Conscious Choice: Italian Comfort Food

July 2001 | Conscious Dining

Italian Comfort Food

by Lauren Malloy

Scarola is Italian for "escarole," which is not only the namesake of La Scarola, but also a prominent ingredient in many of the restaurant’s dishes. While Italy is perhaps best known for its pizzas and pastas, vegetables also play a notable role in this healthful cuisine, something La Scarola proudly reflects in its more than ample selection of vegetable appetizers and soul-satisfying soups and pasta dishes.

Marked by a nondescript sign as faded as the era the restaurant is meant to represent, La Scarola could well be a hangout for the Soprano family. Everything about it screams good old-fashioned neighborhood Italian restaurant, from big plates of pasta to owners who know the customers by name. It’s the kind of place where you’ll find old-school Chicago guys, discussing business between bites of pasta, perhaps imbibing the occasional lunch-time martini. Some are dressed in suits, others in casual attire, but nearly all are wearing some kind of gold jewelry and using their hands to punctuate the conversation. Devoid of the usual predominance of trendy, young, urban types, many a table is filled with stylish, well-groomed older people. There’s no loud music, only Sinatra, traditional Italian songs, or other softer tunes of our parents’ time.

Of the two rooms that make up the homey space, there’s more action in the front room than the back. It’s noisier, livelier, and brighter, and home to the open kitchen, which is invariably clattering away with the mingled sounds of cooking, laughter, and Spanish. For some reason, people seem to prefer the front room, perhaps because it is nonsmoking, but I’ve yet to see a smoker in the back room. The question of which room to choose becomes a moot point at dinner, since the entire place is usually filled by as early as 6:30 pm with a nonstop wave of people that doesn’t die down until around 9:00 pm — even on a Tuesday. At lunch, however, when there’s more room, La Scarola’s staff greets visitors with the welcoming refrain, "Sit wherever you’d like."

Both rooms are lined from ceiling to floor with celebrity photos, many of which feature the familiar face of the restaurant’s maitre de, who can usually be seen walking around the restaurant or sitting or standing with longtime customers. While some photos are carryovers from Kelly Mondelli’s, a Chicago restaurant popular in the eighties that was owned and run by La Scarola’s maitre de, the majority have accumulated over the three years since the restaurant opened. According to owner Armando Vasquez the large number of celebrity photographs is due to the restaurant’s popularity with people working in the television industry. While the restaurant may be young, its sign is made to look old, reflecting the theme the restaurant is modeled after — the little Italian restaurant in New York City’s Little Italy.

La Scarola is a great feast for lunch, especially for diners who work downtown with the time or inclination to head west of the Loop. Daily specials — typically comprising a few pasta, seafood, veal, or chicken entrées — also come with a cup of homemade soup. More than a dozen pastas, priced at no more than seven or eight dollars, form mountainous heaps on oval platters. For lighter options, soups and appetizers often form a complete meal. In addition to the soup of the day, the regular menu carries five soups. Of those I tried, various combinations of beans, vegetables, and pastini towered high above the broth. They also made an excellent dip for the crusty bread that accompanied them.

Escarole makes its debut in several menu items — escarole and beans, sautéed escarole, escarole soup, and escarole and bean soup. I preferred the bean combinations to plain escarole, which, by itself, tasted a bit bland. When paired with cannellini beans, as it was in the Escarole and Beans appetizer, the beans lent a creaminess to the broth, giving the dish a heartiness and slightly salty edge that neither ingredient could achieve on its own. Also delicious was the Pasta Fajioli (pronounced "fah-jool" by the staff), which teamed those same creamy beans with just a bit of escarole and other vegetables, but mainly with pastini, or tiny rings of pasta that never got soggy, even in the midst of the liquid broth. Hints of wine and cheese added decadence to the mixture.

Dinner at La Scarola is the more popular time to go, but unlike a few other Chicago trattorias, customers waiting for tables aren’t spilling into every orifice of the place, since the restaurant does accept, and even encourages, reservations. At dinner, the same array of pastas offered at lunchtime are still on the menu, but priced a few dollars higher, and augmented by more options for risotto, veal, chicken, and seafood. The specials typically include several other vegetable dishes that could work as either an appetizer or side dish, such as Italian Green Beans or Broccoli Rapini. The kitchen will cook to order any other vegetable a customer requests, such as grilled vegetables, or steamed asparagus, as long as they have the ingredients on hand.

While many Italian restaurants tend to emphasize nonpasta dishes as the stars of their menus, La Scarola seems to give equal billing to both. Of the pastas, my favorite was the Risotto Primavera, which, of course, is not actually a pasta. My dining partner and I had to chuckle when we saw the size of the pile of rice we were expected to consume. Rice was melded together with big chunks of broccoli, artichokes, and mushrooms through a combination of goat cheese, olive oil, and the sheer force of the chef’s stirring. While it wasn’t as creamy as the strictest definition of risotto might suggest, it was satisfying in a different kind of way. A bit of steam emerged as I pulled each tasty ball of rice away from the mound.

Also delicious was the Broccoli and Goat Cheese pasta, this time served in a light olive oil, garlic, and wine sauce over orecchetti (ear-shaped pasta) along with sun-dried tomatoes and wilted spinach. The pasta, shaped more like hats than ears, was cooked nicely al dente and therefore sturdy enough to cling to the folds of the spinach and tomatoes. Large florets of broccoli bloomed generously throughout the plate.

Seafood pasta specials tended to pair shrimp or other shellfish with the restaurant’s signature tomato sauce. The one I tried, Pasta Giovanni, is a popular choice from the regular menu that combines shrimp pieces, mushrooms, peas, and tomato sauce with farfalle (bow-tie) pasta and a bit of cream. Also cooked expertly al dente, and spruced up with thick cuts of mushrooms and bits of tomato, it was just the right proportion of sauce, vegetables, and shrimp.

Less successful was the Macaroni Arrabiata. While this dish is usually served with penne rigate, and as fiery as its name would suggest (arrabiata means "angry"), La Scarola’s version, made with rigatoni and baked in the oven, reminded me more of the kind of ziti casserole one often finds at potlucks. Overcooked pieces of rigatoni sat in a watery pool of not very spicy tomato sauce, with not quite enough mozzarella and basil to add sufficient variety.

The house salad is a nice contrast to balance the hearty flavors of the pasta. A cross between the classic Italian dinner salad and the baby greens salad of the nineties, both fancy and old-fashioned varieties of lettuce commingle in a dressing of olive oil and vinegar that is finished with black olives and pepperocini. As far as the other appetizers are concerned, the escarole and other vegetables dishes, as well as the soups, might be too filling to go along with the oversized pasta dishes, but antipasto or fried calamari for the whole table might work. I didn’t much care for La Scarola’s version of bruschetta, which paired the usual combination of toast, tomatoes, olive oil, and garlic with a large quantity of romano cheese that rendered the bread a bit soggy and drowned out the taste of the tomatoes.

One rather nice aspect to the close of a meal at La Scarola is the excellent cappuccino it serves. Desserts are simple and traditional, including a cannoli sprinkled on both ends of the shell with nuts in the manner of a soft ice cream cone, along with other favorites such as spumoni or tiramisu. No bones about it, for those in the mood for authentic Italian shtick, La Scarola is the place to go.

La Scarola, 721 W. Grand Avenue, Chicago, 312-243-1740

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: