Il Fiasco

A fiasco, it’s not. It is neither an English-language fiasco nor did we see any evidence of the Italian-language one (the classic straw-covered wine bottle), though it’s named after the latter and clearly emulates that feel.

We went on Saturday, the second night of its existence. (Who opens on Friday the 13th? Ya gotta love their chutzpah—note to self, ask Antonius what the Italian word for chutzpah is.) The room (previously Rioja, previously Atlantique) has not been substantially modified and would benefit (as would have the previous incarnations) from a little sound absorbing material. Tile floor, exposed brick or largely unadorned wood walls...everything reflects sound. It wasn’t particularly hard to hear but a quieter room would be welcome and need not be a completely quiet room. The new owners did have the sense to take out a number of two-tops in a very busy area that has improved the look and traffic flow enormously—no doubt at the cost of some real income. Still, it’s a distinct and genuinely positive improvement.

The good news, somewhat surprisingly, is the food. The bad news, somewhat predictably, is everything else. We walked in about 6 pm to a restaurant about one-quarter full. We were immediately shown to a comfortable booth in the front room across from the large bar. I was surprised not to be taken to the larger dining room and can’t quite understand why we were put where we were. We were too far from the front windows to be seen as happy customers and the bar was distinctly the more crowded and louder of the two rooms. In retrospect, it would have been nice to have been seated in the dining room, particular since the bar now features two very large LCD screens hung high on the brick walls. We were treated to a video of a Natalie Merchant concert followed by a Tony Bennett concert. The Merchant video was loud; the Bennett show, more in keeping with the ostensibly Italian theme, was inexplicably turned up, then down, then up, then down, then up....

There were no daily specials; to our surprise, the menu is printed on one side of the paper placemat and the wine/drinks list on the other. Nice paper but I felt liked we’d stumbled into a different kind of place. The menu features a well-thought-out selection of items leaning largely, though not exclusively, to Italian. Seven salads ($4 or $6) and eleven starters (mostly $6-$9). (I should note that the menu lists a website but that it is not up and running. Pastas are mostly $10 as are the Neapolitan 12” thin-crusts. The “specialties”—there are about nine of them—are mostly in the $15-$17 range (the high end being a NY strip with green peppercorns and madeira for $24). Five sides and six desserts; more on both to come. First pleasant surprise—everything is very reasonably priced.

The wine list is adequate (about 15 bottles each of red and white), eclectic, and mostly quite reasonable. (For some inexplicable reason, the “Full intensity reds” are all over $60/bottle with one exception.) The list helpfully breaks the wines into different “styles” and lists a very few available by the quartino (about two-and-a-half glasses), something we recently ran into at Anteprima, just up the street. There is a smallish bottled beer selection with some more offbeat choices (Liefman’s Kriekbier and Peot’s Stout) and half a dozen on tap (from Peroni to De Konick and Blanche de Bruxelles) at $4-$5. Nice to see Limonata and Aranciata available.

I decided to order an app. I felt like the figs with prosciutto, mascarpone and honey but figured that would tell me little about the kitchen. So I opted for a gorgonzola/spinach souffle with poached pears. In a word, scrumptious. The small souffle was warm and perfectly balanced, sitting a bed of slightly bitter greens. Around the circumference of the plate, beautifully poached, spicy pears with a touch of honey. Unctuous. LDC concurred, although I was too jealous to offer her more than a couple of tastes.

The Lovely Dining Companion skipped the apps and went right to dinner, ordering a pizza (grilled field mushrooms with mozzarella and arugula). She also asked for a side of asparagus (grilled with a lemon/herb vinaigrette). Our server confirmed that she wanted the side, not the asparagus app, but then proceeded to serve her side at the same time he delivered my app. Odd. For the record, the asparagus was lovely. I’d love to be able to report the herbs in the vinaigrette because it was off the beaten track, but I couldn’t quite place them; although I didn’t really get the lemon, the vinaigrette was quite nice. Moreover, though assertive, we both thought it worked very nicely with the asparagus, not overwhelming it as I had feared it might.

