Chicago has several pockets of Italian culture: the original Little Italy on Taylor Street, the area of West 24th Street and Oakley Avenue, and part of North Harlem Avenue.
Steve Dolinsky, NBC 5’s food manager, says there was also a bustling corridor at one point along Grand Avenue in West Town. Recently, this area has been slowly making a comeback.
For decades, the area around Grand Avenue, just a mile or so west of downtown, was home to an Italian grocery store, bakeries and restaurants. There are still some holdouts, as well as some new blood pumping energy into an area that has seemingly lost many of its pioneers.
At Tempesta Market, a fantastic Italian deli owned by the family behind the best ‘nduja in town, the deli is the focal point, Dolinsky says. Seasoned, buttery Calabrian sausage joins other meats on a menu full of subs and sandwiches.
Down the block, the legendary D’Amato’s sells bread from its coal-fired oven, while Bari also has sandwiches and groceries. Across the street is the brand new food Gemma – a pandemic project that has become a full-time job.
“I started cooking for friends, offered, said, ‘hey, I’m going to make pasta, are you interested? It’s going to be kind of a restaurant-level experience in your house,’ and all of a sudden it’s become a thing,” said Tony Quartaro, owner of Gemma Foods.
Pasta is treated with respect here.
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Quartaro lives up to his elbows in flour and eggs, making some with a fancy extruder, others entirely by hand. This may interest you : “Development at Bertam must involve skilled and high-tech workers”. The details on the ravioli are stunning; filled with ricotta, sealed and sliced, few restaurants can match this level of skill.
“We have three classics on our menu: our canestri alla vodka, and then we also do paccheri with Sunday sauce, bucatini cacio e pepe,” he said.
You can have the pasta picked up, delivered or shipped, then buy the sauces separately to make at home.
“You add some pasta water to thin out the sauce a little bit, then you put it all in the pan,” Quartaro said.
If you want to have someone else cook your pasta, there’s Elina’s, a cozy new restaurant on Grand Avenue just west of Racine Avenue. The vodka rigatoni alla is a house favorite, as is the chicken parmesan, finely crumbled. Most of the pasta is homemade. The small dining room fills up quickly, so there’s no shame in dining at the bar.
A few blocks away from the Grand, the new Paulo Gelato is partially hidden behind the CTA entrance, but well worth the effort. Everything is handmade, including the pistachio paste.
“Pistachio is something I decided to start doing because I wanted to do it really well, and it takes a lot of time,” said Pawel Petrykoski, the owner.
“First you have to roast the pistachios, then there’s a mechanical grinder that crushes the pistachios into small pieces.”
Also the Trio – which contains dulce de leche, chocolate and hazelnuts or the charming chocolate mint. The store is the culmination of a dream that began in Poland but is now fully realized here.
“It’s the part I love to do and it’s creating something new,” he said.
Here are the establishments you can visit in the neighborhood:
