5 Chicago Italian restaurants with end-of-summer dishes

Italian cuisine is famous and revered for its use of seasonal ingredients, and there are so many light, colorful and delicious foods that Italians enjoy on summer days: plates of pasta with sauces that require little cooking; seafood off the grill or cut into raw, sheer carpaccio slices; dishes with peak-season produce such as fresh purple figs, juicy melons and sweet eggplants.

Each one of Italy’s 20 regions has its own summer specialties. Tuscany and Umbria are known for panzanella, a dish that transforms day-old bread and ripe tomatoes into a salad with onions, vinegar and olive oil. Emilia-Romagna makes midday meals out of prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe, while a lunch in Liguria can be a simple plate of fresh lemon-marinated anchovies.

Sicily makes the most of eggplant in the summer by combining it with tomatoes and salted ricotta in pasta alla norma or by making caponata — a relish with sweet tomatoes, onions and briny capers and olives that showcases the island’s Moorish history. If you’ve visited Sicily’s immediate neighbor Calabria in July, you’ve seen the street food carts with polpette di melanzane, fried little eggplant balls.

Finding regional summer foods that Italians love isn’t an entirely easy task here in Chicago. Rice salad is popular all over Italy in the summer, but you can’t find it here unless you cook it. However, you can score other treats at our five restaurant picks.

“I grew up in Naples, where the seafood is so fresh and I learned from my mother how to prepare insalata di mare the right way,” says Nella Grassano, co-owner and pizzaiola at Hyde Park’s Nella Pizza e Pasta, which has playfully modern Italian décor. “It’s one of the hardest dishes to make. No one is allowed to prep it but myself.”

Two other summer dishes worth trying at this restaurant are pescatora risotto ($22) with calamari, shrimp, mussels, clams and cherry tomatoes, and the Caprasella on crostini toast ($17), which puts a different twist on the classic caprese salad: “We use heirloom tomatoes, which are sweeter,” says Grassano. “And instead of regular mozzarella, we use buffalo mozzarella which we order directly from Naples every week in the summer.”

1125 E. 55th St., 773-643-0603, nellachicago.com

In the South Loop, you’ll find an interesting spin on the ubiquitous caprese salad at Café Bionda, where executive chef Cosimo Riccardi transforms it into a Caprese Ravioli ($20) as a tribute to his family roots in Napoli. “This is a dish I learned from my mom,” he said. “Every Sunday when I was a child, she prepared these raviolis with caciotta and ricotta, and topped them with a sauce of cherry tomatoes and basil from the garden.”

Octopus carpaccio ($18) is another Italian summer dish you don’t come upon often in Chicago restaurants. “I would go to the fish market with my father, and the evening was the best time because the fish were fresh from the sea,” Riccardi said. “One of the most remarkable sights were the octopuses, gigantic and still alive.” At Bionda, Riccardi prepares the octopus in a terrine mold and serves it with arugula salad, shaved celery and lemon dressing.

1924 S. State St., 312-313-6485, cafebiondasouthloop.com

Located in Lakeview’s Southport Corridor and named after a Southern Italian wine grape, Coda di Volpe celebrates the ingredients of Sardinia, Sicily, Campania, Calabria and Puglia. This is well illustrated in the restaurant’s Grilled Red Prawns ($38). “It’s inspired by a dish I had in Contessa Entellina in Sicily,” says executive chef Jacob Saben. “The couscous was steamed with tiny gamberoni rossa and snapper. We wanted to make our own spin on it, so we steamed the couscous with a touch of saffron, burnt orange, shellfish stock and mint. We then grilled these gorgeous head-on prawns and finished them with a little tomato and colatura vinaigrette, laurel butter and Calabrian chili. It is bright and refreshing with just a kiss of smoke.”

In this stylishly relaxed space, where midcentury meets Italian deco, you can also get an introduction to caponata. It’s featured in the Branzino con Caponata ($35), an entree with tomatoes, leccino olives, marjoram and the flaky white branzino fish.

3335 N. Southport Ave., 773-687-8568, cdvolpe.com

“One of my favorite things to do in the summer is sitting around my backyard with family and friends, having panzanella, grilled vegetables from my wife’s garden, and great conversations,” says Tony Priolo, co-owner and chef at Piccolo Sogno in West Town.

A fine way to capture this scene for yourself is by landing a coveted table in their tree-lined patio and ordering the panzanella ($19) along with the Antipasto Piccolo Sogno ($24), which is an assortment of roasted and grilled veggies, prosciutto, olives, beans and certified Italian pecorino cheese.

Zucchini flowers are a beloved summer dish in many parts of Italy, so whenever Piccolo Sogno has it on the menu, make sure to try their Fiori di Zucca. “We get zucchini flowers almost daily and stuff them with imported fontina cheese and batter, fry them and serve them over olive oil and tomato puree,” says Priolo.

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464 N. Halsted St., 312-421-0077, piccolosognorestaurant.com

If you’re lucky enough to get one of the few sidewalk tables at Riccardo Trattoria, which is just off the lake in Lincoln Park, enjoy the people-watching on Clark Street and start off with a peppered tuna carpaccio ($20) with arugula, fennel shavings and fresh orange. It’s an extremely light appetizer, cool and refreshing on a hot day, and the texture’s a bit like biting into a watermelon.

Just make sure to leave room for the Misto di Pesce a la Griglia ($38). The perfectly cooked calamari, octopus, pepper tuna, prawns, squid and sea scallops come with a simple sauce of butter, garlic and herbs, and you get a petite tricolor salad with arugula, radicchio and fries for balance. Take the rosemary bread you got at the beginning of your meal, dip it in the remaining butter sauce and embrace the end of summer.

2119 N. Clark St., 773-549-0038, riccardotrattoria.com

Nikki O’Neill is a freelance writer.

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