Cafe Lucci

Cafe Lucci
609 Milwaukee Avenue, Glenview, IL 847.729.2268

Tony has actually been to Cafe Lucci a few times, but a few nights ago was my first time there. I'd been wanting to go since he and Joe (a guy from work) went. Joe (we guess) is a regular and just had them bring food. I love it when places will do that. I really miss Antoine at Chateau France in St. Pete (*sigh* I shouldn't have looked it up. Now I miss Antoine more. He's just awesome. If you're ever in St. Petersburg, Florida and want an excellent meal with impeccable service, go visit Antoine. He's the owner/executive chef and he trained at Le Cordon Bleu. And he makes a mean paté.).

Anyway. Back to Cafe Lucci.

Tony kept talking about the nice wine list (not that I'm imbibing at the mo, but hey) and the good food. He went back at least one other time for another dinner with people from work. So when he needed me to come get him from work one night this week as he was working late and said to get a reservation, I went for it.

It happened to be a slightly strange night to go, since there was a crew there taping a spot for CitySearch. I think I might have even made it on camera, though I sure would have worn more makeup if I'd known that was going to happen.

We asked the friendly waiter to just bring us food and he kind of halfway did -- which meant that he picked stuff out for us and asked if it was okay (we said sure). What I really, really like is when they don't do anything other than maybe ask about allergies and then just bring you food. But, it was okay. I think the time Tony had been there before they'd had the owner come by, but he was busy with all the taping (though, really friendly guy).

He picked out crab cakes to start with (they were really great and instead of a bread filler, included some type of pasta that gave it the right bit of crispness) and for me a Chilean sea bass and for Tony a pasta scallop dish. Both were good with giganticus portion sizes (I got most of the way through one part of the fish and didn't even touch another). We didn't make it to dessert. At this point, my stomach has been shoved out of the way and it will only hold so much food at once. Some of the desserts looked really good too. Again, *sigh*.

Inside, the atmosphere was nice. Pretty good ambiance. I gather from the website that they renovated everything not that long ago and removed the "old World Feel" it used to have. It's pretty generic inside now, but nice. Nothing that jumps out at you, other than the dark wood wine cabinets up on the wall and the giant chalkboards listing the menu specials of the day (which, interestingly enough, are in Italian...though when the waiter describes them to you, he uses the English...i.e. linguini gamberi becomes linguini with shrimp. I was just happy to practice my rusty Italian at all.)

I'll definitely have to try it again sometime, perhaps on a quieter, non-TV-filmed kind of night. It seems like it would be a great place to go with a large group too.