Looking to change things up after a long and taxing day of calling on dealers in the Chicago area, I was wanting some Italian food that evening. As I usually stay out near O'Hare International Airport when I'm in Chicago, I was looking for something in the area that I hadn't been to before. My new GPS gave me some suggestions in the area and there was one place - Bella Sera - that I wasn't familiar with. (see map) I thought I'd give it a chance and see what Bella Sera was all about.
Over 50 years ago, Holiday Inn built a hotel along Mannheim Road near O'Hare. It was one of the first hotels built in the area and it had a restaurant on the premises - the Armada Room. When the movie The Blues Brothers was filmed in the Chicago area in the late 70's, the Armada Room was prominently featured in a scene in the movie where Jake and Elwood Blues went to convince former bandmates "Murph and the Magic Tones" to come back to work for them.
The restaurant changed hands - and names - over the years becoming Spiazzo's, then Cafe USA, before Ron Kammo opened Bella Sera Restaurant and Lounge 20 years ago. It is now located in what looked to be a rather rundown Quality Inn that had a local disaster restoration company working on some renovations on the building. Yellow tape and fencing was prevalent on the outside of the building. But the front of the restaurant looked like it had just had a facelift, so I was somewhat hopeful about the place. There was also limited parking, but I was able to snag what proved to be the last space in front of the restaurant. Everything in my body was telling me this was a mistake, but I decided to trudge ahead and see what it was all about.
It was truly a restaurant/lounge with a three-sided bar area, neon lights and pop/dance music pumping from the sound system. The ambience was pretty horrid for an Italian restaurant. Well, really for ANY restaurant. The bar area had a number of people sitting there, but there were only a couple of tables that were filled in the dining area. My deep down feeling was that I needed to flee the joint, but I decided to stay.
There was only one waitress working in the restaurant, a young lady by the name of Yovana. She dropped off a menu and said that she'd be right back. Well, she wasn't. It was over five minutes before she was able to get back to me to take my drink order. In the meantime, I looked through the menu to see what they had available.
The menu wasn't very lengthy, but they did have a nice offering of items. Chicken parm, chicken Marsala, lasagna, grilled salmon, and steaks were on the main entree page. They also had pizza at Bella Sera, as well. But the thing that caught my eye was the "Build-Your-Own" pasta page.
You start out by selecting one of four different types of pasta - mostaciolli, bow-tie, fettuccine or spaghetti. Then from there you have a choice of six different types of sauces including a straight marinara, a meaty bolognese, an alfredo sauce, a spicy diablo sauce, a simple olive oil topping, and the Concasse sauce which had chopped tomatoes, garlic, and fresh basil in an olive oil. You can top off the pasta dish with a variety of vegetables, chicken, shrimp, Italian sausage or meatballs.
And that was the route that I took - well, once I was able to get Yovana back over to the table to take my food order. (She did apologize a couple of times during the course of the evening, but I was surprised that she was the only one working the floor of the restaurant.) I got the mostaciolli with the bolognese sauce, sliced fresh mushrooms, and four meatballs.
For as slow as the service was and as bad as the ambience of the place was, the pasta entree was - I felt - outstanding. The bolognese sauce was meaty and had chunks of tomatoes mixed in. The meatballs had a great Italian herb taste, and the combination of the mostaciolli pasta with the fresh mushrooms was a wonderful taste experience. I was really glad that I didn't bail on the place when I had the chance - more than once.
Sometimes you can't judge the book by the cover. But, quite actually, the outside of Bella Sera was nicer than the inside. The cheesy lounge decor, the neon lights and the pumping dance music aside - not to mention the slow service - I forgot about all of that with the pasta combination dinner I got that evening. It was one of the more surprising meals I've had at a restaurant where my expectations were so low by the time my meal was served to me. The mostaciolli with the meatballs, bologese sauce and sliced fresh mushrooms was simply outstanding. Had the meal been mediocre - at best - I would have been more harsh on the overall experience of the restaurant. But the food was good enough to balance out the bad that I experienced at Bella Sera.
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