Washed up in the wave of high-profile Italian openings (Bar Toma, Balena, even Nellcote) are two restaurants that couldn’t be more at odds: RPM and Bar Ombra. The next time I want to disappear I’m headed for the latter, the Venetian-style bar from Marty Fosse and Tim Rasmussen, a radical transformation of one-half of their once overextended farm-to-table concept Acre, which continues to operate alongside Ombra in the same Andersonville space.

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These tight quarters are at odds with the sheer volume and variety of the kitchen’s output. The menu by Anteprima/Acre executive chef Carlos Ysaguirre focuses on cicchetti, little bar snacks analogous to Spanish tapas that are the trade in Venetian bars. The selection, broken into ten categories, is more regional than strictly northern, and big enough to baffle. Helpfully, much of it is arrayed on platters behind glass, allowing pointing rather than puzzling over the menu. One of my conspirators observed that this display looked like the deli counter at Jewel, but many of these things, particularly salads—broccoli with chili and lemon, olive-feta-grapefruit salad, beans-cabbage-radishes—have forgiving shelf lives, and are their best consumed at room temperature.

Polenta is a recurring delivery vehicle, baked and cut from creamy sheets, the platform for a kind of brandade (baccala mantecato), the foundation of an entree-size lasagna, or the drowning victim in a massive serving of squid cooked in its own ink. Like shredded sneaker rubber in shoe polish, the calamari neri was the only naked failure I encountered (our server, to his credit, did warn us to stay away from it).

It would be easy to dismiss this as yet another shallow River North birdbath for the likes that frequent Paris Club and Hub 51, but that’s only if you neglect to note the “P” in RPM, which stands for Doug Psaltis, the chef, who worked for Alain Ducasse and in a number of well-regarded Manhattan restaurants before joining Empire Lettuce for better (L2O) and perhaps worse (Paris Club).

In terms of the food this might be the most winnable restaurant yet from the Melman siblings. But that’s not enough to get me back inside. If you’re looking for me, try Bar Ombra.

5310 N. Clark

773-506-8600

barombra.com

RPM Italian

52 W. Illinois

312-222-1888

rpmitalian.com