Abbondanza!
Trattoria 225 aims to please with great pizza and more -- a lot more
Trattoria 225, located in the Oak Park Arts District, is one ambitious restaurant.
The owners, Craig and Liz Charlton, have fashioned an interesting menu that has everything from Mediterranean olives to a Kobe beef burger. In between, you will find grilled octopus, salads, a dozen (wood-fired) pizza choices, some pasta dishes and several "main course" choices (one each fish, steak, lamb, chicken).
But wait! Don't order yet. Along comes the daily specials menu with mussels, balsamic-glazed pork chop and a "cheese board." A little or large something for everybody, kids included.
But what this restaurant is mostly about is pizza and a casual good time. The food is a lot brighter than the atmosphere, which suffers from poor lighting, but that's easily corrected by buying more bulbs.
The big oven tucked into the far back corner of the second dining room turns out more than pizza. But with a wide range of pizzas available, and observing what others were ordering, it seems as if pizza is the popular choice. And why not? The pizzas (made with organic whole-wheat flour) are quite good. That wood-burning oven gives the crust edge a nice puff along with a pleasing char and a good chew. The bottom of the crust gets a light char, too, so the pizza is more East Coast-style than Midwest.
We got into two pizzas (they come one size only and are large enough for two to share as a first course), one "white clam" and the other "spicy sausage." Clam pizza is the pizza de resistance at Frank Pepe's Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Conn., where they actually shuck fresh clams for the topping. Trattoria 225 uses canned chopped clams, but they are good clams and plenty were used. Even better, they were zipped up with just the right amount of garlic, crushed red pepper (important to a clam pizza) and a light dusting of Romano cheese. Damn near total perfection, I say.
Ditto for the sausage pizza, which sports mighty good and mighty large chunks (in abundance) of really good sausage that is, indeed, spicy, but not so much so that it clashes with the sauce and cheese. Wine selection for the white clam pizza: Hess Chardonnay. For the sausage pizza: Farnatella Chianti.
That same chunky-good spicy sausage is used in orrecchiette, one of the pasta dishes. It couldn't have been put together better. The pasta was on the money (as in al dente) and the arrangement of those "little ears" of pasta with sausage, broccoli, a touch of garlic and a dice of tomato was quite good (though the tomatoes can go; they seem to be there only for color). There is no sauce to speak of; just a glaze of olive oil does the job.
As for the appetizers, one was a thriller, one not so much. The thriller was the grilled Caesar salad. A head of organic romaine lettuce (the heart mostly) got a light grilling that gave the lettuce an interesting smoky flavor. Then the lettuce was dressed up in a mild Caesar dressing (cheese mostly). Two chunky slices of grilled bread come along on the side (the crouton part, I suppose). Nice idea.
The chiller was the grilled octopus appetizer. Bits and chunks of octopus were nestled into a lot of microgreens (dressed in a lemon vinaigrette), almost to the point where it was like digging it out of seaweed. That was not the problem, though. The octopus had been overcooked and was so soft it had lost its texture, so it was like chewing on nothing (tasteless, that is).
One dessert was outstanding: the apple crostada. Layers of tender, nicely spiced apples were wrapped in a tender and flaky cinnamon-laced pastry. The enjoyment got bumped up a notch with a scoop of creamy-rich ice cream. A fine dessert, one not to be missed.
Pat Bruno is a local free-lance critic and author. E-mail brunoeats@aol.com. Listen to Pat Bruno talk about food and wine Tuesdays at 6:23 p.m. and 10:23 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 7:53 p.m. on WBBM News Radio 780-AM.