Not long ago a new Italian restaurant opened two blocks from where I work. It's called Trattoria Parma and it's run by Paul LoDuca, who also operates Vinci on North Halsted, where he has made a popular local fetish out of polenta. It occupies the space formerly home to LoDuca's Mare, another Italian restaurant that specialized, as its name would suggest, in seafood. It's a good place and I liked it a lot, but I don't know when I'll be getting back--simply because there are so many other restaurants I already like that are, like Trattoria Parma, serving good Italian food at friendly prices in pleasant surroundings.
In fact, I am surrounded by good Italian restaurants. At work there are at least three such spots even closer to my office than Trattoria Parma (photo). At home it's a similar story; of the more limited dining options available nearby, there's a relative preponderance of good little Italian spots. All these trattorias add up to an embarrassment of riches, and pose a provocative challenge: how to pick among them?
Twenty years ago, the Italian food most Americans ate, outside those cities (or even those neighborhoods) that boasted large Italian populations, was what my friend Carlo dismissed as paisano Italian. Growing up in the 1970s, my family sometimes went to a little place down the street called Villa Theresa, which was representative of the type: red-and-white checked table cloths, heavily impastoed paintings of Venetian canal scenes, and mustachioed waiters serving up the same rotation of five or ten pasta, chicken, and veal dishes. With meatballs or without? The movie "Big Night" did a great job of showing the limited expectations most Americans once had for Italian food, despite the opulent breadth of true Italian cuisine.
Today, soulless venues like Maggiano's, Nick and Tony's and the more attenuated reaches of Alex Dana's Rosebud network still pack them in serving the hearty old paisano standbys, usually in stupefying quantities. The traditional Taylor Street places still do as well or better than ever. But back in the 1980s, restaurants like Avanzare and Scoozi, Lettuce Entertain You stalwarts that bookend the breadth of the Near North Side, showed that Italian food could be hip. Spiaggia, after it opened in its beautiful room overlooking Oak Street Beach, showed that one of the best fine-dining establishments in the city could serve Italian food that was imaginative yet deeply attuned to tradition. Best of all, though, for young and hungry diners like myself, a profusion of terrific trattorias--smaller, less-expensive, more casual Italian restaurants serving a greater breadth of Italian food than most Americans were accustomed to--popped up like so many porcini mushrooms.
A dozen or more years ago, the phenomenal popularity of Trattoria Pizzeria Roma in Old Town launched in earnest the boom we're still enjoying today. Suddenly good trattorias were opening in storefronts all over the North Side. When star chef Dennis Terczak left Avanzare to open Sole Mio near Armitage and Sheffield, it seemed no neighborhood was complete without one of its own. Or two. Or three. OrŠ
Of course, things got totally out of hand with the ridiculous success of Mia Francesca. Most of my friends who eat out often have strong feelings about this place. Some consider it one of the best, if not the best, trattorias in Chicago. Others wouldn't be willing to endure the hellish waits for the unreserved tables at the original Clark Street spot north of Belmont if Marcella Hazen herself was cooking and serving their meal. I tend to sympathize with the former camp, but that probably has everything to do with the place's ace martinis, poured from a frost-shagged bottle of Tanqueray the size of an aqualung and adorned with gorgonzola-stuffed olives; merely for introducing me to this nonpareil of garnishes--for that gift alone--I'll always have immoderately fond feelings for the place.
Whichever, Mia Francesca's ascendance was the cardinal sign of the trattoria's domination of the Chicago restaurant scene. Diners love trattoria food because it tastes great, it's not costly, and because the nutrition watchdogs made all of us aware that saturated fat is bad, carbs are good, and the so-called "Mediterranean" diet may be a key to beating cardiovascular disease, that great American way of death. Trattorias thus slid into our hearts on a stream of extra-virgin olive oil. Restaurateurs love trattorias because much of the food is inexpensive to serve, leading to fat potential profit margins.
Which returns us to that vexing question: how, when one craves Italian, does one choose among so many splendid options? In the mid-nineties I became frustrated by what I found to be overwhelming similarities among the newer places that seemed to be opening every other week. I resolved to cut back on going to new trattorias unless I heard of one that was truly exceptional, choosing instead to patronize my deserving neighborhood places and my one or two other favorites. In my case this meant Annamaria's, on Broadway and Irving, and Angelina's, further down Broadway at Addison. When Mia Francesca opened its first satellite on Taylor Street--and began accepting reservations there--I said goodbye to its less-than-friendly Clark Street confines for good. And I'm happy to have found Trattoria Parma. When it comes to good Italian restaurants, there's always room for one more. Right?
by Doug Seibold
copyright 1998 New City Communications, Inc.