I think I know what is meant... In any event, a list has been offered, on which I have a couple of comments:

If the Damenzo's listed there is the one on Tayler by Oakley, the trattoria side of things is no more, though the neighbouring pizza parlour continues to serve pies and subs and mostaccioli and attract its share of riff-raff to bucolic Tri-Taylor.

A place not included that perhaps should be (N.B. I haven't been there and mention it on the basis of hear-say) is Il Vicinato at Western and 24th or so.

Antonius

I'm not exactly sure about what you are looking for either but you might want to try:

Pizza D.O.C.
2251 W. Lawrence Ave.
773-784-8777

The pizzas really are good.

FROM METROMIX:
The initials in the name of this pizzeria stand for "Denominazione di Origine Controllata" -- that's the designation that appears on bottles of Italian wine, guaranteeing that it's the real thing. That's what you get when you order the authentic pizzas here. Popular pies include the margherita and the quattro stagioni -- all are baked in a wood-burning oven and served whole, Italian-style. There's also a pasta of the day made from scratch on premises and a selection of appetizers and salads.
Hours: 5 p.m. - 11 p.m. Monday through Friday; 12 p.m. - 11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

I was curious if anyone else had been to Coco Pazzo in the last few months?

It's one of the few places that the wife and I will return for fine dining, rather than trying someplace new. Always a great experience.....until two weeks ago. The service was downright horrible and the food was good, but not great and certainly didn't merit the cost. A lamb dish was so poorly prepared that it tasted as if it were beef in some generic brown sauce, ala second-rate neighborhood Chinese food.

Hopefully we just had a off-night. If not, I hope the Cafe is still going strong, because I don't think I'll be returning to the Hubbard St. location.


As a random aside, we went to North Pond the next night which was as good, if not better, than I had remembered.

None of these comments is up-to-the-minute, but I offer them FWIW:

The closest I ever felt to actually being in Italy, in Chicago, was Trattoria Roma in its early days. The first generation of staff and menu. It was even BYO, if I recall. However, I haven't heard anything about it slipping horribly, so perhaps it's worth investigating.

I think Vinci on Halsted also does some good things. Had 1-2 meals that were quite good, and attended a wedding reception (hors d'oeuvres) that was just OK. (Nature of the beast, I'd say.)

Also Bocca della Verita. Again, 1-2 very nice meals with excellent service.

Antico Posto: had a truly inedible meal there, followed by a civil letter of complaint to management, followed by no response of any kind.

I’m posting this here because I don’t feel that I can provide enough info to justify a new thread.
I visited Bice a couple of weeks ago and was not impressed. It felt like a tourist trap (may have been the location) and the service was way below average. The food was fine, no complaints, but not spectacular. Although our waiter looked the part, he didn't deliver. We barely saw him. I asked for a recommendation on a Super Tuscan and he sold me a bottle of something else (which was actually quite a bit less expensive) but it wasn't close to what I wanted (light bodied pretty lame).
Dinner came a bit too fast while we were still munching our calamari, but that didn't seem to matter to them, they cleared our small plates and moved on.
They only asked one of us if we wanted parmesan on our pasta. The bottle of wine went dry ¾ of the way through dinner, the waiter was talking to another table for 15 minutes or so. He never came to ask if our entrées were ok or if we needed anything. He strolled over a while after we had our dinner plates taken away and mumbled something about desert in his cute accent. Ironically my response to him was the exact place I got the recommendation for the restaurant:

Check Please!

JeffB wrote:I wonder, when was the last time someone visited the Chicago branch of the Milanese chain Bice?

MikeB wrote:I visited Bice a couple of weeks ago and was not impressed. It felt like a tourist trap (may have been the location) and the service was way below average. The food was fine, no complaints, but not spectacular.

Bice has suffered from service problems, off and on, since its very beginnings here. I can remember, shortly after it opened, an experience that a friend described as like being waited on by robots.

I thought it was at its best under the tenure of Chef Riccardo Michi (who is, by the way, the nephew of Beatrice "Bice" Ruggeri, who founded Bice in Milan in 1926), but he left last year to open his own place:

Riccardo Trattoria
773/549-0038
2119 N. Clark St.
Chicago

LAZ wrote:I thought it was at its best under the tenure of Chef Riccardo Michi (who is, by the way, the nephew of Beatrice "Bice" Ruggeri, who founded Bice in Milan in 1926), but he left last year to open his own place:

Riccardo Trattoria
773/549-0038
2119 N. Clark St.
Chicago

Is that the location that was Via Emilia? I thought VE was very good when it first opened; a couple of years later, the food and service had both fallen off a cliff. I don't know why that happened, but I bet the place would still be there and doing business if it hadn't. (But what do I know about running a restaurant? Maybe the food and service fell off a cliff because the place was going under financially. I don't know what was the chicken and what was the egg.)

