La Luce

Getting close to the end of recycled posts from the LTH Listserve posted here for the benefit of future searchers...

La Luce (March 21, 2004):

Among old school Italian places, La Luce (photo of the movie-perfect awning under the El here):



...has never seemed to get much Chowhound attention compared to La Scarola a few blocks away, or other spots like Bruna's. But I always heard good things about it, even including lavish gifts of free wine to a newly engaged couple and so on, from my friend Wyatt and his various friends. So tonight I made him go there with me.

Charming old Victorian building with tin ceiling, wooden meat locker with milk glass front, and so on. Food was generally simple but not screwed up-- big scallops lightly breaded in a lemony sauce were light, almost Chinese food-like:



Grilled calamari was exactly what it should be:



And homemade "8 finger" (whatever that means) cavatelli in a vodka cream sauce was an argument for the metallic trumpet blast of San Marzano canned tomatoes as superior to the fresh kind:



The only non-Old School note was the total absence of Frank music as we walked in-- but then we realized that The Sopranos was on over the bar, so that made sense.

Anyway, I didn't experience the lavish hospitality on this quiet Sunday night, but the meal was satisfying and I'd go back on a busier night for the full effect.

La Luce Restaurant
1393 W. Lake St., Chicago
Tel: (312) 850-1900

Thanks for the report Mike, I have always wondered about that place when driving by.

Mrs. JiLS and I visited La Luce for the first time Saturday night, and are pleased to report we had a great meal. First off, I'll note the setting and ambience are wonderful, a little bit of Old Chicago but not a "touristy" place at all, which I was somewhat afraid to find. (In addition to professional and sincere service, one small example of how La Luce "works" would be the music, which was straight-ahead hard bop jazz, not stereotypical Frankie or Dean or sappy "moon in your eye" crapola.) The exterior design of La Luce has always been one of my favorite restaurant structures in Chicago; the interior lives up to the exterior, full of exposed brick, tin ceiling and salvaged building materials. (Note: Although the building itself is definitely "Old Chicago," built in 1892, La Luce is not; they've only been around for about 10 years, at least in this location, which was another reason for some of my unwarranted trepidation -- would they be "faking it," pretending to be something they were not? Answer: No.)

We arrived without reservations at 6:30 to find the dining room about 1/4 full; it was busy, but not crushed, when we left around 8:00, so we had a comfortable meal; I imagine with the tin ceiling and narrow design, it gets pretty loud when crowded.

I started with the grilled calamari pictured in Mike G's post, which is a huge serving (I think I got about 1/3 more than you see in Mike's picture). Flavorful and tender squid, perfect grill flavor and markings, and a sauce that warranted skinning the cat with the very good (not remarkable) Italian bread, even before the squid was fully devoured. The sauce was quite rich, I think with stock rather than butter, and I think sage. Anyway, it was sop-worthy sauce. A sharply acidic and reasonably priced sauvignon blanc was a nice accompaniment.

Mrs. JiLS had a very good tomato and onion salad, although the tomatoes were no better than you would expect to find out of season. Topped with crumbled blue cheese and vinaigrette, this was a perfectly decent salad, artfully presented and a more than ample portion.

My main course was the braciole, which is served in a manner that's inconsistent with my own experience, but DAMN ... I liked it! To wit: two or three small slices of braciole (very tender flank steak and yellow raisins) were served over a bed of linguini in a very tasty (kind of sweet, but not sugary) red sauce, along with a good sized meatball (sliced) and grilled sweet Italian sausage. Huge portion resulted in leftovers that I am eyeballing even as I type this Sunday evening. Definitely an authentic Chicago meal, not terribly authentic Italian, but really satisfying and indulgent; a winning dish.

