Monteverde

Chicago has so much Italian food. And even if we rule out a hundred restaurants as mediocre ‘red sauce’ copycats, that still leaves dozens of really excellent Italian meals of every style and subregion. Therefore, to list yet another Italian restaurant, I always think something new needs to be offered – as a comparison, if anything. We’ve got ‘luxe Italian,’ ‘traditional Italian,’ ‘fashion Italian,’ but now we visit the West Loop’s hot spot Monteverde and I would be remiss not to highlight this as ‘cool Italian.’

Monteverde has been a highlight of Chicago’s dining scene for almost a decade, and continues strongly. The space is beautiful – bright, metropolitan, busy, and just noisy enough to be fun rather than disruptive. The menus are intensely Italian, but deserve strong credit in their creativity – they rarely pick the ‘standard’ Italian fare, rather, they tour around the peninsula, showing off interesting and delicious regional dishes with a downtown-Chicago flair.

The wine list pushes the ‘cool’ even further – it doesn’t need to be massive like some of its competitors; it maintains a skilled balance between representing classical Italian wines (plus a few also-rans) and showcasing exciting and interesting producers. Even for those of us who are Italian food and wine experts, Monteverde is a rare place where I can always look at the menu and say “...oh, that’s cool!”