900 N. Michigan Avenue (map)
(312) 280-2750
www.spiaggiarestaurant.com
$$$$ (Jacket required)

What a beach. Spiaggia sits at the top of the Magnificent Mile overlooking the Oak Street Beach and Lake Michigan beyond, and it sits on top of the mountain of Italian dining in Chicago.

It begins with Executive Chef Tony Mantuano, who is a fixture at the local farmers’ markets, both as a shopper and educator. All fruits and vegetables on the menu are seasonal and bought as much as possible from these local growers.

Nothing is spared with the selection and treatment of ingredients. To understand Spiaggia’s commitment to quality at all levels, begin with the cheese “cave”, the first temperature and humidity controlled cheese environment in Chicago. Spiaggia’s full-time formaggiao stocks it with not only imported cheeses, but also with fine artisanal varieties from local makers in Wisconsin and Indiana.

Tony travels to Italy every year to personally choose the restaurant’s private label olive oil. Sicilian sea salt from the village of Menfi is the kitchen staple, but is also on every diner’s table. Seafood comes in daily from the Mediterranean, and octopus from the Canary Islands. There will be white Piemontese truffles for shaving on pastas, and black Umbrian truffles for flavoring sauces and filling ravioli. And seven days a week for the last 15 years, a small cadre of ladies has worked the kitchen’s pasta station, making by hand agnolotti, paparadelle, ravioli, spaghetti alla chittara, or bigoli from the Veneto.

Spiaggia’s original sommelier, Henry Bishop, had been with the restaurant since its inception, for over 20 years, and only recently left to ply his skills at a smaller neighborhood establishment. During those years his wine list expanded from a sixty-item all-Italian offering to over 600 vintages of Italian and Italian varietals. He came to eschew rigid political boundaries in favor of recognizing the ambiguous geographical boundaries of European viticulture. So there are now wines from Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland, Austria, and France. Just as importantly, his passion for discovering small unrecognized American vineyards manifested itself in an ardent promotion of what he refers to as North Amer-Ital wines, that is varietal wines not just from California, but also from the Arizona, the upper Midwest, Virginia, Baja Mexico, and Canada. A double magnum of Nebbiolo Reserve from Virginia, once humorously priced on the wine list at $1,000,000, reflected Henry’s estimation for the wine.