LDC’s review of the pizza was spot-on. “Well...it isn’t Spacca Napoli.” No, it’s not. It was a nice pizza with not much mozzarella and the largest, hugest arugula leaves I’ve ever seen in my life. Nicely cooked and very tasty.... Just not Spacca Napoli. Still, for $10, very reasonable. I ordered a “crispy” duck confit and it came with the specified poached plums and sauteed green beans. The confit had been reshaped and stuffed back into the skin of the leg, so I was a little concerned at first. But I pulled it apart to find it luscious, crispy, and bursting with flavor. Occasional nuggets of fat remained but the duck was juicy without being oily. An absolutely lovely dish and, for a mere $15, worth repeating soon.

This is probably as good as place an any to note that the specialties run the gamut without more than the occasional nod to Italia. There’s a sea bass with salsa verde, grilled salmon with baby beets, pork tenderloin with honey/mustard glaze, and intriguing lamb chops with a pea puree and mint vinaigrette. Scallops with lentils and a couple chicken breast preps round out the list. We ended up without tasting any pastas, whose preps are mostly expectable. A couple unique ones do merit attention and possibly even ordering on a subsequent visit: jalapeno gnocchi (with asparagus, peas, and roasted red pepper puree) and an artichoke and spinach ravioli. The others pizzas, for the record, include traditional expected ones as well as speck with gorgonzola; wilted spinach with tomato, ham, and “free range egg”; and tuna, red onions, and tomato.

Desserts were varied. I chose the panna cotta with rhubarb compote. One doesn’t often see rhubarb on the menu and that was enough to hook me. The panna cotta, a trifle short of the right firmness, seemed to be a lemon/vanilla—the menu didn’t specify. The rhubarb was beautifully cooked, just the right level of sour. LDC opted for fresh berries with cream and meringue. The only unusual dessert is a steamed hot chocolate pudding.

I dinged the service at the top of this review. I should say a few words. I already noted that we were seated across from the bar when the dining room was largely empty. The bread was presented quickly with a dish of olive oil and parmesan. The bread would have been fine had they not sliced it hours earlier and let it dry out. It was fresh that day but clearly dried out on the surface. It would also have been nice if someone had noticed about thirty minutes before someone finally did, that we were out of bread and oil and parmesan. Water was kept filled but the empty bread and oil dishes were ignored. The waiter cleared my app dish but inexplicably left LDC’s completely empty dish sitting there, despite three visits back to the table. On the third visit, I handed it to him and received not even a sheepish grin in return (much less an apology). The waiter was personable but perfunctory. No enthusiasm for the place, the food, or much of anything else. No warmth, no particular interest in anything other than getting the order in and the food served. Delivered the desserts and, not a minute later, the bill. Didn’t ask if we wanted coffee or anything else.

Friends of the owners (we assume) abounded—at the bar, at the tables, in the open spaces. And the owners reciprocated by spending their time, almost exclusively, chatting with their friends. We had one two-sentence visit and were never visited again—not even by the owner who spent our entire meal there chatting with one pair of friends at the bar, not ten feet away. Not entirely a surprise on night number two, I guess, but we often felt like we had intruded on a private party. We liked the place quite a bit—at least for the food. LDC hit the nail on the head, I think. Il Fiasco doesn’t have the aspirations that Spacca Napoli does. Unlike Spacca Napoli, they pay no particular attention to their mozzarella, for example. (That should not be interpreted as criticism, merely information.) They make no issue of their ingredients, imported or no. Unlike Anteprima, which boasts of its home-made pastas, Il Fiasco does no such thing. So what? It seeks to be no more than a comfy neighborhood restaurant. In that, they are off to a great start. We will be back and, indeed, look forward to the five-block stroll.

Il Fiasco
5101 N. Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60640
773-769-9700

I had my first experience at Il Fiasco on Thursday night and it was a positive one. Let me begin with a disclaimer: an acquaintance from high school is married to the chef. I'd never met him before, and the HS friend isn't someone I was really tight with, but it had me inclined to a positive reception, and I'm pretty sure we ended up with a few comped treats. So that's out there.

I had the crispy duck confit with green beans and poached plums, and I enjoyed it. The skin wasn't quite so crispy when it was served, but it was tasty. The other most interesting dish I tasted at our table was the jalapeño gnocchi, which, while not all that spicy, were quite nice with the extra zing coming through the mild gnocchi flavor.

Oddly, several of us at the table remarked on the house dressing for the simple mixed salad. It's rare that you notice that kind of dressing, but this was a good one.

GB, did you have the chocolate pudding? We did, and it didn't seem that unusual -- it's basically a small chocolate cake, typical of the "chocolate-lover's spot" on most dessert menus. It was very enjoyable, but not that unusual. I think the name reflects Chef Phil's British heritage, and he said they'd probably be renaming it on the next printing of the menu.

At first we were afraid our server was a bit overexuberant, but we ended up being quite comfortable with him. The chianti probably helped. He couldn't possibly have been the person who served Gypsy Boy's table. Seriously, though, the staff were very friendly, although we did have one person who was overzealous trying to clear plates. There was also a bit of a timing issue with the one pizza ordered at our table; something went astray with the first one before they sent it out and it took a little while to get it straightened out, while the rest of us were eating. We had had apps and salads, and we were in hang-out mode, so it was all good with us (and I'm pretty sure they took it off the bill.)

In short, Gypsy Boy is right. Il Fiasco isn't aiming to be a destination restaurant, but rather a solid neighborhood place. That's pretty brave given the density of restaurants in the neighborhood, including many Italian, but I think they are on the right track to be that kind of restaurant. I'll be interested to hear what other people make of it.

Sorry for a kind of sparse review, but that's what I get for waiting three days.

For Italians 13 is a lucky number. Or so my nonno (Grandpa) told me

Had dinner at Il Fiasco a few weeks ago, but never got around to posting. It was a pleasant meal, good food, friendly (but by no means top notch) service.

Two of us started with the asparagus salad, one with the spinach salad. Asparagus was pleasantly tasty for being so late in the summer, and the gorgonzola offered a nice contrast. I'll agree with others that the dressing was better than average. This was a large portion, too.

Spinach salad came with anchovies, which I suspect was the reason it was ordered, and the plate was cleaned.

For entrees two of us split the caprino pizza. Goat cheese, zucchini, eggplant, tomato, mozzarella, basil. They weren't too heavy-handed with the mozzarella, which was good, but they also skimped a bit on the basil. Crust was crispy on the edges, softer in the middle, could have been slightly more charred. We weren't terribly hungry, especially given the size of the asparagus salad, so I was pleased to have a large slice leftover for lunch the next day.

Other pizza ordered was the rossa: italian sausage, roasted red peppers, caramelized onion. I was given the last piece of this, sans any sausage. Peppers were well roasted, slightly smoky even. Crust was done similarly to the other, so it seems they're consistent with it.

Service was friendly but not so polished. Our server was a bit exuberant and made extremely bizarre faces, but not in a snide or menacing way. He was just very expressive. No less than four dishes/glasses/trays of silverware were dropped while we were there, too.

All in all, a pleasant addition to the neighborhood. Reasonably priced and inviting. I'll be back.

All of the reviews here seem to be pretty much on the same page, and I'm not going to stray far from that based on my first Il Fiasco experience last night -- this is a pretty decent neighborhood spot that it is probably not aiming to be much more.

It's been more than two months since the initial review posted here indicated that the menu mentions a website, but that the site is not up and running. Well, it's still not up and running. Their menu can be found at chicago.menupages.com, but I can tell you that the menu (or place mat as it might be) at the restaurant has changed some.

