A Non-Alcoholic Beginning to a 21st Birthday

Michelle's sister came into Chicago to celebrate her 21st bday/get alcohol poisoning.  However, before she nearly met her death, we took her out to lunch (it was Restaurant Week, afterall).  We tried to get into Topolobampo, but for some inexplicable reason, they don't do lunch on Saturdays.  We ended up at Cafe Spiaggia, which is not a bad backup option.

I started out with the tuscan bean soup with olive oil.  It was all full of olive oil deliciousness.  It was pretty tasty except that there was way too much of it and there was no textural diffentiation in there, so I got bored of it pretty fast.

My next course was the butternut squash ravioli with brown butter and sage.  The pasta was a very nice thickness, but the butternut squash wasn't terribly flavorful, so the dish probably wasn't as good as it could have been.  Michelle and her sister got the grilled chicken with potatoes.  Theirs was much better.  I only had one bite, but it had some awesome wood-grilled flavor in there.  I would like to come back and see what they can do on a non-Restaurant Week menu.

We finished off with an assortment of gelato and sorbet.  I ordered a chocolate, pistacio, and pineapple-basil.  I do say that these are the closest things to gelato from Italy that I have had in America, and the pineapple-basil sorbet was very interesting.  It tasted very melon-like, but then it melted away into a delicate basil flavor.