It’s rarely a good sign when a takeout/delivery joint offers everything from crab legs to linguini with clam sauce, plus grilled cheese, Italian beef, fried chicken, barbecued ribs, and pizza. But for decades that’s exactly what Angelo’s did from a dreary storefront in Albany Park. The harsh lighting did little to sell the cardboard slices moldering on display in the front window, but the place had its devotees. Then earlier this year things suddenly went dark and Angelo’s Wine Bar rose up behind the papered windows. Now it’s got a spiffy dinning room with reclaimed-wood walls interrupted by a solid line of flatscreens playing classic Italian cinema, a glassed-in wine cave, and an honest-to-god sommelier roaming around. It joins Breakroom Brewery and Ixcateco Grill in the upscaling trend taking over this once working-class neighborhood full of taquerias and South American chicken joints.
The other bright side is that the auxiliary sections of Angelo’s food menu seem to perform a bit better than the pizzas: a grape tomato caprese salad with good balsamic vinegar and burrata that behaved the way it’s supposed to; a mound of sausage in a rich, thick tomato gravy with banana peppers and crispy new potatoes; and a simple plate of roasted vegetables all bode well for a new neighborhood hangout (if you can avoid the TV overload) that’s not like anything else in the area.
