A Return to the 'Burbs...But Just For a Moment!

Darlings, the Foodie has a plan...subsist during the week on salad bar creations and soup (plus the requisite latté, of course) so that, when given the chance, she can indulge in things far more delicious than she could ever encounter in the school cafeteria.

On a trip home this past weekend (joy of joys!), I was lucky enough to be able to go to my absolute favorite restaurant...my favorite Italian restaurant, that is...we mustn't play favorites.  Never know who's reading, now do we?

Anyways!  Off to Antico!  The risotto of the day was an obvious seasonal nod, featuring sweet corn (glory be!), along with pork tenderloin, caramelized onions, and a splash of aged balsamic.

Risotto, in my opinion, is one of the many dishes that just make your eyes roll back in your head.  It is that good.  The texture, the flavor...all that cheese!  And this risotto was no exception, by any means.  Velvety and creamy, rich, smooth and yet a bit toothsome.  It was awesome.  And it was only made better by the fact that the corn was just shaved off the cob and tossed in at the last minute.

Now, you may be thinking, 'Raw corn! Oh, but Foodie, that isn't right!'

It is so right.  Especially when the corn is this fresh.  It is sweet without even needing to be cooked.  And by not boiling the stuff to oblivion, there remains a wonderfully contrasting texture, a slight crunch, that lightens up the risotto in a way (unfortunately, it didn't make it seem light enough for me to indulge in a mini dessert...shame, really...).

And now, regrettably, I must offer some notes of criticism to my beloved Antico Posto.

The tenderloin...was not tender.  I've had tenderloin there before that was served with a heavy-duty serrated steak knife alongside, but which would only have required a butter knife.  This time, all I had to work with was an excessively dull butter knife, and a piece of pork that simply refused to disassemble.

The pork wasn't really dry...but it wasn't as luscious as I've had it.  Perhaps someone turned away from it at the critical moment, and it was left to seize up a bit before placed atop my dish.  Whatever the reason, although I found the flavor of the meat to be delightful (what wonders a splash of the balsamic will do!), I could have gone without it entirely.

And I must add also that the caramelized onions could have gone a bit longer.  They were caramelized and sweet, but they lacked a certain velvety spreadability that I have come to appreciate in a cooked onion.  Their residual strength of structure made it rather difficult to evenly disperse the stuff throughout my rice.  I would have liked if it had fallen apart.  All the more flavor to spread around.

But I can hardly complain much more than that.  The closest thing I've had to Italian food on campus was at a Build-Your-Own-Pasta station.  I was met with overcooked, under-drained farfalle sauced with a lackluster and undersalted marinara.  My flavor combinations would have been glorious had they taken some Pasta 101 classes from the cooking school.  And the garlic bread looked like it had toasted breadcrumbs on it...how redundant!

Look for my next post: Building the Best Salad Plate!

Peace, Love, and (Hopefully) Antico to You All!

~AF

Antico Strikes Again! Hard-to-Twirl Noodles at My Fave Spot

Antico Posto is my ab-fab favorite way to start the weekend! (Can you tell by my jubilant punctuation?)  Nothing like carbs served with carbs served with garlic and olive oil!  And here we go...

Pappardelle with Fennel Sausage, Goat Cheese, and Tomatoes

My mom and I had the lunch special, Pappardelle with Fennel Sausage.  Fresh pasta in a tomato sauce, tossed together with crumbles of house-made Italian fennel sausage and topped with piquant fresh goat cheese and a pretty chiffonade of basil.  Can I get a "Whoop, whoop?"  As rich as goat cheese is, it actually felt like the one ingredient that lightened up the dish.  All the rich, earthy flavors--the tomatoes and the sausage--needed something sharp and acidic to perk them up.  The dish was so well-balanced in its flavor profile.  I took half home, but it's already gone.  I had it for dinner.

I love pappardelle.  However, that being said, pappardelle is very, very, very difficult to eat gracefully.  For those of you who don't know what pappardelle is, think fettucine...on steroids.  It's about halfway between a fettucine noodle and an un-ruffly lasagna noodle.  This is the sort of pasta that stands up well to something super meaty and hearty.  Thus, it was the perfect pasta pairing with the crumbled sausage.

But the size (nay, the girth!) of the noodles requires you to A) be able to do origami to fit an entire noodle into your mouth or B) cut your noodles into bite-size pieces.  Good luck trying to twirl these babies!  It will not work, especially with the thickness of the noodles at Antico.  Any thicker and they could be considered boiled flatbread; any thinner and they'd break when tossed with the sauce.

But from what I think could be considered an engineering standpoint (bear with me...I know it's a stretch), Antico's pappardelle are the perfect size.  And although it absolutely kills me to cut my pasta, it's worth it.  Especially since it keeps me from getting tomato sauce behind my ears.  That would not be classy.

Unfortunately, we skipped dessert today.  But next time, I shall have my Panna Cotta with brandied cherries.  It is so good.  But you knew that already.

Peace and Love From a Noodle-Cutting Classy Lady,

~AF

Bella, Bella, Bella Means Beautiful...Food that is

It's carefully hidden in Oakbrook Center.  Or at least that's what it says on the menu.  Almost a next-door-neighbor to ma cherie, Mon Ami Gabi, the restaurant Antico Posto is like Gabi's quiet Italian cousin.  It's a "Lettuce Entertain You" restaurant just like Gabi and another restaurant I love, Wildfire.

Ever since the first moment I stepped inside this restaurant through its revolving door, I loved it.  There's a bar at the front and a couple bar tables, but the majority of the restaurant is dimly-lit, white-tablecloth dining.  And it's usually packed.

