Vivaldi Trattoria wouldn’t attract notice in Chicago. A smallish restaurant with a hand-lettered menu of modestly priced Italian food, Vivaldi is easily dismissed as just another disciple of the Mia Francesca formula.
Ah, but this is the suburbs, where there still is room for restaurants like this. More specifically, this is restaurant-challenged Downers Grove, where an eatery that can fire up the grill without hurting anybody is a rare and welcome sight.
So while Vivaldi Trattoria will get few points for originality, it has a capable kitchen, extremely good service and accessible prices. Accordingly, it has been a big hit in Downers Grove, whose residents keep the place humming most nights and absolutely pack the place on weekends.
Chef Ash Abu-Taleb (his brother, Anan, owns the restaurant and its same-name original in Oak Park) puts out a compact menu of about a dozen entrees, a half-dozen appetizers and a few salads and pizzas.
One of his hits is breadcrumb-dusted calamari, lightly fried, which arrives tender and ungreasy at the table, along with a spicy tomato sauce for dipping.
The calamari is also offered on the combination platter, an appetizer assortment for two or more that includes a quartet of hefty grilled shrimp and a portion of porcini-mushroom risotto. Orders of bruschetta also are large enough to share, consisting of four slices of grilled bread piled high with chopped tomatoes and arugula.
Insalata Basilico is essentially a salad caprese — sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil — drizzled with a reduced balsamic vinegar. Insalata gorgonzola, the tomato slices topped with red onions and crumbled gorgonzola cheese, is more interesting. Best of the bunch is the asparagus salad, with chilled asparagus stalks flavored with a light vinaigrette and, again, crumbled gorgonzola.
Thin-crust pizzas are a good bet, but Vivaldi generally offers only one or two straightforward versions — odd only because next-door Pizza Capri offers more intriguing toppings, and Abu-Taleb owns both places.
The best entree on the menu is the linguini Toscana, which piles plenty of well-cooked clams, shrimp and scallops over pasta with a spicy cherry-tomato sauce. Less spice-tolerant palates should head for the ravioli formaggio, a bounty of filled pasta squares (artichoke filling on our visit; cheese filling currently) with a tomato-based four-cheese sauce.
The daily risotto, offered in appetizer and entree portions, is capably rendered as well.
Salmon Abruzzi provides in flavor what it lacks in presentation; the salmon is buried under a melange of diced eggplant, zucchini, broccoli and tomatoes, but however messy it looks, it tastes fine. Ditto for the swordfish Arno, another “Where’s Waldo” presentation of roasted swordfish hidden by mushrooms, tomatoes and spinach.
When ordering meat at Vivaldi, it’s important to know that the default doneness level is medium (medium-rare would be more typical). We requested our lamb chops medium-rare, which is just how we got them, but a manager overseeing the floor ran over to see if the lamb was cooked to our liking.
That said, the lamb chops, served with whipped potatoes containing a week’s worth of garlic, are quite good. The veal medallions, served with creamy polenta, are even better.
Chicken Vivaldi, sauteed chicken breast over pasta with black olives and a tomato-cream sauce, needs more seasoning — and better olives than the flavorless versions offered up here.
Most desserts aren’t homemade but are of high quality. The various gelati come from Al Gelato, and the cheesecake and fudgy flourless chocolate cake are from Bittersweet. Homemade tiramisu is a very good version of this ubiquitous dish.
Service is a delight. Friendly waiters are unfailingly attentive and savvy enough to make frequent customers feel appreciated. An outstanding busboy crew, led by the preternaturally cheerful Sylvestre Sanchez, is efficient and professional.
The interior design is by the estimable Nancy Warren, whose long list of clients includes Trio, Brasserie T and the recently opened North Pond Cafe. Warren’s inviting space includes visually arresting curved ceiling trusses, handsome wood wainscotting and cream-colored walls with framed photographs of Italy. There’s even a nod to the building’s past; the terrazzo flooring dates back to when the space was a Walgreens.
And yet at some point, the design team made the shocking, just shocking, decision to open a Chicago-area trattoria with no faux-finish treatments of any kind — which, I believe, puts Vivaldi in direct violation of the Repetitive Decoration Act of 1993.
I would do something about the music, though. It’s nice to hear actual Vivaldi music playing over the sound system, but the restaurant apparently owns exactly one recording of “The Four Seasons” and a smattering of popular music beyond that. There are other Vivaldi works available.
Vivaldi Trattoria
(star) (star)
5141 Main St., Downers Grove
630-434-7700
Open: Dinner Mon.-Sun.,
lunch Wed.-Fri.
Entree prices: $11.95-$20.95
Credit cards: A, DC, DS, M, V
Reservations: Accepted for parties of 6 or more Fri.-Sat.
Other: Wheelchair accessible
Rating system
(star) (star) (star) (star) Outstanding
(star) (star) (star) Excellent
(star) (star) Very Good
(star) Good
Satisfactory
Unsatisfactory
Reviews are based on no fewer than two visits. The reviewer makes every effort to remain anonymous. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
