Roger Ramjet wrote:zoid wrote:With the Italian mom and pop shops along North Avenue and Harlem, along with places like Caputo's and Freddy's in the Oak Park-Cicero-River Forrest area I'm struggling to figure out why I would slog downtown.
With a great high-quality Italian store right downtown offering a ton of outstanding options, I have no reason to slog out to the far reaches of North Avenue, let alone the Oak Park Cicero River Forest area! Hurray!!
Roger Ramjet wrote:Well okay then.
"Produce" - that's the stuff they make salads out of, right? Don't think I care much about produce, nohow.
ronnie_suburban wrote:Roger Ramjet wrote:Well okay then.
"Produce" - that's the stuff they make salads out of, right? Don't think I care much about produce, nohow.
It's a necessary evil!
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hsm wrote:Bemused to find Garafalo spaghetti priced far higher than what I pay for it. At Costco.
ronnie_suburban wrote:BR wrote:jordanhojo wrote:Although the crust is delicious, I found the pizza to be extremely soggy, caused by a combination of things, with the excessive use of olive oil drizzled over the top the primary culprit. Great ingredients, poor execution.
My understanding is that they're going for authentic Neapolitan, where the crust gets wetter/soggier towards the middle. It's not my personal favorite style, but I believe that's the exact style they're going for. They used to do that more at Spacca Napoli although at some point SN transitioned to pizzas that are far less wet in the middle.
I've heard from a couple of other folks that pizzas were soggy throughout, not just in their centers. Give them time, I guess.
I found Eataly to be remarkably annoying and I was there when it was fairly empty, at about 7 pm on a Monday evening.
I'm sure shopping can be fine. I found it an overwhelming, stressful branding gang-bang that felt pasteurized, soulless and insincere. I know that many of the items on the shelves and in the cases are of good quality but prices were high and it would take a great deal of costly trial and error to learn what's great and what isn't. Conversely, at a place like J.P. Graziano, for example, I know the proprietor, trust him and know that if it's in his shop, an item has been suitably curated. With 'feel good' billboards touting self-created brands throughout the shopping area at Eataly, it felt the exactly opposite. Totally impersonal. Additionally, produce was abysmal and I don't see how on earth they're going to move some of that inventory (salumi, cheeses) before it expires.
I ate at 2 of the foodcourt eateries upstairs: Verdure and Carne. Verdure was the better of the 2. I liked the 3 dishes we had but the bill for those and a round of tap water came to $48 before tax and tip. Ouch! I also didn't appreciate our server trying to upsell us on the $44/bottle balsamic vinegar that adorned one of the dishes we ordered.
At Carne we had 4 dishes. 1 was great -- the Cotechino. A lamb shoulder steak was tasty enough. Beef hearts were overly chewy and lifeless. A poorly cooked strip steak was virtually devoid of flavor. It was seared on only one side and was not allowed to rest long enough before it was served. Fail.
I think the overall set-up is lousy, too. It's really hard, if possible at all, for a group of people to get food from the different upstairs eateries and then all eat together. I know there's a pen for eating food from the upstairs grocery counters. I know this because it was pointed out to me by a manager-type while my companions and I snacked on some prosciutto I'd picked up while waiting for our dishes to arrive at Verdure. I got a brief lecture on how they don't typically allow that but they would in this case. I'd offered to pay for the $8 of prosciutto at the counter where I got it and also again when the manager spoke to us, but neither of those were options. Instead, I was told to keep the sticker from the butcher paper and make sure to pay for it downstairs when I left. I assured the manager that I was an honorable person, while thinking how incredibly short-sighted it was that customers were expected to go all the way downstairs to pay for such items.
I can see making a special trip for an ingredient that I might not find anywhere else but I cannot imagine making this a regular stop. In fact, given the location and the parking situation, I'd find it fairly surprising if anyone who doesn't live or work in the immediate vicinity stopped in here on a regular basis for anything.
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Pie-love wrote:Eatlaly NYC gets in trouble for liquor license violations:
http://nypost.com/2014/03/26/eatalys-wi ... sales-ban/
I hope these don't affect Chicago...
Independent George wrote:I have a dumb question that I wish I'd have thought first. What do they call the Eataly locations in Italy (or Japan, Turkey, and Dubai, for that matter)? The pun (or play on words) doesn't work outside of English...
Eataly Replaces La Carne With Osteria Eataly, an All-Around Italian Restaurant
pairs4life wrote:I haven't been since spring but love the food and shopping here. Oh and that gelato.!
David Hammond wrote:pairs4life wrote:I haven't been since spring but love the food and shopping here. Oh and that gelato.!
Mind-blowing discovery is outstanding pistachio gelato at Connie's in the Viagra Triangle. Better than anything I had in Florence, so full of nutty flavor, amazingly good.
pairs4life wrote:David Hammond wrote:pairs4life wrote:I haven't been since spring but love the food and shopping here. Oh and that gelato.!
Mind-blowing discovery is outstanding pistachio gelato at Connie's in the Viagra Triangle. Better than anything I had in Florence, so full of nutty flavor, amazingly good.
Connie's? I have not heard of it.
ews wrote:So how busy is Eataly these days? We've got some out of town visitors . . . can we just walk in a get a table at 8pm on a Thursday night at one of the sit down restaurants?