Illustration: Greg Clarke
When I visited my daughter in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago, she wanted to get lunch at an Italian restaurant in her neighborhood because she was craving its meatball parmigiana sandwich. I never took her for a meatball sub kind of girlie but that’s because I had a specific image in my mind: a split-open loaf heaped with so much sweet tomato sauce and melted cheese that the main ingredient isn’t even visible. Not this one. It started with a thin, airy focaccia from a great bakery that had been bisected through the center so the halves — no thicker than the walls of a cardboard box — held a row of meatballs that had apparently been rolled in tomato sauce and flecked with bits of sharp pecorino cheese. It was the most austere version of this dish I had ever seen and an absolute banger.
I don’t want to be the guy who comes back from a trip to kvetch about what we don’t have here. It’s not a good look for a food writer, but it’s one I’m not afraid to assume now and again to spur conversation. So here goes: Despite our long and illustrious history with Italian-American restaurants, we really don’t have many great ones today. We’ve got a lot of good — very good! — spots for pizza and pasta and, my god, we must be the chicken Parmesan capital of the world. Nowhere do they come as big and over-the-top insane with breading, tomato sauce, and so much of Wisconsin’s finest mozz that you’re guaranteed a cheese pull with every bite.
What we don’t have are the restaurants that rethink the pleasures of red-sauce Italian. Where do you go to try the flavors brought over by immigrants from Campania and Naples in a way that feels fresh? When Chicago food editor Amy Cavanaugh and I looked over our feature on the city’s 50 best restaurants that we compiled in 2024, we were surprised to find only one full-service Italian restaurant on the list — Monteverde, which came in at No. 1. (The pizzeria Spacca Napoli was only on the list at number 45.) We love Sarah Grueneberg’s cooking because she understands the primal pull of Southern Italian flavors but only occasionally succumbs to that temptation to equate them with excess and indulgence.
Which, of course, people love. Every year the busiest new restaurants include a few cannily retro red sauce joints that get people talking about their lasagna, cacio e pepe, or (sigh) Parm. We all want to see how they stack up. Italian comfort food is a pop tune we always jam to until it becomes an earworm.
What I’m looking for is an Italian restaurant where the chef’s building blocks are tomatoes, garlic, basil, cured meats, eggplant, rapini, sweet peppers, hot peppers, pecorino cheese, olive oil, coarse bread, eggless pasta, and finesse. I would love to see dishes that look simple on the plate but taste complex because the ingredients are so good.
Also, if your blood is boiling because I’m describing your favorite Chicago restaurant, I’m all ears.
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Dining and Cooking