We walked in and immediately I felt like I was in the Godfather. They dimmed the lights so much that I could barely see in front of me, all the waiters looked like they were "in the family", and so did some of the customers. We sat down and we noticed that it was freezing because the air conditioning was on despite the fact that it was 50 degrees outside. The other thing I noticed was that the menu was laminated. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing but it's not really awesome thing either. It actually reminded me of the old Italian restaurants in my neighborhood except that the ones in my 'hood are authentic and surrounded by other old school Italian restaurants whereas this one was in a more tourtisy 'hood.
I wasn't really hungry but somehow I ended up eating so much more than I wanted to. I guess that's always what happens in an Italian restaurant. Everything on the menu was pretty standard family style food, although the one thing I did like was that you could pick your pasta and sauce combination. I don't know why more restaurants don't do that! For starters, we ordered a cold seafood platter (grilled scallops, calamari and octopus), meat/cheese platter, and baked clams. The seafood platter and bake clams were pretty good but the meat/cheese plate looked like cold cuts I would have gotten at a local deli. For a main dish, I really truly didn't want anything heavy so I opted for the fish special which was sea bass with asparagus and topped with shittake mushrooms. The fillet was huge and it was indeed covered in mushrooms. I love all the ingredients in this dish and could hardly imagine how you can cook fish, mushrooms, and asparagus incorrectly but there was an issue with my dish. While the asparagus was cooked perfectly and crunchy, the dish as a whole was pretty oily. The more I ate, the more oil I tasted. I don't know if it was because I wasn't super hungry but I actually left 1/4 of it on the plate which is something I usually never do.
We didn't get to finish meal until almost midnight, so it was pretty late when we finished. I did like that the waitstaff wasn't pushy and let us sit there as long as we wanted, they essentially closed the entire restaurant down around us. At one point, I didn't even know where everyone went and I thought everyone might have gone home. While the meal was fine, the concierge was mis-leading when she said it was "amazing". Next time I am sticking with deep dish pizza for any Chicago Italian cravings. Total bill (with 2 bottles of wine): $289 for 4 people with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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