The shuttering of Aldino’s—the interesting if inconsistent Scott Harris-Dean Zanella pan-Italian effort that briefly inhabited 626 S. Racine—is exhibit A in the case against the so-called restaurant renaissance of Little Italy. Sure, there are good things happening at Three Aces and at Harris’s Davanti Enoteca, but the apparent disinterest of a major university community in a truly novel-for-the-neighborhood endeavor was discouraging.
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Harris’s comeback, this time with Jimmy Bannos Sr., is also a step back, resurrecting Gennaro’s, the Taylor Street red-sauce joint that banked a half-century’s worth of neighborhood goodwill before closing in 2009. Servers at Salatino’s never fail to remind you that Mary Jo Gennaro herself is in the kitchen, overseeing execution of the original recipes, and though some murky dispute kept the original name off the door, blown-up black-and-white family photos are plastered all over the place.
I was much happier about the big bowl of plump mussels in a thin marinara sauce, the fried sweet Italian peppers with slices of slightly sharp provolone, or the nubby, gnarly house-made egg noodles (essentially fettuccine Alfredo). And then there are the legendary pork chops, honored with a poetic ode hanging on the wall. The thick-cut monsters, piled with fried potatoes and more of those peppers, were Gennaro’s signature, and they’re indeed fantastic, though it should take the average eater at least two sittings to finish them.
626 S. Racine
312-226-9300
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