Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Pacino's Classic Italian to Open in Roosevelt Collection

In case you missed this (via Eater Chicago):
Reps from the Roosevelt Collection continue their efforts to improve dining in the South Loop as a new Italian restaurant should open this fall in the development that includes the ShowPlace ICON Theatre. Pacino’s Classic Italian is slated for an October debut, replacing Mago Grill & Cantina at 1010 S. Delano Court. Pacino’s chef, Michael Serratore, was the chef at Trattoria Isabella, a West Loop Italian restaurant that closed in 2016.
The article goes on to say some interesting things:
Pacino’s will be a family-friendly Italian restaurant with 335 seats and a private dining room for 150. There’s also an outdoor area with a pergola. They’ve transformed the space to make it feel like Serratore’s native Italy. He’s Sicilian.
The risotto may be Pacino’s signature dish, as Serratore said it’s a labor-intensive item. The menu will also feature plenty of seafood and fresh pasta. Sample dishes include Bucatini Bolognese with Sicilian sausage in a tomato meat sauce; Ivoltini di Pollo with goat cheese-stuffed chicken breast, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, vodka sauce, and mixed vegetables; and Neapolitan-style pizzas. Serratore prefers to lean to traditional cuisine, but he’ll try to modernize a few dishes, to perhaps make gravies a little lighter where he can. There’s a bar with 16 draft lines and also 15 bottles of beer available.

That's a lot of seats to fill, but hopefully the risotto is as good as advertised.  As a reminder, the Mago Grill space was huge and beautiful, but abruptly shut down in the spring of 2018.

The post also references the impending BBQ restaurant called The Lucky Well that is going to open in the development (which we posted about back in June).  And last Wednesday news came out about a crazy concept called X Pot with robots serving dishes and whatnot.

Good to see all the dinning news at Roosevelt Collection.  We wish them well.

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