Before I get to the food, let's talk about the bar area. Strangely, no one was sitting at the bar last night, and the area is more of a dining room with many dining booths lining the wall and additional tables set up throughout. Yet the two 42" televisions showing music videos and the blaring music treat the room more like a bar and it's hard to avoid the colors shooting from the screens in this dimly lit room -- FIASCO, TURN THEM OFF! Don't be shy about asking to be seated in the other room.

On to the food. The bread service is uninspiring. Simple, non-crusty Italian bread, not so fresh, very average olive oil and some of that powdered parmesan that you could do without.

They now have a Caesar Salad on their menu, which one person in my group ordered. I liked the dressing, particularly the fact that I could taste anchovies in the dressing, but otherwise it's pretty standard. If you want a Caesar Salad, you certainly will not be disappointed.

I had a small taste of the Gorgonzola and Spinach Souffle with poached pears, and I agree that it was very nice, especially the pears.

Shells were served with chicken and if I recall, a Gorgonzola sauce that was described as a bit "heavy." This was a little disappointing -- the shells cooked past al dente, not drained particularly well, and the sauce was a little too thin and bland. I'd skip this.

I was very impressed by the pizzas -- we had two of them -- which the menu described as Neapolitan, but which were not cooked in a wood-burning oven. Not necessarily Neapolitan but they were very good.

My favorite was the Fiorenta (wilted spinach, garlic, mozzarella, tomato sauce, ham and a free range sunny-side up egg in the middle), although I'll note a lack of garlic. The mozzarella certainly not buffalo mozzarella, but it melted nicely. The runny egg is always one of my favorite finds on a pizza and was cooked perfectly. The crust had beautifully charred, very crispy edges, and the dough became softer towards the middle.

The other pizza we ordered had goat cheese, tomato sauce and eggplant and zucchini and was also very good, and had nearly the identical texture.

There was a half-chicken, roasted with rosemary and lemon (even a nicely roasted slice of lemon) and maybe some garlic (although not enough), and it was served with caramelized onion mashed potatoes. The chicken was beautiful. I find that a rarely order a roast chicken -- it just does not typically inspire me -- but I'm very happy I did in this case. It was seasoned perfectly, good but not too strong flavors (i.e., just enough rosemary), crispy on the outside, incredibly moist inside. Pretty simple but very nice! This is the kind of comfort food that I hope for from my neighborhood restaurant.

The caramelized mashed potatoes, on the other hand, too dry.

We also shared the parmesan and white truffle oil french fries, served in a fake newspaper page folded up in cone-shaped metal holder. I liked the presentation, and the texture was good (not too thin, crispy and yet soft inside), but I didn't taste any white truffle oil, and they were way too salty. Maybe just a one-time gaffe.

For dessert, the panna cotta (I believe with creme fraiche), now served with a blackberry compote. I like the fact that it was not too dense, but I did not like the somewhat grainy texture.

The steamed hot chocolate pudding is very similar to the falling chocolate cake we've seen on so many menus. This one had a nice deep, semi- to bittersweet chocolate flavor and a nice texture, just slightly oozing in the middle. It was served with average vanilla ice cream, and a very nice, buttery, nutty tuile.

The meringue with cream, raspberries and strawberries was a crispy meringue shell, filled with a sweetened cream and the fruit. Very tasty but they need to double the amount of fruit.

All in all, a good meal, highlighted for me by the pizzas and the roast chicken.

I was surprised when I looked up this thread to see that nothing has been posted for six months, so we'll use our dinner to report.

Last night represented our first visit to Il Fiasco since Eric Aubriot came on board in January. Although we’ve been back to Il Fiasco since my first post, this is the first time I’ve been minded to put something down. In a word, all the changes we noted were for the better.

