Piccolo Sogno/Mado

The restaurant revolves around ingredients. Ingredients constitute dishes and form the menu. It is everything: the food, the drinks, the environment, and the experience. The creative venture embarked by chefs and restaurateurs throughout the city is so closely linked to the ingredients used, it has to be viewed as the fundamental building block of any food producing business. I have recently visited two fairly new restaurants in Chicagoland with differing perspectives and applications of ingredients that exemplifies not only the dichotomy of food service, but also greater economic trends in the growing confusion of current American consumer culture. (I am coining this trend as “glocal consumerism,” which refers to the desire and awareness to consume both specialized foreign goods and uniquely local creations concurrently.) This exploration revolves around the restaurants Piccolo Sogno in River North and Mado in Bucktown. Piccolo Sogno, the long-awaited brain child of Chef Tony Priolo (Coco Pazzo, Coco Pazzo Café), which focuses on a pure Italian experience dependent on all-Italian, artisan ingredients from olive oil to flour. Contrastingly, husband and wife Robert and Allison Levitt (312 Chicago, North Pond) have build Mado on local, sustainable ingredients from farms across the midwest. Both Chef teams stress the importance of ingredients in the quality and mission of their food, but differ on where those items should originate: from the traditional grounds of creation to ensure completely authentic flavor, or the specialness of entirely local products fostering the use of the surrounding economy and produce. Herein lies the dilemma: we want both!

 

First of all the colors are different: white and Mediterranean blue at Piccolo Sogno, all culminating through the wide doors leading to the multi-tiered patio filled with cobblestone and greenery, and the brown brick enclave of Mado with its deep burgundy seats and minimalist murals hanging next to the green, always work-in-progress chalkboard menu. The teetering crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceilings at Piccolo Sogno give the first hint to the frenzied environment of rushed servers delivering an unorganized presentation of a fresh menu and a seemingly fleeting wine collection. While Mado’s simple hosting table is a guest’s first view of a corresponding menu focussed on practiced, fresh technique but lacking completeness of flavor. 

 

At Piccolo Sogno, my dining companion and I were met by a friendly, flustered hostess trying to decide where to put us. We sat in the main inside dining room across from the gaping patio doors, next to the bustling kitchen, with the antipasti platter beckoning us with its olives, figs, and giant cured pork leg ready to be sliced. The greeting from our server was so rushed, it was lost in the movement of the space and the enjoyment of the olive oil and balsamic vinegar preset on our table. I finally got into a glass of Torre Gaia Asprinio di Aversa from Campania and was met with beautiful bubbles, fruit, and acidity. (Italy truly blows my mind with the range of wines it encompasses: every region has its sparkling, white, red, and sweet wines which define it.) We ordered our food from our server, who, unfortunately, tried to portray his knowledge with a fake Italian accent, while I could picture him just as easily bartending in Wrigleyville. He was inevitably eclipsed by the arugula salad with ripe peaches and fresh goat cheese. The crispness of the arugula paired with the dry cream of the cheese was perfectly rounded by the sweetness of the the peaches. The healthy noise from the patio boomed as we were served our main courses: four cheese ravioli and yellow fin tuna with Sicilian vegetables and raisins. We were without wine when the food hit, which was disappointing and further compounded with unmentioned gaps in the wine list. We ended up with unexpectedly successful recommendations from our server: Santadi Monica di Sardegna (Sardinian wine, check it out) and Arnaldo Caprai Grecante, an impressively delicate and floral wine from Umbria, made from the grechetto grape. The grechetto stood up to my bold tuna dish, which highlighted the the meaty texture of the fish with the substance of squash and the sweetness of the dried fruit. All together, it tasted like an amazing bar-b-que sauce in meat and vegetable form. By the end of our entrées, we felt a little forgotten and decided to depart, but we left truly impressed with Chef Priolo’s divulgement into authentic Italian ingredients and application.

 

Mado is fairly new and still a BYO at this point, which is very attractive in my opinion. To not be defined by a wine list is almost liberating. We brought two bottles: a Txacholi, a white from the Spanish Basque region, and Anthos Vino Da Tavola, made from the brachetto grape usually made into a sweet, efforvescent wine, here a dry application that still had the exotic nose of the sweet wine. It was so unique and literally smelled like cranberries sprayed with Vera Wang’s Princess: candied fruit and hugely floral.  We started with wax beans, baby octopus, and a duck liver terrine. Our entrées of hanger stake and rainbow trout came promptly after. Every dish was simple in its composition but lacked in in completeness. It was as if each item was missing that something that would make it really hit. With the octopus it was acid, the terrine needed fruit, the hanger steak wanted some sort of glaze, and the trout with cherry tomatoes and fennel was missing an herb, maybe even black pepper. The true highlight was the shortbread cookies at the end: perfectly buttery, sugared, and crumbly at the slightest pressure. We wanted to order a dozen to take home. 

 

Both restaurants are quite new and still discovering how their ingredient-driven menus materialize into an approachable service. At Piccolo Sogno, it is how that service is organized to best accentuate the menu and the individual needs of the guests. Mado, comparatively, needs a way to highlight the obvious comprehension of classic techniques with more complete flavor profiles. Each Chef team is clearly creating a niche in current Chicago cuisine with the focus on ingredients and preparation. Even if we as glocal consumers are confused about what we want, it is exiting to know that Chefs in this city are exploring the importance of ingredients and exposing us to the freshest and most unique products available.