Mrs. JiLS had the spaghetti Bolognese, which was aromatic and meaty and just what she was looking for. I thought it could have used a little more spice, but that's my taste, and it was a very well put-together dish. This and my braciole were nicely complemented by a cheap sangiovese; nothing remarkable there, except to note once again how much the right combination of cheap(er) wine you would never drink alone, drunk with food that it pairs with well, creates a whole that is greater than the parts.

La Luce, by the way, is conveniently within walking distance of the Randolph Wine Bar, where we met up with some friends after dinner. This was a great Saturday night out "combo" that I would heartily recommend.

I'm so relieved I don't owe you $3.95.

You know, another place I've been meaning to mention forever, in the genre of old school Italian, or maybe the time warp restaurants thread, is a place in Old Town called Orso's. There's been virtually no comment on it-- I think when I searched I just found a single passing, negative comment by Erik in an Old Town thread on CH-- and I suspect the out-of-towners who took me there (Hollywood producers; I was tagging along with my friend Scott, whose novel they're producing) picked it based on the tip of someone who hasn't lived here in 20 years. But I enjoyed it; it's kind of like an upscale version of Gulliver's, the same 60s Victorian-era-on-acid decor, but done with far more taste and restraint than the miles-over-the-top Gulliver's. (Actually what it kind of reminded me the most of was another classic of 60s pseudo-Victoriana, the Haunted Mansion at Disney World.) The Italian food was highly competent, nothing spectacular but nothing screwed up, either, much like La Luce. Anyway, dark, decadent, and vaguely swingin', it's actually probably the best straight answer I could have come up to Stirs, I mean, Mauvais Sang's question about where to dine with your mistress.

Orso's
1401 N. Wells St.
(312) 787-6604

"Time-warp Italian" -- yes, that's probably a good sub-category for a number of Chicago Italian-American spots. I think it is particularly a propos for La Luce, which as I noted above is not an old restaurant (rather a 10-year old restaurant in a 113 year-old building), but has the genuine look and feel of a place that's really been around the block. I think the Buca de Beppo designers ought to be force fed at La Luce before they create another one of their mildly offensive, over the top caricature pieces. Like the "just add water" Irish pubs that sprout wherever Big 10 graduates settle in Chicago, pseudo "authentic" Italian places are always a big dissapointment. La Luce, a (relatively) new restaurant that gets it right and "works" in ways Buca de Beppo never could, is a refreshing curative. By the way, here's a link showing La Luce in all its day-lit glory -- wonderfullly noirish as Mike G's original photos are, they don't illustrate my point about the great architecture: La Luce in la luce

JimInLoganSquare wrote:My main course was the braciole, which is served in a manner that's inconsistent with my own experience, but DAMN ... I liked it! To wit: two or three small slices of braciole (very tender flank steak and yellow raisins) were served over a bed of linguini in a very tasty (kind of sweet, but not sugary) red sauce, along with a good sized meatball (sliced) and grilled sweet Italian sausage. Huge portion resulted in leftovers that I am eyeballing even as I type this Sunday evening. Definitely an authentic Chicago meal, not terribly authentic Italian, but really satisfying and indulgent; a winning dish.

It's not quite clear what you found odd or inauthentic about this dish. I guess I find the use of linguine with such a meat sauce rather inauthentic (in the sense of not traditional in Italy) and from a personal standpoint decidedly less than optimal (though certainly not unheard of on this side of the Atlantic) but the combination of meats itself, which seems perhaps to be the unfamiliar aspect, is a classic, pan-Southern Italian, somewhat-to-rather festive (i.e., could just be a Sunday but could also be a holiday) ragù with precisely that combination of braciole, meatballs and sausage. But linguine with that sauce really does seem a bit bizarre to me, at least from a traditional sort of stand-point (though it's hardly cause for dyspepsia).

By the way: what do they stuff the braciole with besides the sultanas?

Sounds like a good meal, especially the grilled calamari. I've been passing by there for years and have always thought it a very handsome and inviting looking place from the outside.

Antonius

Antonius wrote:By the way: what do they stuff the braciole with besides the sultanas?

