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Ciao Amore Ristorante
Rating Details »
Neighborhood: Pilsen
1134 West 18th St
(between Carpenter St & May St)
Chicago, IL 60608
(312) 432-9090
1134 West 18th St
(between Carpenter St & May St)
Chicago, IL 60608
(312) 432-9090
Zoo Lights this weekend!
Check out zoolights @ Lincoln Park this weekend & come dine with us for dinner.Visit http://www.restaurant.com for some great gift certificates
Announced 32 hours ago- Hours:
Tue-Thu. 11:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Fri. 11:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Sat. 4:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Sun. 3:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
- Parking:
- Street
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good for:
- Dinner
- Alcohol:
- None
12 reviews for Ciao Amore Ristorante
I don't think I have ever loved a sauce as much as their porcini mushroom wine sauce! You could put it on cardboard and I would stil think it is heavenly. When you put it on their fluffy gnocci pillows I could die right then and there and be happy!
My boyfriend and I have been here 5 times and each time have had great service. Everyone goes out of their way to ensure you are happy and have everything you want. Combine that with a BYOB and you have a perfect spot! Delicious food at a very reasonable price with great customer service, definitely a rare find!
The website that offers discount restaurant gift certificates was offering a deal for this place, so my girlfriend and I decided to try it out. We've had great experiences at Caro Mio, and were hoping to have a similarly awesome meal here at Ciao since the proprietor/chef worked at Caro Mio for several years. What a disappointment. Not only was this place not as good as Caro Mio, it was just bad. Real bad.
My order of beef stuffed with cheese and spinach and home-made pasta was drenched in a ridiculous amount of olive oil and grease. The gf's lobster ravioli just tasted like a fishy cheese ravioli. Let's just say that we found that this food was difficult to digest later.
I'd suggest skipping this place if you're somehow hoping for anything resembling a Caro Mio experience.
The best Italian food in Chicago. There, I said it.
I've never had gnocchi so flavorful and the lobster ravioli was shockingly flavorful with the addition of jalapenos.
Excellent service, staff and decor as well.
Not only were we asked if we wanted dessert, but after declining we were given sorbet. Go now before its on "Check Please" and crowded.
This was the tastiest meal I've had in a looong time. Forget Taylor Street, head south to 18th street, to get maybe the best Italian in Chicago. Extremely fresh ingredients and some interesting pairings in every dish we tried. I never expected five star flavor from a quaint BYOB but they delivered!
I really wanted to like this place. Was there with 3 friends and we were the only people in the place. Service was great and loved the ambiance. But the food?... Needs work. The gnocci themselves were light and delicious, but ruined with the super cheesy sauce that they were drowning in. Same with the lobster ravioli, the presentation looked like something out of a 1950's magazine. Minestrone was tasty, but too thick. And calamari salad? Well, the calamari had no taste and I swear were frozen for like a year before I ate it. Plus who mixes seafood with something as strong as green peppers? It just missed the mark by a longshot. A lovely place but they need cooking lessons from an Italian.
Buonissimo! The best I have had in a while...
I have visited Ciao Amore about 3 times now and we have been consistently BLOWN AWAY every time. (In a good way...) As a longtime Pilsners, my friends and I have been watching restaurant openings like hawks, and it's great to have a place for unpretentious and flawless Italian on 18th street!
The gnocchi are the best I have ever had, either in the US or Italy. The Cioppino (spicy seafood stew) was delicious, the calamari were perfectly done, not rubbery or oily.These three items are bellwether dishes that cannot be muddled through. Pastas were light and fresh like in Italy.
The food is top-notch, authentic Italian. In general, the portions are large, so best order family-style and share. ( When you factor that in, the prices are beyond reasonable.) Normally places that have large portions skimp on ingredient-quality, but everything at Ciao Amore was fresh and high-quality, even small touches like a sprig of fresh rosemary on a meat dish.
The staff was always very welcoming and they were all genuinely sweet and friendly. Some of the waitstaff are from Italy, as well, and everyone we encountered seemed happy to be there. It was more like visiting the cool and cozy loft of some Italian friends rather than being customers in a restaurant!
We met chef/owner Caesar on one occasion and he regaled us with tales of the town in Italy where his mother came from.
We were surprised to find such a hidden gem in Pilsen. They had a soft opening to fine-tune the kitchen, but everything was perfect from the first time we went, which literally 2 days after they opened.
Since then we have brought groups of friends and honestly, no one has ever even had their dish come out so much as slightly off. Every app, every dish was singularly wonderful. These "paisani" really know what they are doing!
Dessert-wise: The sorbet and the tiramisu were OFF THE CHARTS. I was sad I didn't have more room for them!
