Last year, a friend of mine told me about how great the food was at Ignotz Ristorante on S. Oakley Ave. in Chicago. My wife and I were in Chicago last winter on a Monday night and decided to find Ignotz to have dinner there. Unfortunately, Ignotz is closed on Monday's, but we were able to find a restaurant that I had eaten at years ago, but I could never remember the name of the place - which was Bruna's Ristorante - or where it was located. (Click here to see the Road Tips review on Bruna's.) We were determined to go back to Ignotz Ristorante at some point and during a weekend trip into Chicago late last spring, we ended up having dinner there.
Roger Wroblewski grew up near the small "Heart of Italy" enclave in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. His family had settled in the area in the late 19th century working in nearby factories. The 1930's thru the 1950's were the golden years of the neighborhood with a number of restaurants, retail store fronts, and bakeries sprouting up along Oakley Street.
When the nearby McCormick/International Harvester plant closed in the late 1950's, it signaled the start of a mass exodus of Italian families to the suburbs of Chicago. The Italian emphasis of the neighborhood was still there, and S. Oakley Street was still a thriving magnet for dining and nightlife into the 70's. But Taylor Street soon became known as "Little Italy" with the opening of a number of Italian restaurants and bakeries up and down the street beginning in the 80's as some of the restaurants, bakeries and store fronts in the Heart of Italy neighborhood closed down.
Roger Wroblewski's only restaurant experience was as a teenager working in the kitchen of the neighborhood Woolworth's store. So, it was no wonder that his wife Joan thought he was out of his mind when he announced that he was going to open an Italian restaurant in 1999. But Wroblewski was certain that he could make a go of the restaurant and he named it after his father-in-law Ignatius. He hired Frank Thomas to be his head chef and next year Ignotz will celebrate 20 years in business.
It was an unseasonably cold Sunday evening when we made our way to Ignotz Rristorante. I had called earlier in the day to make reservations and Roger Wroblewski answered the phone. "Uh, I don't know if we'll be open for dinner tonight," he said over the phone. He explained that he had two receptions going on at once. "Somehow, they got double-booked and it's sort of taxed us today." He said that he captured my number and he would let me know by 6:00 p.m. if they would be open. At 6:15, he texted me and said, "Come on in! We're open tonight!"
We found parking just down the street from Ignotz on S. Oakley. (see map) We walked down a long brick- walled corridor off Oakley to the entrance of Ignotz. We were greeted by Roger Wroblewski, an amiable guy with a quick smile and bright blue eyes. His Chicago accent was heavy when we were talking on the phone and he seemed genuinely happy that we were able to make it in. I told him that we had tried to come on a Monday - "No, we're closed on Mondays," he said - and then when he told me on the phone that he didn't know if we would be able to have dinner there again that night, we were sort of crestfallen. He threw up his hands and said, "Oh, this was just a mess today. We didn't have our calendars coordinated. But we made it through all right. Please, have a seat anywhere."
The dining room was small and cozy with a large mural on one wall and a fireplace hearth on the opposite wall. A number of tables were somewhat jammed into the room and I could see where if the place was packed it may be a bit overwhelming with people seated so close together. There was a bar area in the back of the restaurant and they had a reception room opposite the dining area on the other side of the long outside corridor. Old time Italian crooners such as Dean Martin, Jerry Vale, and Tony Bennett were playing in the background.
Our server for the evening was Lisa, a very nice and very outgoing young lady who said she lived in the neighborhood and had worked part-time at Ignotz for a number of years. She brought out a basket of warm bread that Ignotz gets daily from the great D'Amato's Bakery and a large head of roasted garlic to spread on the bread. My wife and I remarked that we had a garlic roaster at home and it was so easy to do something like this on our own. The bread with the roasted garlic spread across the face was delicious.
The menu at Ignotz could be easily characterized as Old School Italian. They had a number of pasta dishes, chicken and beef - including veal - entrees, and some seafood items to choose from. Lisa told us that Ignotz was also well-known for their thin-crust pizza. We saw one that someone was coming in to take out and it looked very good.
After we started out with minestrone soup for my wife and a house Italian salad for me, our entrees showed up. My wife got the Veal Alexis - one of three dishes named after Roger and Joan Wroblewski's three daughters. It featured veal medallions with chopped artichoke hearts and sliced mushrooms in a light white wine sauce. The veal was so tender that my wife never needed the knife that was provided for the meal.
She also got a side of the fettuccine with Ignotz's brandy cream sauce. I had a bite of it after my wife raved about the fettuccine, but I thought I was a bit too sweet for my tastes. She loved it, though.
I ended up going with the meat-filled ravioli in Ignotz's signature marinara sauce. I asked Lisa if I could get a couple meatballs with the ravioli and she said it would be no problem. "Our chef can pretty much do about anything you like," she told us. "He makes almost everything from scratch in the kitchen." And the ravioli with the marinara sauce certainly tasted like it was all made from scratch. The marinara was slight sweet with a tangy taste. The individual ravioli were large and packed full of a ground pork/beef/veal mixture. It was a lot of food.
But the meatballs were simply outstanding. They may have been the best meatballs I've ever had. They were moist, flavorful, tender, and utterly delicious. We had ordered a bottle of the Coltibuono Cetamura Chianti, a reasonably priced red wine that went extremely well with my ravioli and meatballs, and my wife's veal.
We ate as much as we could, but the portions were huge. Lisa came over and asked if we wanted boxes to take our leftovers home. My wife explained that we were traveling and, besides, it never tastes as good heated up as it does in the restaurant. "Where are you folks from," Lisa asked. We told her we were from the Iowa Quad Cities and she said, "Really? That's great! We get a few out-of-town people in here. It's mainly a lot of people from the neighborhood and surrounding area."
Lisa told us that we would both get complimentary spumoni ice cream after our meal. But I wanted to have some of their house-made tiramisu. She sort of cringed and said, "You know, I think we sold out of our tiramisu today with the two receptions we had." She went back into the kitchen to check and came back out and said, "No, I'm sorry. We're out." She said that they did have cannoli's and we decided to get one of those along with a scoop of the spumoni. The cannoli was very good, but it wasn't tiramisu that we had hoped to try.
Roger Wroblewski came over to our table about halfway through the meal and said that he had to take off for a moment and didn't know if he would be back before we were finished with our meal. He asked how our meals were and we said they were outstanding. "Thanks again for stopping in tonight, folks," he said in a very appreciative manner. "I'm glad we were able to get you in tonight."
And Ignotz Ristorante was just that kind of a place - welcoming, warm, charming, cozy, and comfortable. From the time we arrived to the time we left, we felt at home at Ignotz. The food, we felt, was very good, the portions were large, and the service was friendly and efficient. This is a great little family-run Italian restaurant in the Heart of Italy neighborhood that more than holds their own against some of the more upscale Italian restaurants in the Chicagoland area. And it may have become our most favorite Italian place to eat at in Chicago.
Comments