Who has time for fine dining when there’s so much holiday shopping to be done? The answer, of course, is that you make the time. When you need to recharge your batteries, the solution is a relaxing, sit-down dinner, not a pre-baked pizza slice gulped down at the Snacker-doodle Food Court.
Resolving to treat yourself well during the prime shopping season is easier these days, thanks to ever-improving dining options in the area malls. We paid a visit to three mall restaurants, including one that’s particularly good for the kiddies, and have the following reports:
Antico Posto
Antico Posto means “the old spot;” the name doesn’t quite fit this year-old restaurant in Oakbrook Center, though faux-aged walls make it look as though this smallish ristorante has been around a bit longer than it has.
The restaurant is yet another Oakbrook Center concept by Rich Melman’s Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, which also owns or operates Corner Bakery, Maggiano’s Little Italy, Papagus, Wildfire and the recently opened Mon Ami Gabi. Lettuce doesn’t have a monopoly on Oakbrook Center dining, but it’s close.
What differentiates Antico Posto from its corporate brethren is its size, a relatively small 33 tables, giving Antico Posto a sense of intimacy the others can’t match. The small scale can be frustrating for those trying to dine without a reservation, but once seated you can spend a couple of hours in comfort. The place isn’t exactly quiet, but you can hold a conversation here.
The space once was home to the ill-fated Zarrosta Grill, and if you remember Zarrosta, Antico Posto’s layout will seem familiar. There’s still the smallish bar area up front, and Antico Posto is making good use of Zarrosta’s open cooking area, using the wood-burning ovens to crank out an assortment of nicely constructed pizzas, including a woodland-mushroom version with caramelized onions and a splash of truffle oil.
The menu includes a capably done chicken saltimbocca, and cappellini pasta with shrimp and white-wine sauce. A couple of specials were standouts — good, al dente ravioli stuffed with ground duck, and a pumpkin risotto, fortified with toasted pumpkin seeds and diced bits of pumpkin flesh, topped with slices of pounded pork loin.
Desserts include a very good panna cotta, topped with so much vanilla bean it looked as though someone had been careless with the pepper. A chocolate budino tasted fine, though its presentation was marred by a hazelnut-cookie “crisp” so soggy it folded in half without breaking.
Antico Posto’s main strength is its customer-friendly wine program, which offers a couple dozen wines, including some very upscale offerings, by the glass and three-ounce half-glass. If you’ve ever wondered if a $60 Barolo was worth the price, you can find out with as little as a $6 investment. The menu gets into the wine-centric spirit as well, suggesting wines with most of its dishes.
Antico Posto, Oakbrook Center, Oak Brook, 630-586-9200. Open for lunch and dinner daily.
Bice
Open only a few months, the Bice in Northbrook Court is already a draw among people who have no intention of shopping, and why not? The suburban Bice already matches its city sibling in food quality and sleek good looks, and has acres of free parking to boot.
Here you sit at generously spaced, linen-topped tables, surrounded by eggshell-hued walls and open glass shelves set with art glass pieces. If this is mall dining, sign me up.
Highlights of our visit included lightly seared tuna carpaccio, draped over mixed greens and lightly touched with oil and lemon; and mezzeluna pasta filled with an artichoke-potato mix, topped with goat cheese and set in a rich tomato-cheese sauce. A stuffed (with spinach and prosciutto) veal chop special was outdone only by the excellent rack of lamb, with roasted potatoes and a luscious garlic-lamb reduction.
Tiramisu is almost a must here. I remember when Bice downtown served its tiramisu in a martini glass; the portion at the Northbrook location is too big to consider that presentation. Apple tart, topped with a lattice of golden pastry, is excellent as well.
Chef Marcus Mooney does a fine job overall but could keep a closer eye on his seasonings; a couple of dishes, like the seafood salad, were over-salted.
Service is very good here, and particular notice must be given to Mario Rizzotti, the personable, nattily attired maitre d’ who can smooth-talk and hand-smooch with the best of them.
For a more budget-conscious meal, the adjacent Bice Grill offers a simpler, moderate menu of pizzas, panini, pastas and a few grilled entrees, virtually everything less than $12.
Bice, Northbrook Court, Northbrook, 847-272-9003. Open for lunch and dinner daily.
Mars 2112
Mars 2112, the newest addition to the Woodfield Mall dining scene, is not the place to be when you want a respite from the bright lights and convulsive energy of holiday shopping. It is, however, an excellent place to take the kids after several hours of mall-crawling.
The concept, a sequel to the New York City original, is that customers are transported to the planet Mars in the year 2112. To that end, the dining experience begins with a simulated space-ship ride, complete with moving floors and simulated-motion screens, from Earth to the Red Planet. If you’re one of those spoilsports who feel that inducing motion sickness is a bad way to begin a meal, you can take the shortcut and skip the ride. But it’s pretty tame, and a good place to kill 10 minutes or so, if only to reduce the youngsters’ exposure to the souvenir shop, which you must walk through to reach the dining room.
Once seated (and this can take a while in this no-reservations restaurant; waits of an hour are common), you’ll find yourself in an area that’s more sound stage than dining room, tricked out to resemble a Martian canyon, complete with red-tinged faux-rock walls more than 20 feet high, a wide video screen displaying unearthly landscapes, sporadic laser-light shows and other gimmickry.
The food is pretty standard American, though predictably, everything has a spacey name, such as quasar quesadillas, lunar lasagna and cosmic chaos cheesecake. I question the wisdom of grouping salads under the “Soylent Greens” heading, and if anybody orders the “black hole chicken sandwich,” it isn’t going to be me.
But the spring rolls, one filled with roasted duck, spinach and pistachio and the other with smoked chicken, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, aren’t bad, and the crab cakes are decent enough, brightened up by a good red-pepper remoulade. The sirloin steak isn’t impressive, and the pepper-crusted tuna steak so-so.
With all the kid appeal, there are plenty of dessert choices, including a Skylab sampler that gives you a taste of everything. For grownups, there’s a full bar, offering plenty of signature cocktails, Mars’tinis and the like. The bar area actually is pretty comfortable, and, as it’s strictly off-limits to children, an oasis of sorts. For the youngsters, there will be a video-arcade called Cyberstreet — but the game permits haven’t come through just yet.
A good strategy for dining at Mars 2112 is to arrive early, get your name in to the host and continue shopping, checking periodically on your status (the host’s estimates seemed pretty accurate on our visit). At various points in the facility (but curiously, not in the retail area), there are video screens displaying those names whose tables are ready, sparing you the bother of hanging out by the host stand.
Mars 2112, Woodfield Mall, Schaumburg, 847-885-2112. Open for lunch and dinner daily.