The first thing placed on the table is crusty, fresh-baked bread with coarse salt on the crust and a dish of add-ons: fruity olive oil with garlic, parmesan, and balsamic and a dynamite giardiniera with green olives, onion, celery, cauliflower, and eggplant.  If the entrees themselves weren't quite so phenomenal, I could just eat the bread.

But the thing is, the entrees are phenomenal.  So don't do too much carbo-loading at the outset of your meal.

They make these really great brick oven pizzas with a chewy crust that tastes a little pretzel-like to me.  They hardly use any sauce, which allows the flavorful toppings to shine, whether it's oven-roasted tomatoes and basil on their goat cheese pizza or sweet fennel sausage and fire-roasted peppers.  The goat cheese pizza is my sister's favorite, and it's the food item that taught her to embrace the roasted tomato.

I happen to be rather partial to the pasta dishes, and I've sampled quite a few.  The pasta is made fresh in-house, and this really makes a difference in their plates.  I love the gnocchi (both bolognese and pomodoro), and the spaghetti bolognese.  While not necessarily authentically Italian (according to Food Network's Alton Brown), this combo of thin, delicate pasta and rich meaty sauce is undeniably delicious.

My all-time favorite pasta at Antico is the cavatelli, which in Italian means "little worms"...delicious, right?  But in all seriousness, it's a hearty yet delicate pasta with a pleasant chew to it.  At Antico, they make it with ricotta, and they pair it with assertive toppings.

I've tried the cavatelli special with vodka-cream sauce, tossed with sweet fennel sausage  and lots of fresh parsley (shown right).  It was a great deviation from my usual, a plate only available once a week.

Behold, ladies, gentlemen, and others: Cavatelli with Sunday Meat Sauce.  It is a heaping plate of pasta tossed in a light cream and topped with a great big ol' dollop of braised meat.  On my last visit, our waiter gave up the names of the meats they use, five in all: pepperoni, sausage, sopressata, roast beef, and roast pork.  All of this is cooked down in garlic and tomato until it's a soft, sumptuous sauce full of meat that is fall-apart tender.  I can think of nothing to improve upon it.

And don't even get me started on the desserts.  They have these great little mini-desserts, from a velvety panna cotta with brandied cherries (my favorite, right) to a creamy lemon cheesecake, topped with whipped cream and lemon curd (my sister's favorite, already half eaten before I got a chance to snap a pic...though I don't blame her).  All you need to cap it off is a LaVazza cappuccino, and you're in business.  Bella, bella, bella.

C'est Magnifique: Macaroni Gratin that Wows

Mon Ami Gabi is one of those restaurants with a few locations: one in Vegas, one in Chicago, and one conveniently close to me in Oakbrook, Illinois.  It's a French bistro-style restaurant that has a wide range of items to pick from, a quality that almost guarantees that no one will go without finding something they will love.

I've tried some great stuff there before, from savory crepes filled with chicken stew to a Burger au Poivre, crusted in pepper and served with au jus and green peppercorn aioli.  Anything you order is delicious, and if it's served with pommes frittes (French-style crispy-fried potato strips) it is downright amazing.  They always bring out crusty French baguette with raspberry jam and whipped butter at the start of the meal (pictured right...superb!).

I've been stuck in a rut lately, alternating between the Burger au Poivre and a special that seemed to pop up a lot, a succulent lamb burger.  But on my last visit to the restaurant, I decided to try a dish that has been calling out to me since the first time I stepped inside: Macaroni Gratin.

Now, this ain't your mama's mac 'n' cheese.  Instead of elbow macaroni, they use teeny-tiny shells that really grab onto the luxurious, silky bechamel sauce.  They add crisped, salty cured ham to the mix and top it all off with a substantial layer of Gruyere cheese.  And then they bake it.  Wow, oh, wow.  It is so creamy, so rich, that you're probably only going to polish off a third of it (just a third!) and that's if you're really hungry.  Isn't it pretty?

Readers!  In my haste (and my excitement about my macaroni) I neglected to mention the tasty soup that I tried as a starter.  At Gabi, they present you with a bowl of garnish and pour the soup into the bowl at the table.  The soup I tried during this visit was a mushroom soup.  It wasn't necessarily a cream soup, but it was creamy.  My only complaint about it was the garnish they used. 

Most of the time the garnish is a perfect complement to the soup, like a paprika-scented creme fraiche atop a velvety butternut squash soup.  But the garnish for the mushroom soup was a few pieces of fresh wild mushroom and croutons.  The wild mushroom was entirely raw and completely unseasoned.  It was begging for salt, or maybe even garlic.  And the poor, pitiful little croutons (also painfully underseasoned) were not quite crispy enough, and they became extremely soggy when the soup was poured over them.

Now that the soup is out of the way, I digress.  Let us proceed to dessert!

French desserts are, to put it quite simply, exceptional.  My aunt, my sister, and I tried desserts that weren't necessarily French, but they were rather exceptional.

When it comes to food, we first eat with our eyes.  Presentation is paramount.  The white chocolate bread pudding (below) that my aunt and I shared was plated beautifully, topped with ice cream and caramel sauce.  And the chocolate-pecan tart my sister ate (at right) featured a cannelle of fresh whipped cream and a decorative smear of caramel.

I'll speak first about that tart.  My oh-so-generous sister let me try it, and it was delicious.  The crust was sweet, more like a graham cracker crust, and the pecans were like pralines, embedded in chocolate.  If you have a sweet tooth, then this is the dessert for you, and it's always on the menu.

The bread pudding...OMG.  It's really all I can say.  It was custardy and warm...if it weren't so rich I could have eaten three.  I'm pretty sure it was on special that day, but if you ever see it featured, get it.  You will not have any regrets (just don't ask to see the calorie count).