gourmet babble

Chicago has had a surge of enotecas, an Italian combination of a bistro, wine bar, and tapas place. Hugo Ralli and Steve Lombardo, best known for their Chicago standards of Gibson's and Hugo's Frog Bar (reviews forthcoming), have entered into this hot new fray with Quartino, a challenger just a block away from the new Lettuce Entertain You enoteca, Osteria via Stato (review forthcoming). Sadly, like many things Hugo and Steve do, this is more about show than substance, but especially so here. The tables are jammed together worse than your traditional kosher delis, with floors and walls that reflect sound everywhere, coupled with a fairly hip, arrogant, (and thus) loud crowd; in toto, it makes for a lousy dining experience. The waiters think they're funny with their pushy attitude; it simply doesn't work in this environment, coming off as almost boorish instead. The dishes were hit and miss in quality, more good than not (though nothing especially great), and forget about asking for anything done a certain way by the kitchen; it's clearly a production line that has a stock set of formulae and don't even bother trying to mess with it. Their marinated fare was perhaps their best; I had a housemade (or so claimed) giardinara that was kind of nice, and some of the dried meats seemed tasty enough. Like the patrons and the service, though, much of the food was brash, unsubtle, and overbearing. Example: sweet potato fries were big and overbreaded; tasty, but in a way that makes you go, "okay, I get the point, stop shouting." The red pepper sauce that came with them was nearly identical.

Their true win is the wine, and the fact that they named themselves after their wine presentation sort of shows at least they're aware of what they're hawking. Moderately priced choices of truly average wines abound, in carafes as small as the quartino so you can have many choices on the table. They serve the old style diner water glasses for you to take small pours from quartinos so you can get little tastes of just about everything your party orders (and I'm sure this encourages a sort of "endless drinking" concept that reflects well on the final tab). Since I tend to dine with highly discriminating wine enthusiasts, we found ourselves with a couple of quartinos of almost drinkable fermented grapes. I think one of my fellow diners would have labelled it as "good for kids" (meaning people my age and younger) but not worthy of a serious (think "your parents' age") wine drinker's time.

After a Friday at Orchestra Hall, if I need a Ralli and Lombardo place to stop at for an early dinner (as was the old family tradition), it's going to be Hugo's, not this place. In fact, I don't think I'll ever go here again… unless I have some friends who are just in love with the place, and I don't care if I can hear what they are saying during dinner.