It seems positively unlikely (or negatively likely, am I supposed to say?) that there is an authentic home-style Italian restaurant just a few blocks from a gang-infested stretch of Howard, but there is. Tucked between a flat, nondescript bank building and Fish Keg, a fried fish take-out (whose fried fish are actually pretty tasty), Cucina di Donatella serves authentic cooking of your lost Italian mamma. It's classic, but not in the marinara-smothered-overcooked-pasta kind of way; it's classic in you-might-find-the-same-food-in-a-Roman-trattoria kind of way.

The open-kitchen restaurant is small with about 8 tables, but the menu is extensive. Not to be missed is the handmade pasta dishes that take up about half the menu, but there are also nightly specials that show up on the chalk board on the wall, as well as in the almost chant-like recitation by the waiters who seem to emphasize their staccato Italian accent. Though meat and fish entrées sound great, we usually succumb to the temptation of simply prepared pasta dishes.

Tagliatelle alla Boscaiola

Patrick's favorite is the spinach lasagna, which puzzles me as to how in the world Donatella, the owner chef you can often glimpse in the kitchen, makes this usually heavy-with-greasd dish so light. The strong, green flavor of the abundant spinach is definitely the most prominent feature of this dish. My favorite might be a medley of mushroom pasta with black truffle oil (this was one of the specials last year, during the mushroom season), but unfortunately, this might be harder to encounter. There are also pasta dishes that I've never seen anywhere else. One of them is the pasta al prosciutto con burro e salvia (wide, flat pasta rolled with prosciutto and sage in butter sauce). The butter did get a bit much for me toward the end of the meal, but the combination of the salty prosciutto and the fragrant sage was quite delightful.

Gnocchi Genovese

When we visited Donatella's kitchen a few weeks ago, Patrick had Gnocchi Genovese and I had Tagliatelle Boscaiola (fetuccini-like flat pasta with carrot-and-mushroom meat sauce sans tomatoes). Both were excellent in a simple and clean way. The Gnocchi was extremely tender yet still had just the right resilience against my teeth, and the basil-infused olive oil never got overwhelmingly oily. The parmesan cheese sprinkled over the white wine-based meat sauce on my dish was a pleasant (and salty) complement to the otherwise very subtle mix of flavors. But the true BANG! was the appetizer, bruschetta with chopped mussels (see the photo below). The crusty bread was literally piled high with mussels. I'm usually not a huge fun of mussels, but this one was fantastic. The oceanic kick of the mussels was perfectly balanced with the strong zest of freshly chopped garlic and the sharp, green flavor of the Italian parsley.

The service seems to fluctuate. When it's excellent, it's amazing; unintrusive, knowledgeable, friendly and swift. When it's slow, it can be reeeeeeeeeally slow (but never snooty). So, don't go there starving. Bring a bottle of wine (it's BYOB), sit back, enjoy the conversation with your party, and when they're ready, you'll be served an excellent, reasonably priced classic Italian. Many reviews (including this detailed one from Sun Times) rave about their desserts, too--I just have to try some soon!

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La Cucina di Donatella
2221 W. Howard St.
773.262.6533
Parking is available along the alleyway on the west side of the building.

We'd been to El Famous Burrito just down the street one too many times. Not that their food is bad (it's actually a pretty good bang for the buck), but we felt we should try some other Mexican joints that line the Clark Street between Pratt and Touhy. It's nice to have a favorite neighborhood eatery, but it's also fun to try new ones.

So, the other day for dinner, we went to Quesadillas y Mariscos Doña Lolis near Clark and Morse. A Reader article recommended something called champurrado, "a mixture of masa, chocolate or cocoa, cinnamon and other seasonings." Though we didn't have a faintest idea as to what that was from the description, we were game for it. (We thought it was a bread-like thing, mixed and then baked; in reality, according to this recipe, it's a warm, cocoa-flavored drink thickened with masa.)

The thing is, we didn't look up this info on champurrado before we headed out (too hungry). By the time we finished our seven-minutes walk to the restaurant, I had forgotten what their specialty was. The only thing I remembered was that it involved chocolate. Munching on the homemade tortilla chips loaded with frijoles, I looked for items with chocolate on the menu. None.

"Do you remember the name of their special thing?" I asked.

"Nah, I don't remember," said Patrick.

"I feel like it started with a P," I said (totally wrong).

We decided we were too hungry to remember, and went for the two dishes that sounded good: Patrick got a steak with freshly made guacamole, while I ordered meatballs in chipotle chili sauce. We devoured the thick tortilla chips as we waited for our food. The green sauce had a wonderful peppery flavor (I felt like I was cutting one up right that moment), but the fun part was the brown one. I tried to discern what it was made of, and had no clue. It was very smoky; almost exclusively so. We should have asked the waitress, but she seemed to be so engrossed with a horribly acted drama on one of the many manifestations of Fox Channel that I felt disinclined to interrupt. (Yes, it was something on Fox, not a telenovela on Telemundo. Was there any difference? Perhaps not.)

