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Billusa99, anonymous:

Overall:

• Quality:

  5/5

• Vibe:

  4/5

• Service:

  4/5

• Value:

  4/5

Daniele Osteria is the kind of place you would walk into in any small Italian village. From the low lighting, to the music, to the brick wine cellar and heavy draped curtains, to the welcome from the staff, it instantly reminded us of our trip to Tuscany last year -- albeit Daniele's is actually Sicilian in its influences.

The menu is broken into the typical antipasti, pasta and secondi courses. Now, we rarely can eat that much, but here we did it by splitting the first two courses. We started with calamari, which was perfectly fried little ringlets, with a crisp and light breading, that were not chewy at all. They were accompanied by a zesty Sicilian red sauce that thankfully was NOT the semi-sweet, flacid marinara served in countless other places. Next, we split the spinach salad, which was served with pine nuts, caramelized onions, some crisy fried pancetta (dry-cured Italian bacon) and a wonderful, tart, dark basalmic vinaigrette. The spinach was crisp and fresh, and the whole salad sang with la dolce vita!

For our final courses, I ordered the rigatoni al funghi and my wife had the pappaaredelle sodano, their "pasta of the house." Mine came with pancetta, shallots, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes in a Parmigiano cream sauce. My wife's had cherry tomatoes, arugula, capers and black Italian olives in extra virgin olive oil. My heavens, WHAT PASTA this man can make. Perfectly al dente and tasting so fresh -- like it had just been made and hung to dry over broom handles that afternoon. We were both eating as much out of each others plates as we were our own! We did not recognize many of the wines, so went with a Sicilian red recommendation from our waiter, who was also from that area.

We will definitely go back and try the meat and fish (secondi) dishes. If they reflect Daniele's skill with pasta, I know we won't be disappointed. So, if you want a loving trip across time and space, to an authentic, small, Italian-run kitchen that you can only get in Italy (and now Oak Lawn), then get yourself to Daniele's Osteria!