312 Chicago, the dining room inside the new Hotel Allegro, has a lot going for it — clubby good looks, an affordable, Italian-inflected menu and a close-to-everything Loop location.
Although my visits have been encouraging, I wouldn’t rank it among the Loop’s elite just yet. But 312 Chicago is a nice option for Loop-area workers to have.
The chef is Dean Zanella, who has done good work all over town but particularly so as opening chef at Grappa, a good restaurant with a bad lease that, like many such restaurants, closed. So Zanella, after a brief stint at Park Avenue Cafe, took his deft Italian touch to the Loop.
Meals get off to a great start with the arrival of several homemade breads (by pastry chef Heather Terhune) and an addictive little tapenade of olives, sun-dried tomatoes, capers and garlic. There’s a real danger that customers will overload on these freebies, but extras are brought cheerfully enough.
Appetizers include several usual suspects — fried calamari, carpaccio, a little tomato salad and grilled asparagus — but one intriguing dish is a vertical presentation of salmon and tuna tartars, sandwiched between crispy semolina crackers; the tuna is flavored with caper berries and a touch of chili oil, the salmon seasoned with chives and horseradish oil.
Even better is a quartet of pan-seared scallops, crispy edged and tasty alongside a pile of mushrooms flavored with a whiff of truffle oil.
The polenta souffle is an agreeable mess, the tall polenta resembling an oversized muffin that falls apart with the first prod of the fork. Surrounding the polenta are wild mushrooms in a porcini-veal sauce with cambazola cheese.
A salad of roasted red and gold beets was very nice, even though there were no golden beets in evidence. The red ones were just fine, however, arranged with soft dollops of goat cheese, toasted pistachios and a brown-sugar vinaigrette.
A field greens salad with shallot vinaigrette is simple and good, and the spinach salad with roasted tomatoes and goat cheese is enlivened by bits of pan-fried prosciutto.
Entrees can be hit or miss. Hits include roasted sturgeon, a thick and meaty slab of fish served over a “lasagna” of thin-sliced fingerling potatoes and wild mushrooms; one hopes this special will be repeated often. Sauteed salmon is another superior piece of fish cooked just right, served with baby artichokes and a lemon-caper vinaigrette. And roast duck, over Israeli couscous with grilled figs and intense fig compote, is delicious.
Seafood risotto offers good texture and a nice assortment of seafood, but was oversalted; ditto for a rigatoni with veal meatballs, a great-looking rustic dish that was too salty to enjoy. A dish of lamb chops over a gorgonzola-laced potato cake tasted fine, but the scrawny chops didn’t have much meat to them.
The best dessert on the menu is the plum crostata, essentially a roundish, free-form tart with a sweet plum filling seasoned with cloves and star anise, served with a big scoop of cinnamon ice cream; it’s addictively good.
Other desserts aren’t as special. The peach tart is inoffensive but a bit of a snore; the chocolate lava cake lacked the liquidy middle that was promised. And the pastry chef outsmarted herself with a s’mores dessert, using homemade graham crackers (too thick) and homemade marshmallow to assemble a dish that was a lot of work — but didn’t work.
312 Chicago does a brisk lunch business; the lunch menu differs slightly from that at dinner. The room is also an appealing breakfast destination; it’s rarely crowded, the east-facing windows let in plenty of light, and the menu offers a nice balance of sweet, savory and lighter entrees. I recommend the four-cheese omelet, and the messy-but-tasty chicken hash.
Service is quiet, reserved and efficient, keeping track of each table’s progress without appearing to be doing so.
The wine list, mostly Italian with a sprinkling of American wines, is playful but thorough. About 20 wines are offered by the glass or three-ounce taste.
The dining space divides seatings between two levels, which are connected by a wide, curved staircase. The street-level space includes the bar and is a bit cramped; the upper level is more spacious and prettier. Banquettes along the windows look comfy but are a bit small for parties of four.
There’s a sense of almost to 312 Chicago. The handsome, earth-toned dining room is almost distinctive, but not quite. The menu has some intriguing choices, but not enough of them. There’s a lot of repetition in the current menu, too many recurring flavors, even though several dishes shine individually.
Overall, this is a pretty good restaurant on the brink of being a very good one.
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312 Chicago
(star)
Hotel Allegro
136 N. LaSalle St.
312-696-2420
Open: Dinner Mon.-Sun., lunch Mon.-Fri.,
breakfast Mon.-Fri., brunch Sat.-Sun.
Entree prices: $13.25-$19.95
Credit cards: A, DC, DS, M, V
Reservations: Recommended
Noise: Conversation-friendly
Other: Wheelchair accessible;
Valet parking available
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.