The food was very good in a rather homey way. My chipotle sauce had just a hint of heat, nothing to make you run for the second glass of cold water. Wrapped up in their homemade tortillas (served in lidded containers to keep them warm), the tender meatballs were quite comforting. Patrick's steak looked intimidating at first. It looked too much like the indestructible, flavorless beef I once had in Madrid, both in color and texture. But when I took a bite into the tortilla-wrapped, guacamole-slathered steak, the premonition immediately dispersed. The beef was on the tough side, that's for sure, but it had a ton of fbeefy flavor (i.e., that greasy goodness) that went fantastic with the onions in the guacamole. The two small quesadillas that came with the steak was a nice touch, too.

When we finished the hearty meal, we noticed a hand-written sign on the wall. "Champurrado," it said. Was that what the Reader article was talking about, I wondered for a moment, but I had absolutely no room for anything else. (We were so full we decided to take a neighborhood walk afterward, if you need an idea as to how large the portion is.) The bill came to just short of $20. You'd pay more here than at El Famous Burrito, but Doña Lolis has a better variety, and the quality of food seems better. So I'd say it's $20 well spent (except that we didn't get to try their specialty).

(Patrick took the steak photo.)

I'd definitely want to try the champurrado (which seems to have been ingrained in my brain by now) the next time we go there, but the meatballs and steak were very good in their own ways. So, hooray for the amnesia!

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Qusadillas y Mariscos Doña Lolis
6924 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL
773.761.5677

When I came home around five, starving, I found two tamales in the fridge. Patrick got a six-pack yesterday for dinner, and left two for me. I boiled some water in a pot, placed a Chinese steamer (the bamboo-made ones you see in dim sum places) on it, and steamed the tamales in it. Kind of an odd way to steam Mexican food, but hey, it worked.

The place we get our tamales is on Clark Street. It's a mom-and-pop place (I suppose I should call it mama-y-papa place, though) called Tamales: Lo Mejor de Guerrero, and it only has tamales. Well, they do have some other stuff like horchata, and they do weekend breakfast (which we haven't tried), but their main thing is the tamales. When the orange-awninged place opened up last year, we were pretty excited--it's always reliable when a restaurant really specializes in something. This place isn't an exception. Their tamales are gigantic, cheap (six giant tamales for a mere $5.45), and yummy.

Their tamales are moist and the corn masa still bears some lingering sweet, nutty flavor of the corn. There are seven different varieties, costing only a dollar each: hot or mild chicken, hot or mild pork, cheese with beans, cheese with jalapeño and sweet with strawberries or pineapples. My favorite (by far) is the boring-sounding cheese with beans. I do like the meat versions, but the cheese with beans hits that soft spot for simple, comfort food. None of the three ingredients assert itself too loudly (unlike the pork and the hot green sauce, which sometimes obscure the subtle flavor of the corn dough), and the richness of the cheese blends wonderfully well with beans and corn masa.

While the tamales steamed in the Chinese steamer, I opened a bottle of Kirin Ichiban (a Japanese beer) and took swigs from it. The green leaves of the big tree outside of our kitchen window, I noticed, had turned to the real, summer green from their nascent light green. After all, it was approaching mid-May. Finally done with all the papers for the semester and indeed with my BA work, I waited for the heavy cast of stress melt in me. It felt good to be done. It felt good, although it was only a beginning of my life outside of school--a life that I may not enjoy as much as I did all the learning and thinking inside of the academia, but for now, it felt really good to have no paper to write, no required reading that I'd have to rush through.

When the tamales were heated through, I placed them in a plate, took a few pictures and wolfed them down. I probably shouldn't have eaten both--they were pretty sizable--but they were yummy, and with the help of the beer, the tamales finally managed to undo the knot of stress that I'd been feeling for last two weeks of my last semester in school. Perhaps it's not too surprising that these tamales did such a great job of soothing my papered-out brain. In the back of the restaurant, there are several Mexican grannies (presumably from Guerrero) cooking the meat in sauce and stuffing the corn husks with masa. It's the kind of place where you order a few tamales and the girl at the counter walks into the kitchen, asking her "tia (aunt)" if she still had the kind you asked for--all in Spanish, presumably with Guerrero accent. It's very homey, and that relaxing atmosphere of a family-run restaurant certainly translates into the tamales they create.

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Tamales Lo Mejor de Guerrero
7024 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL
773.338.6450

We were very glad that this restaurant managed to survive the recent neighborhood fire unscathed. The fire consumed a few stores right next to the Mejor de Guerrero, which included another of our neighborhood favorite, a Colombian rotisserie place called Pollo al Carbon.

For culinary tidbits about the Guerrero region of Mexico (and where to get their specialties in Chicago), see this fascinating Chicago Reader article.