In the spirit of Italian restaurants that aren't Spiaggia, I'll confine this review to the appropriately generically named thread "Fine Italian".

I stopped by Coco Pazzo this evening after work for a quick solo meal at the bar. The menu is brief, somewhat seasonal, and largely quite boring. No offal cuts and potatoes of some form come with all but one or two of the secondi The contorni station looked quite delicious but its offerings are clearly meant for sharing. Since I wanted to try a couple things (and because everything else seemed kind of blah) I tried a couple different pastas. I appreciate how they'll do appetizer portions (~2/3 the price) of their pastas, so I selected a gnocchi dish with mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes and a stracci dish with ramps, pea tendrils, asparagus, and truffle oil.

The pastas were fine and worlds above the usual Italian-American crap served across this great nation--forgive the venom but I really, really, really hate bad Italian-American food--but the cooking here lacks a certain preciseness and balance that makes great pasta. The gnocchi were too soft and heavy and were not browned in the pan, making the resulting dish somewhat bland in flavor and texture. The cremini and fleeting shitake mushrooms did little to overcome this. The stracci seemed to include scallions instead of ramps and strangely lacked salt and pepper. There was a lot of flavor from the truffle oil and variety of spring vegetables but the dish seemed, well, static-y, as if its true flavors couldn't quite come through.

My dessert however was a surprise highlight. A raspberry parfait was topped with a lemon (supposed Meyer, but I'm not so sure) custard. The dish was entirely successful, blending the unique tartnesses of the berries and citrus with just enough sweet, soft cake. I rather enjoyed it.

Not a bad spot but not somewhere I'd rush back to. Could be good for a business dinner, however, as it's the right blend of formal yet accessible.

The gnocchi were too soft and heavy and were not browned in the pan

I've had spaettzle or polenta browned in the pan but never gnocchi...???

I took the whole family to Coco Pazzo on Saturday night (figuring it would be a good place where all 10 people could find food that they like). The thing I like about it there is that you always know what you're going to get. You may not get home-runs, but sometimes doubles and triples work just as well.

For my appetizer I had the pappardelle with braised duck, which I thought was very very good (maybe a foot short of a HR). For my main course I got what I usually get there which is whatever whole roasted fish is on order. Saturday night it was branzino and it was as good as it usually is. Simply prepared and fresh, just what I was looking for.

The fiance had the stracci that BryanZ referenced in his post (I couldn't get The Godfather out of my head from the moment I saw stracci on the menu). I tasted it and really liked it. I thought the ramps looked like scallions too, but they were definitely ramps. I think depending on how they're cut, they can definitely be scallion-like in appearance. Anyway, I thought the dish was pretty well done and obviously appropriate given the season.

Bottom line...I think Coco Pazzo is a great option when you're looking for:

A. Not Spiaggia
B. Not red sauce Italian
C. A place that can accommodate numerous culinary tastes and preferences

For ten of us the total check was about $900 which included tax and 18% gratuity (charged by the restaurant for a party of 6 or more). With a couple bottles of wine with dinner as well as scattered cocktails I think this was very fairly priced.

Snark wrote:

The gnocchi were too soft and heavy and were not browned in the pan

I've had spaettzle or polenta browned in the pan but never gnocchi...???

Usually gnocchi dishes are sauteed briefly with their sauce and accompaniments. This lends some caramelization that I like. I'm not talking crispy, just lightly browned. This dish was nearly soupy.

Regarding the questionable ramps in the stracci, they may well have been but the dish was generally overpowered by garlic, so the subtlty of the ramps was somewhat lost.

Sometimes gnocchi are browned in a baking dish, but I'm not familiar with the practice of pan-browning them. That probably isn't going to happen when tossing them quickly with a sauce to finish the dish, inasmuch as it doesn't happen with pastas generally. But I like the idea of seperately pan-browning them before the finishing toss if they are of the heavy/dense variety. I wouldn't consider it for great gnocchi like that from Spiaggia. Pan browning in butter does wonders for Polish kopytka. BryanZ, they have great hand-made kopytka at Andy's deli on Division for a miniscule fraction of the cost of gnocchi at Coco Pazzo.

JeffB, always looking for alternative pastas.

Sorry that you didn't enjoy your meal as you had hoped Bryanz. I am a big fan of the Stracci at Coco Pazzo. I have ordered it at Coco Pazzo at least half a dozen times and have never been disappointed. Oddly, the things that I find make the dish so good - strong taste of truffle oil and crispy fresh vegetables - didn't seem to come together for you. I add a little pepper, but the saltiness of the shaved Parmesan is enough for my taste. It always makes me long for a pasta dish I had several times in Rome that consisted of past tossed in olive oil with Parmesan and shaved white truffles. Very simple, but magnificent.