Back when I worked in the neighborhood, not a week went by that I didn’t stop at L’Appetito, the little near-north-side Italian deli on Huron now in its 33rd year. Whether it was for an espresso and panino, a cup of gelato, a bottle of good olive oil, a pound of imported pasta, or a chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano, L’Appetito was a quick and essential part of my routine that helped me eat well during the workday and at home. These days it’s easier for me to access other great little Italian deli/markets in less central neighborhoods, like Bari Foods on Grand, J.P. Graziano on Randolph, and Riviera on Harlem. These are places I’m willing to drive out of my way to visit, not just for their thoughtfully selected products, but for the genuine human interaction you can have with people who’ve been immersed in Italian food all their lives.
Comparisons to Ikea’s inescapable floor plans are often made, but wandering around Eataly I often felt I was in a culinary version of Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Library of Babel,” where the bookshelves contain every possible arrangement of the alphabet, resulting in an information overload that renders it useless to anyone who wants to find a readable book. At Eataly, instead of books it’s pesto sauces and dried pasta, olive oils and vinegars, wine and salami, and eight different kinds of raw-milk Parmigiano. Somewhere, amid the dozens of different brands of tomato sauce, is the right one. But how will you ever know?
Le Verdure also has some appealing dishes apart from the aforementioned grilled bitter greens, including gnocchi with tomato and mushroom ragu, and an “egg in purgatory,” baked in polenta with tomato sauce. But it’s the barely cooked vegetables here that stand out from the rest, including a selection of just-warmed green beans, carrots, brussels sprouts, rapini, and zucchini (far fresher than the limp-looking produce on the first floor) tossed with nutty farro and dressed with a light Nebbiolo vinaigrette. A selection of crudites is arranged around a tub of bagna cauda, the emulsified anchovy and olive oil dip that should replace hummus as the nation’s leading carrot-stick accompaniment.
I haven’t visited Eataly’s two coffee bars, but I’ve already written about its Rosticceria, where a hunk of slow-roasted meat (which changes daily) is sliced onto sandwiches that are ultimately overwhelmed by the rustic bread. The same is true at the I Panini station on the first floor, where the sandwiches spend too little time under the press, and the fillings remain cold.
*Baffo opened a few weeks later than the rest of the store; I’ll be reviewing it separately.
43 E. Ohio 312-521-8700eataly.com/eataly-chicago