Antonius -- I really couldn't tell without having the menu in front of me. The whole dish was rather heavily covered with the semi-sweet tomato sauce (that heavy, sweet sauce plus the pile of linguini were what I thought might make this more Chicago-style dish than Italian). The heavy application of sauce tended to blend all the flavors and hide ingredients. Moreover, the braciole was in smaller pieces than I'm used to (only about 2 inches diameter) and it fell apart (or I mangled it) enough that any other stuffing just got mixed in with the sauce. The raisins were distinctive enough that I could pick them out (and I also expected them to be there, so I was looking for them). Unfortunately, La Luce doesn't have an on-line menu; to solve the mystery of the braciole stuffing, you'll just have to go find out for yourself!

JimInLoganSquare wrote:Antonius -- I really couldn't tell without having the menu in front of me. The whole dish was rather heavily covered with the semi-sweet tomato sauce (that heavy, sweet sauce plus the pile of linguini were what I thought might make this more Chicago-style dish than Italian). The heavy application of sauce tended to blend all the flavors and hide ingredients...

JILS,

Thanks for the answer on the braciole. The tendency to oversauce can be seen in the picture of the cavatelli posted by MikeG above... It's a widespread vice around here, though...

Raisins and pine nuts usually go together in one version of braciole but, as can be seen from a recent thread on this dish, there is wild variation in the recipes, region by region, town to town, family to family. The pine nuts, even with very long cooking, would have likely shown up, so I bet they didn't include them.

Any idea if the people who run La Luce have any particular regional affiliation?

A

Antonius wrote:Any idea if the people who run La Luce have any particular regional affiliation?

If they do have a genuine regional affiliation, it was not apparent to me. Reading up a bit on La Luce before we went, I saw a number of references to "Northern Italian" (e.g., Metromix has the following to say: "Northern Italian cuisine features modern twists"). I think it's probably more advertising copy than reality, or maybe refers to an outdated menu, because it looks like right now La Luce is actually all over the Italian culinary map. In addition to the braciole you identified as Southern, they also had the Bolognese and one or two rice dishes, and I'm sure a complete menu dissection would find any number of other acts of regional miscegenation. According to a blurb in their menu, they began rehabbing the building in 1989 and it was a 5-year project, which means they first came on line in the early to mid-1990s. I suspect they at least originally found it profitable to play up the then-trendy "Northern" style foods (and maybe the menu did originally stick to Northern Italian recipes).

Yeah, I think "Northern" came to be synonymous with "less heavy than Rosebud/more contemporary than Club Lago" in the popular parlance during the 80s and 90s, completely irrespective of the actual origins of any dish. If there was fresh basil on it, it was "northern Italian."

I'm sincerely hoping that either La Luce was completely off it's game on our most recent visit or that we ate at a completely different restaurant, because Ms. EC and I had one of the most dissatisfying meals we've ever had in an Italian restaurant in Chicago. I have never been particularly enamored by the majority of Italian restaurants in Chicago. (Even my feelings about my favorites tend to fade over time). So, I wanted to like La Luce. I wanted to love it there. JiLS' loving description of the braciole had me thinking about it all week. I've always loved the location and architecture; The recent discussion drew me in to what I thought was a potential favorite.

We arrived to find the place mostly full, which was nice because I never mind having time for one drink at the bar. The bartender was among the most surly, foul-mouthed, and incompetent bartenders I have ever met (and I've been in my fair share of nasty bars). After a few too many cries of "what's the bleeping hurry?" and "how the bleep do you make that drink?", the hostess had to give her a talking-to. (It is important to note that the bartender was polite to us--but basically unable to make a drink--and directed all of her ire at the waiters for what appeared to be no good reason.)

This experience at the bar threatened to cast a shadow on our meal, but we shook it off in the interest of dining (figuring she was a temp or fill-in), and took our seats.

We shared an appetizer of mussels in marinara. A simple bowl of fresh mussels in red sauce is bliss but I'm always leery of ordering. In "Kitchen Confidential", Tony Bourdain makes the case for never ordering mussels in a restaurant. I have chosen not to take this to such an extreme, but this advice has made me more judicious and inquisitive when ordering. We asked the waiter if they were fresh today and he replied "yes" (they always do), but his answer didn't seem particularly emphatic. Against my instinct we ordered the mussels anyway.

These mussels were not spoiled, dead, rotten, or dangerous in any way. They simply were not fresh; edible, but not fresh. Ms. EC found them less edible than I did, at one point proclaiming that the mussels "taste like a zoo". At this point I should have sent the dish back, but I talked myself out of it. As a result of this appetizer we have developed a new system for ordering mussels which I will share as a post-script.

I ordered the braciole which was as tough as shoe leather and without any flavor at all, filling included. After a few minutes of sawing through the overcooked (and possibly reheated) meat, any filling was obliterated into the way-too-sweet sauce, rendering it completely undetectable. The meatball was the best thing about this dish, but I've had just as good meatballs served on a roll at Tore's (thanks for the tip, stevez).

Ms. EC had the special ravioli which was described to be stuffed with eggplant and dressed in a gorgonzola-cream sauce. She was served a plate of tasteless mush served in a sauce of tasteless mush. This dish would have been indistinguishable from gruel had the filling not been wrapped in pasta dough.

In hindsight, all three of our dishes should have been sent back, but I am very, very gun-shy about this practice. I am also gun-shy about posting a review of such a negative experience, but like Bacchanalia, my disappointment ran so deep that I could not keep quiet.

I have a lot of respect for the tastes and reviews of JiLS and Mike G (this is what drew me to La Luce, after all), and I sincerely hope that this was an off-night for La Luce. Even so, it will take some serious arm-twisting to make me go back.

Best,
Michael / EC

A post-script on ordering mussels: I always ask if the mussels are fresh and generally make my choice on how emphatically the waiter says "yes", which they always do. This is strictly a matter of instinct, or reading human reaction. Occasionally, my instinct will say "no" but my natural desire is to not show the waiter that I do not trust them, which a "no thanks" would convey. So, after being bitten by not following my instinct, on the drive home from La Luce, Ms. EC and I agreed upon our new method of ordering mussels, now known as "The Luce Method", and goes something like this:

(This method is basically the same as having a code-word or signal for leaving a party).

I ask the waiter, "Are the mussels fresh?". He or she answers "Yes" in a manner that I do not trust. At this point, I turn to Ms. EC and say, "Well, do you feel like mussels tonight?" which she will take as a signal to say "No". This allows me to decline them without casting significant doubt on the trustworthiness of the waiter. Of course, a waiter who is also a good actor can foil this method rather easily, but in those cases I will not be so gun-shy about sending them back.

I've eaten at La Luce many times and have never been disappointed. Maybe our expectations are different? (Though, your meal did sound truly bad.) My absolute favorite thing there is the house made ravioli with brown buttter and sage. The pasta is tissue thin and the ricotta is sweet and fresh tasting with a little spinach mixed in... I think of this place as a neighborhood place (which is a little different, if not better than all the other Italian places in the neighborhood) that's always good for a moderately priced, relaxing meal.

On mussels: They're so cheap and easy to make at home, I can never justify ordering them in a restaurant. (especially after reading Kitchen Confidential.)

Sorry you had a bad meal and I hope you give them another chance after the memory of this meal fades.

eatchicago wrote:Of course, a waiter who is also a good actor can foil this method rather easily, but in those cases I will not be so gun-shy about sending them back.

If the waiter was a good actor, he wouldn't be a waiter.

Historic treasures from the Victorian-aged La Lucé building will be sold at auction in early April, a sign that the building could be torn down soon.

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/2017032 ... is-weekend