Antico — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

A lovely, intimate Northern Italian restaurant. The atmosphere is cozy and quiet. You have to call in or email for reservations but it’s worth the extra step for this gem.

Service is very attentive, staff are knowledgeable and able to help guide menu decisions. They will push main courses but the homemade pasta is the star of the show and can be upgraded to entree sizes. A great meal can be made from appetizers and entree sized pastas.

Appetizers are on the small side. Burrata is flown in from Italy. There’s a traditional with tomatoes and usually a special. Fantastic. Beet salad with arugula is light on beets. Pear salad was a special. Melon and prosciutto is a great combination and slightly larger appetizer.

Pastas - change from the antipasti size to entree and order many to share. I can’t say there’s a favorite. They’re all homemade and hard to beat. I would recommend getting at least one of the gnocchis. I’ve never had gnocchi so light and airy.

Desserts - panna cotta was the table favorite. Flourless chocolate cake is an excellent rendition. Lemon cake is light and airy after a big pasta dinner.

You can either eat in the more upscale dining room or the slightly more casual deck with fig trees, lemon trees, grapevines, herb boxes, and...

Used to be one of my favorite places but it’s a huge disappointment now. The back patio is hideous now, all the vegetable plants are gone and it has a plastic roof cover allowing no air circulation at all, a lot more tables crammed together. Given the humidity outside, we were melting there sitting on the patio under the plastic roof. The food was very subpar, not the usual quality I’m used to at Antico. Caprese salad had 3 measly tomato slices, each barely over the size of a quarter, same with the cheese. Fried calamari were very salty and greasy. Arugula salad had wilted arugula, we didn’t finish it. Steak entree had 2 pieces of very different thickness. We asked for medium, one piece ended be up very rare but second one well done. I’ve had all these dishes there previously on several occasions, so I don’t know what happened to their kitchen staff or who was cooking it but the food was all bad. Ended up paying $200 (before tip) for 2 people and that’s considering we only had 4 apps, 1 entree and one glass of wine each. Won’t be...

Sat down for our 6:30 reservation and placed our entire order probably around 7PM. Sat for 2 hours with no food, no updates, no one checking in on us, then we eventually decided to leave. We saw tables come in, sit, get their food and pay all within that time. I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and certainly don’t think this falls on the servers, they were busting their butts and we’re swamped. It was clearly overbooked. I could barley lift my elbow without touching the table next to us which was not enjoyable, I could clearly hear the conversations of the people sitting next to us who were speaking at a normal level. (for example, the girl next to me did not like her boyfriend’s friends’ girlfriends. fair, girl! they sound annoying!)

Really disappointed we didn’t get to try the food, had been looking forward to it. I’m sure the food and service is great when they are at normal capacity. It was a huge mistake to try and cash in on valentine’s day reservations as it just set the foh and kitchen staff up...