Aubriot has tinkered with the menu, adding a few things, eliminating (we think) a few things but there aren't any wholesale changes. By and large the ambiance, menu, and price points are the same. We believe that it still aims to be a good neighborhood restaurant and, on those terms, it succeeds admirably. We enjoyed our meal quite a bit.

Il Fiasco is still noisy and retains, if my memory serves, its uncanny knack of having at least one screaming child on each of our visits. We went for dinner at 6 and had no trouble getting a table. By the time we left about 7:15 or so, the front room was filled and the back room was about two-thirds occupied and filling fast.

Our server was young but very good. I’ve had issues with our servers (both attitude and attention) on prior occasions and though she didn’t have immediate answers for all our questions, she handled the queries deftly and returned quickly with the information we sought. We liked her and I, personally, thought she did a great job.

We shared an appetizer of pan-seared polenta cakes with a wild mushroom cream sauce. The dish was generously portioned and very tasty. While not a culinary challenge of the first order, the polenta cakes were seared without being burned, not dry in the least, and well-complemented by the mushroom sauce. A dish simple enough to make at home and yet enjoyable enough to order and enjoy without breaking the bank.

Entrees: the Lovely Dining Companion chose a seafood stew of mussels, calamari, shrimp, and scallops in a saffron broth. Cioppino without the tomatoes. Accompanying it were two plain little toasts, or in the typo-filled menu description, “croustinis.” She pronounced it excellent and we both agreed the portion was, again, generous. No skimping on the seafood and none of the oversalting that the dish appears susceptible to so often.

I ordered a new entrée that Aubriot has introduced: artichoke ravioli with mint, celery, and asparagus, all in a mint butter sauce. Very, very good. There were a generous number of oversized ravioli and sliced asparagus cooked exactly right. Lots of diced veggies in the sauce and a very enjoyable dish. I accompanied it with a quartino of Teruzzi & Puthod Terre di Tufi, the most expensive selection in the by-the-quartino list at $14. It’s a Tuscan wine composed—my subsequent research tells me—of Vernaccia (80%), Chardonnay (7%), Malvasia (7%) and Vermentino (6%), aged 4-5 months in French oak. I found it lighter than expected (their helpful wine list organizes choices by body and this was in the full-bodied section), no doubt a result of the heavy Vernaccia bias. I also found it a bit flat-tasting, without a lot of flavor or depth. Didn’t care for it, but that was my error.

Couple other notes: they’ve changed their bread supplier—a great improvement over the non-descript stuff they used to serve. The olive oil that’s poured is still no more than adequate, but one can enjoy the bread without the oil. The sound system is still too loud, though someone must have complained because it was turned down quite a bit after a while. It may simply be that it was loud for the first hour or so (they open at 5) when most of the business was at the bar and didn’t care. They committed one of those little misdeeds that annoys me every time, but I guess I’m too picky: my appetizer fork was taken from that plate and given back to me for my entrée. Is the dishwasher so overloaded that he can’t handle the additional load of appetizer silver? Do they have so little silver that they can’t afford to use clean pieces for the entrees? I don’t get it—and I don’t like it. Not a major issue by any means, but a practice I’d love to see disappear.

We decided to stroll up to Pasticceria Natalina for dessert. We didn’t find Il Fiasco’s choices overwhelmingly intriguing (okay, we didn’t find them intriguing at all, really), but it’s always fun to see Nick and Natalie and who can beat their dessert selection? We were pleased to see a series of nicely framed reviews up on the wall. LTH’s GNR certificate has pride of place in the center. And they’ve added a small shelf (and Nick promised some chairs/stools) so people can sit and enjoy while there.

All in all, it was nice to return to Il Fiasco. As I noted at the outset, it’s not a destination restaurant but for what it aspires to, it succeeds and we will continue to return. It’s comfortable, very reasonable (our dinner was under $60), and the pacing was fine. We like the changes that Eric Aubriot has instituted and look for him to continue to make this place his.