It's been a couple of months since I last favored these pages with a review, but while my pen (or in this case, my keyboard) has been dormant my wanderings in the Chicago food forest have continued. First, a look at A Tavola in the Ukrainian Village (http://www.atavolachicago.com/).
To sum up for those with short attention span - a disappointment. The LTH Forum people have led me astray once again (no longer a surprise for me). Take a look at this thread (http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6754&hilit=a+tavola) about the pillowy-ness and the heavenly delight of A Tavola's gnocchi. I was intrigued and, not having had good Italian food in several months, excited, especially since I'm quite a fan of good gnocchi. I no longer remember what else we ordered. And since I don't remember it, it must have been uninspired and uninspiring. What I do remember is the cozy room, small tables, white tablecloths, black and white framed pictures (of naked bodies artistically rendered), flowers and candles. I also remember completely tasteless and, yes, super pillowy gnocchi with butter and sage leaf, sage leaf being the one and only taste producing ingredient on the plate. The butternut squash version of same had slightly more flavour, but really, all the effort must have gone to pillowing up those gnocchi since none of it was spent on making them flavorful.
And I cannot even express the extent of my indignation for their sorry excuse of a panna cotta. As I've likely mentioned in one of my other posts, I am bit of a freak when it comes to panna cotta. I first tried it in Trieste, Italy and was instantly seduced by its rich silky texture and delicate vanilla flavour. I have since tried this dessert in countless restaurants in the US. A couple of the NYC ones did not disappoint, but most did. A Tavola's was a disaster not equalled by many. It was utterlly too runny and too soft and too unlike what a panna cotta should be. And all that in an "Italian" restaurant. Please! The panna cotta at Topolobampo, with its Mexican-inspired cuisine, was infinitely better. Now for an Italian restaurant to get upstaged in an italian dessert by a mexican restaruant (even of Topolobampo's caliber) is simply shameful.
A Tavola gets marked as a blah in my annotated Zagat's. The search for mouth-watering dishes and mind-boggling taste combinations continues.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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4 comments:
Try Coco Pazzo, 300 W. Hubbard, for good gnocchi & panna cotta, as well as fabulous wood roasted whole sea bass. You'll also like that the chef and owner are both from NYC!
Thanks. Will do. I don't care where they're from as long as the food is good. :)
I hope you're not including Spoon Thai among those instances of being "led astray", when you were told all about the amazing items on the authentic Thai menu in great detail, and instead chose to completely ignore that information and instead order the most boring, pedestrian items off the Americanized Thai menu.
By my count, in all your time in Chicago, you've now been to a grand total of three LTH GNRs... one you hated, one you adored, and one you sidestepped completely by ignoring everybody's advice to avoid the Americanized menu, but seem to hold them accountable for anyway.
No, Spoon Thai was indeed a find and I am grateful for that recommendation. I did go back, however, and order from the "authentic" menu and must say the food was not that much better than the food from the "pedestrian" menu, not to say that it wasn't good or sufficiently odd. At A Tavola I ordered what was recommended, i.e. gnocchi, and was not impressed. If you wish to scold me for deviating from the main stream opinion, you're not the only one and you're welcome to it.
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