About 20 years ago, a friend of mine and I drove into Chicago to go see the Iowa Hawkeyes play basketball at the United Center. We went in early to grab a bite to eat and my friend had a map to an Italian place that he wanted to try. I remember the place - it was on a corner at a T-intersection in a sort of residential area south of the United Center. But for the life of me, I couldn't remember the name of the place. I just remembered it was old school Italian and the food was very good.
Trying to find the place again was always something that I had in the back of my mind over the years, but unfortunately I never came across the old restaurant during all my trips to Chicago over the past 15 plus years. A good friend of mine at one of my dealers in Chicago had told me about a small Italian restaurant that he loved going to on S. Oakley in the middle of the original Little Italy (before the restaurants and businesses along Taylor Street took over that moniker years ago). My wife and I were in Chicago for an extended weekend and we decided to drive to the restaurant that my friend had raved about. When we pulled up in front of the place, we immediately had a problem - it was Monday night and it was closed. Then I looked down the street and saw something that was vaguely familiar to me. "Holy shit," I exclaimed as I drove up to the long lost restaurant I had eaten in 20 years ago. "This is the place!" It turns out that the name of the place was Bruna's Ristorante and it's one of the oldest Italian restaurants in the city of Chicago.
And when I mean one of the oldest, I mean the 3rd oldest Italian restaurant in Chicago, a city full of Italian heritage. The oldest restaurant is the venerable Italian Village which opened in 1927 in downtown Chicago, a place I've eaten at a couple times years ago, but it's sort of got a reputation as a tourist trap these days. The second oldest Italian restaurant in Chicago is Tufano's in the Vernon Park neighborhood just south and west of downtown Chicago opened in 1931. And Bruna's opened in 1933, just after the end of Prohibition.
Bruna Cani was born in Michigan to Tuscan immigrant parents in the late 1890's. Her family moved to Chicago when she was a young girl to the area of Chicago where a number of Tuscan immigrants were living on the city's southwest side. Bruna - known as "Bella Bruna" to family and friends - started to work at an Italian restaurant along S. Oakley at W. 24th Place called Orsi & Cani (Bear & Dog) in the late 1920's. She had a dispute with the owner of the restaurant and knowing that she could do a better job, she left there to open her own place just across the street.
Bruna wanted her place to be a lively place where neighbors would congregate for a good meal at a reasonable price. When "Bella Bruna" wasn't in the kitchen cooking up her famous dishes such as her famous slow-roasted Sunday chicken made with sage, rosemary and garlic, she would be in the dining room talking with her patrons or she would sometimes climb up on the top of the bar to dance and sing.
By the late 70's, Bruna was still running the restaurant with the help of her daughter Marylyn, also known as Mickey. But illness forced Bruna to sell the restaurant in 1981 to Luciano Silvestri. Silvestri was a native of Siena in central Italy's Tuscany region, the same area where Bruna Cani's parents were born. Silvestri had a long history of culinary experience starting at restaurants in his hometown and working world class restaurants Switzerland and London. He then worked in the kitchens on ocean-going cruise ships, as well as at the world-renown Villa d'Este resort along Lake Como before he moved to Chicago in 1977. Not only did Luciano keep all of Bruna's time-tested dishes on the menu, but he brought a number of his own family's recipes along to add to the already long list of great dishes at Bruna's Ristorante. In addition to his knowledge of food, Silvestri also upgraded the wine selection at Bruna's offering a number of California and Italian wines, including a house wine that he exclusively imports from a winery near his hometown of Siena.
In fact, it was Luciano Silvestri who greeted us when we walked in the door at Bruna's Ristorante after we had parked just down the street on W. 24th St. Place. (see map) A shorter man with a barrel chest, Luciano was welcoming and outgoing as he showed us past the bar area to the dining room in the back.
Upon entering the dining room, I told my wife, "Oh, yeah. This is the place." It had the same framed oil paintings on the wall that I remembered. The decor looked like we had walked into the 1930's, the tables were all topped with linen table cloths, and it had a great cozy feeling to the room. I think she was just as excited for me finally finding the place again after all these years as she was excited about having some old school Italian food that evening.
We were given food menus to look over and I figured that we'd both be getting foods with red sauces so I ordered up a bottle of the Ruffino Chianti Classico Reserva Ducale Oro for us to enjoy that evening. My wife has been on a chianti kick as of late, and while I would have rather had a meat cabernet that evening, I knew she'd like this medium red from Italy to have with dinner.
The menu was classic Italian with pasta dishes, chicken, beef and veal entrees, seafood offerings, as well as a number of Italian appetizers such as fried calamari, prosciutto and melon, bruschetta, and even a sausage and peppers appetizer. They had a handful of chef's specials that evening, as well, including a seafood special, a pasta special, and a steak special.
We had ordered up our food and after we both had a simple dinner salad with their house oil and vinegar Italian dressing on it, our food made it to the table. My wife had ordered the chicken cacciatore. Now, she'd had he chicken cacciatore in the past - it's usually a boneless chicken breast or a chicken breast with a thigh, in a tomato sauce with peppers and veggies. But when our waiter brought her chicken cacciatore to the table, her eyes got as big as saucers. "Oh my," she exclaimed as he sat it in front of her. "I wasn't expecting this!" She didn't know if she would like it or not.
It was a half-chicken swimming in a tomato/chicken broth sauce with a medley of green and red peppers, sliced mushrooms, and green and black olives. It also came with a side of a mashed potato and a plate of asparagus. I told that she didn't have to eat the whole thing and she assured me that she probably wouldn't.
She cut off some of the chicken, took her first bite and said, "Oh my gosh! This is excellent!" By the time she was through, she had made a significant dent in the chicken cacciatore. "I didn't want to stop eating it, it was so good," she said before the waiter took it away from her.
One of the chef's specialties on the menu was the meat-filled ravioli. It came with the marinara sauce, but I asked the waiter if I could get the bolognese sauce on it. He said it would be no problem. And for good measure, I asked him to add a couple of meatballs.
The ravioli were definitely housemade with large pasta pillows filled with a blended beef/veal/pork mixture. The bolognese sauce was meaty and thick, almost too thick. And the meatballs were delicious with not too much breading in them and a great pork/veal/beef taste. The ravioli with the meat sauce was absolutely wonderful, but I determined about halfway through my dinner that I should have probably gone with the marinara - there was a lot of meat on my plate between the meat-filled ravioli, the meatballs and the bolognese sauce.
We finished off the evening with a piece of Bruna's housemade tiramisu. It was served on a plate where they had drizzled "Happy Holidays" in chocolate sauce (since it was just right around Christmas when we were there). And it came with two plates where they had put a heart with an arrow through it with powdered chocolate. It was a kind of a nice little touch for them to do that.
The presentation was only topped by the wonderful rich taste of the tiramisu. We both had a lot to eat for our meals, but we couldn't resist finishing off the last morsel of the excellent tiramisu. It was a great ending to a great meal.
It took me a number of years to reconnect with Bruna's Ristorante given that I ate there just once before, and I couldn't remember either the name of the place or where it was exactly in Chicago. It was just fortuitous that we stumbled on it that evening while looking for another restaurant the area that happened to be closed that night. And everything I remember about it was the same. Bruna's Ristorante isn't fancy, by any stretch. Some may even call the decor dated and tired. But if you looked past that and imagined yourself in your Italian grandmother's house having a great home cooked meal, then you'll love the classic old-school Italian cuisine they serve at Bruna's.
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