CHICAGO SUN-TIMES (December 9, 2005)

By Pat Bruno

Headline: "Extra Virgin Brings Italian Wine Bar Culture to Chicago's West Loop." All right, then, there's nothing like a wine bar to add a bit of culture.

Extra Virgin. Now there's a restaurant name for you. I was wondering how long it would take before the connection between olive oil and food ended up on a neon sign.

After the pouring of the oil, the sprinkling of grated Parmesan and the entry of extra virgin olive oil into the mainstream, the next giant step for culinary-kind is to blend the idea of olive oil with a restaurant and subtitle it as an "enoteca, or Italian wine bar." And this is what we have in a new restaurant in the middle of that culinary work in progress known as West Randolph Street.

Extra Virgin used to be known as the Bluepoint Oyster Bar. And before that, going back a bit now, this was the home of Barney's Market Club. Restaurants can change their identities faster than Clark Kent, but it makes you wonder what's real and whether this is some kind of last-gasp effort to keep the location viable.

Extra Virgin is real. How long will it be viable? Who know? West Randolph Street is still hot, filled wall-to-wall with a walloping array of restaurants, dives and food dynamics. And they all seem to be doing just fine (the food court idea is still a magnet).

Extra Virgin has joined that no-longer-so-elite club of restaurants that have a passion for doing the small plates, large plates eating trend. This whole idea of small plates, large plates is nothing more than tapas by another name. And you are either a fan of this style of eating or you are not.

I am not picking on Extra Virgin here. Other than being noisy as cobblestones rolling off a tin roof, the place is a lot of fun. The powers behind this venture are none other than Roger Greenfield and Ted Kasemir, an experienced duet of restauranteurs without a doubt. And the chef at Extra Virgin, Nick Van Wassenhove, is a good one. He earned his culinary stripes at a few of the Rosebud restaurants and La Vita.

The menu is a good read from top to bottom. It has been a while since I've seen so many different ingredients packed into so many dishes without a lot of them tripping all over each other.

Start off with antipasti (actually a pour of excellent olive oil and bread gets things started). Choose three for $8 or six for $12 (that's per person). Sounds expensive, but the quality is there. I put together a sharp and nutty Grana Padano (think Parmigiano) with baby artichokes (dressed with lemon and olive oil) and rosy-pink, sweet prosciutto (without question the King of Hams). Glorious eating to the very last nibble.

Off and running to a couple of small plates. Nibbles of Italian sausage accented with fennel were stuffed into the caverns of small, sweet red peppers, with fontina cheese holding things together. There were four of them in all, and they were so good, I ate them all (my wife is not a red bell pepper fan).

But then she was so enamored of the calamari salad, I wasn't sure if I was going to get any. This was an excellent salad, the substance of which was an arrangement of tender, peppery leaves of arugula (dressed ever so lightly with extra virgin olive oil) serving as a "bush" in which rings of exquisitely tender fried calamari were nestled. A garnish of slices of grilled lemons sets it all off quite nicely.

Flatbreads are trying to push pizza out the oven door. Not going to happen. And the version (three are offered) I tried at Extra Virgin was not all that great. When you pile ingredients, as good as those ingredients might be, onto a pre-baked crust, it's like eating an open-face sandwich. It arrives on a wood serving board, and the toppings chosen - smoked chicken, prosciutto, provolone - were good enough, except for the chicken, which was too dry.

The large plates at Extra Virgin are very large, so my suggestion is to turn one large plate into two small plates (in other words, share, share). For example, the "free-form lasagne" will easily do for two people. Squares of cooked lasagne were arranged loosely on the plate in layers. Between the pasta layers I found ricotta cheese, tomatoes, and strips of grilled yellow squash and eggplant. The menu description says that smoked tomato, boursin and tempura onions are thrown into the fray, but quite honestly, I know not where. Nevertheless, the goodness held my interest almost to the very end.

Too bad that another large plate - steak frites with rapini and pomme frites - arrived at our table in a condition that, to say the least, was lukewarm. (I figured it was waiting out there in the kitchen for the lasagne to be assembled.) What a tender, flavorful, fine-tasting steak (flatiron cut) it was. A generous portion, too, and could be shared. Decent frites, a cut slightly larger than matchstick and most enjoyable.

A word or two about the wines here. Since Extra Virgin proclaims to be an "Italian Wine Bar," I wondered why there were so few Italian wines. Out of 54 wines on the list, only about 20 were from Italy, with the rest coming from all over the place (Greece, Spain, France, Argentina). On the other hand, the prices are fair. Among the whites (called "Blondes" on the wine list), try a Pio Cesare Cortese di Gavi from Italy ($44). My choice of red wines (called "Redheads" would be Cosentino Sangiovese from Napa ($33).

Desserts. Tried the chocolate torte (boring). Tried the apple tart. Go with the apple tart. The portion is small (two to share here might not get it), but the flavor was large. Served with tart cherries (soaked in something) and hazelnut gelato, it inspired a fork and spoon fight to the finish.

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