Friendly, welcoming, delicious, authentic, what more can I say?
i was pleasantly surprised to find yet another awesome little spot in Pilsen! it was nice to have made the last minute decision to go out to eat and not have a problem finding a table. this place is nicely decorated yet cozy. after eyeballing another table's appetizer we couldn't resist ordering "what they had"... turned out to be some of the best bruschetta I've ever had! the lobster ravioli i ordered was pretty good but i would've preferred a lot less sauce. my friend ordered another ravioli dish that also was drowned in sauce. we worked around it so it was all good. anyways, the owner was gracious enough to visit our table and make sure we were enjoying our experience. he was also cool enough enough to let us know that they are currently running a promotion via http://restaurant.com PLUS it's BYOB. :-) Great deal for a great experience.
Three dishes, three sublime tastes, three clean plates. Polenta with a creamy effervecence and that just right tart marinara, chunky white bean Minestrone with just the right amount of zest (incredible actually)and compared right with Great Grandma's a rare feat, and a most delightful Penne Putanesca with a rich thick sauce that had a wonderful slow heat that reminded me of it's roots. Simply the best Italian Cuisine I have had in ages, since Great Grandma died actually. The service has good karma and just the right amount of attentiveness. Terrific!!!
First of all, I must start by saying I didn't actually eat in the restaurant, so I can't comment on service. My husband brought home carryout from Ciao Amore last night, and it was DELICIOUS!! I told him to surprise me with the food selections, and I was not disappointed. We had the bruschetta as an appetizer. The bread is super yummy and having it drenched in balsamic vinegar was surprisingly delicious. I would definitely order it again! He also ordered the Lobster Ravioli with Arrabiata Sauce and the Gnocchi with Basil Cream Sauce. The Lobster Ravioli was really good. The arrabiata sauce had some good heat to it, but not so much that your mouth is burning. BUT WOW, the gnocchi was to die for! I've never had gnocchi quite like that stuffed with cheesy goodness. The pesto was sinfully good. The fact that they are BYOB is a dream come true for us. Living in the UV area, we had been wanting Franconello's to go BYOB for a long time. Now we've found an Italian place that's food is even better and is BYOB! Hopefully next time we'll eat in and bring a bottle of wine or two!
A flawless dining experience. This is what real italian dining is supposed to be, simple, high quality, and fresh ingredients, I had the lasagna entree and the polenta appetizer and I knew from the first bite I had found someplace special. The menu options were all upscale but traditional italian dishes. Appetizers and soups, a good amount of pasta dishes (things like ricotta stuffed gnocchi and lobster ravioli) and a selection of meat and fish dishes. This is the kind of place that people in Italy would go to on a Saturday night. Everything was extremely high quality. Portions are huge, and everything on the menu ranged from 15-20 bucks, which is an absolute steal. It's also BYOB with a liqour store literally across the street so you really can't lose going here!
The service was impeccable (our waiter was a native of northern Italy who couldn't have been nicer or more helpful) and the atmosphere was casual but classy. La Scarola was my go to for fine Italian dining, but Ciao Amore just rocketed to the top of the list. I will be back and encourage anyone else who likes authentic italian food to go. You will not be disappointed.
The best meal I've had in a long time! My boyfriend used to live right next door to this building, which had been a closed-up Italian restaurant for a while now, and I always thought it was a shame that such a nice location right on 18th street should waste away. Ever since we saw the butcher paper go up in the windows a few months ago, I've waited anxiously to see what the new place would be like and tonight we finally made it over to give Ciao Amore a try. I hoped it'd be good, but I had no idea how impressive it would be. We were greeted warmly at the door, and I was immediately impressed with how lovely and simple the decor is-- nice lighting, tasteful understated decorations and a view of all the happenings on 18th. Our waiter was unbelievably welcoming and gracious-- definitely some of the best service I've had in the city. Everything he recommended was amazing, from the polenta appetizer with the most flavorful tomato sauce (he told a story about how his father grew up eating polenta every morning for breakfast... this was not the breakfast version, however) to the complexly-flavored mushroom gnocchi (which he told us about, although it wasn't on the menu) that I ordered and was absolutely knocked out by, to the delicious tiramisu and complimentary spumoni. Amazing. The portions were really large and the price-- most entrees were between $15 and $20-- was totally reasonable. Really, this place blew me away. We will most definitely be back to support this new gem in the neighborhood.
Went to Ciao last night and had a lovely meal. The porcini mushroom sauce is to die for! Only giving 4 stars because our server failed to ask us if we wanted dessert. I love that this place is BYOB. I will definitely be back.
