teatpuller wrote:Just a snippet on Da Luciano. A couple of elderly old ladies from church told me this was the best restaurant in River Grove.
(pregnant pause)
So I decided to check it out. Called Saturday afternoon for a reservation, but they were already booked up for the night! However, after some negotiation, they were able to fit me in at 5:00.
The space is nice and tidy, "fresh" even. I prefer dark and grimy, but to each his own.
The menu is quite middle-of-the-road. Typical pseudo-Italian pastas, veal, chicken, etc. The only thing of interest I saw was a daily special of tripe, which I am kicking myself for not getting.
I was in the mood for pasta, but somehow wound up ordering lasagne with marinara sauce. It was fine. What my non-Italian mother would have made back in the 70s if she were a decent cook. Wife had the fettucine salmonate, which was an enormous portion of linguine in a creme sauce of smoked and non-smoked salmon. She said it was good and given her general food snootiness level, I believed her.
Kids had a cheese pizza, which was fine. Certainly nothing to seek out.
All in all, everyone left happy. I would return under the right circumstances. A great place to go with fussy eaters, because there's nothing to assault your palate here. Service was pleasant.
DKoblesky wrote:teatpuller wrote:Just a snippet on Da Luciano. A couple of elderly old ladies from church told me this was the best restaurant in River Grove.
(pregnant pause)
So I decided to check it out. Called Saturday afternoon for a reservation, but they were already booked up for the night! However, after some negotiation, they were able to fit me in at 5:00.
The space is nice and tidy, "fresh" even. I prefer dark and grimy, but to each his own.
The menu is quite middle-of-the-road. Typical pseudo-Italian pastas, veal, chicken, etc. The only thing of interest I saw was a daily special of tripe, which I am kicking myself for not getting.
I was in the mood for pasta, but somehow wound up ordering lasagne with marinara sauce. It was fine. What my non-Italian mother would have made back in the 70s if she were a decent cook. Wife had the fettucine salmonate, which was an enormous portion of linguine in a creme sauce of smoked and non-smoked salmon. She said it was good and given her general food snootiness level, I believed her.
Kids had a cheese pizza, which was fine. Certainly nothing to seek out.
All in all, everyone left happy. I would return under the right circumstances. A great place to go with fussy eaters, because there's nothing to assault your palate here. Service was pleasant.
What distinguishes Da Luciano is that they have an extensive gluten-free menu. My wife and I recently went there with a friend and his partner - I chose it because my friend avoids gluten and so was able to have a full pasta dish without gluten. In other words, no ordering 'around' the menu to find something right and then pushing food around on the plate, i.e. not really having dinner.
That being said, the generic pasta dishes (we all tasted each others) were just ok, as you say, it seemed kind of middle of the road - but I ordered Risotto Pescatore and I found it to be very enjoyable. Now it may be that, as a Midwest resident for all of my life I do often have the pleasure of a plate full of clams and oysters mixed with scallops and whatever else was in there and rich creamy risotto. Seems pretty exotic and fun. It may be middle of the road Risotto Pescatore for all I know, but I liked it.
But it is a charming place with good service and a wine list and you can happily take a friend who needs a gluten-free dinner there for a full Italian dinner.
chicagotribune.com wrote:The father-and-son owners of a popular Italian restaurant in west suburban River Grove have been charged with evading federal income taxes by failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash receipts.
Luciano Libreri, 67, and his son, Ignazio, 36, who together own Da Luciano Pizza and Pasta, were each charged in a criminal information with one felony count of tax fraud, court records show.
ronnie_suburban wrote:chicagotribune.com wrote:Luciano Libreri, 67, and his son, Ignazio, 36, who together own Da Luciano Pizza and Pasta, were each charged in a criminal information with one felony count of tax fraud, court records show.
As somebody with journalistic training, could this story have been better presented if the adjective "popular" had been omitted?Some fish-wrapping publication with a tower on N. Michigan Ave. wrote: The father-and-son owners of a popular Italian restaurant in west suburban River Grove have been charged with evading federal income taxes by failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash receipts.
Luciano Libreri, 67, and his son, Ignazio, 36, who together own Da Luciano Pizza and Pasta, were each charged in a criminal information with one felony count of tax fraud, court records show.