Restaurant Review: Acquaviva Winery

(Reposting from restaurant review area for easy retrieval later)

Restaurant Review: Acquaviva Winery
I get quite a few requests for restaurant suggestions for places out in the far westernMIDDLE suburbs so when the opportunity presents itself I try new places for both you and me.

Yesterday Sugar Momma, our friend Mary and I met at a new place called Acquaviva Winery in Maple Park located at 47W614 IL Route 38. There has been a vineyard here for several years and the winery itself has been under construction for a couple of years.

We arrived right at noon and there weren't many people there. As we walked up the stairs we were greeted and the door was opened for us by a young man whose job appeared to be to open the door for us. Upon entering the winery we were immediately transformed to Italy by the ornately-detailed decor inside. The domed entrance reminded us of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel (there is a photo on July 7th's blog if you want to see it). The columns resembled marble. The first impression was breath-taking. We were greeted and escorted past the wine-tasting area, the grand piano and the brick pizza oven to our table. There is a terrace outside but we chose to sit inside as it was a bit humid when we were there. I was fortunate enough to be the person facing south so I had a view of the vineyard across Lincoln Highway which added to the Italian feel of the meal.

We were given a basket of bread and individual dishes of dipping oil and what appeared to be freshly grated Parmesan (I thought it would have been a nice touch if they had grated it freshly at the table but this was lunch and maybe they do that at dinner time or maybe they did and I wasn't in "blog-mode"?).

I am not much of a wine drinker and Mary, who is the most Italian person I know personally doesn't seem to be either. So Jill is the only one of us who ordered the wine. I think she had the Piacere (red) and she liked it very much..I think she had two glasses with lunch.

I wish I had known I was going to do a review of the restaurant when we were there so I would have been more prepared with the menu (I think maybe I was just looking for a reason to go back). I blog everything why not this - staycation?

They had a nice lunch menu and Jill ordered an artichoke pizza from their extensive pizza selections. They seemed to be kind of designer pizzas and she shared it with Mary and I as her pizza arrived well before our food. The waiter explained that the pizza arrived earlier because it's cooked in a different over (the brick fire oven we saw upon entering). My thought would have been to maybe not put the pizza in right away so that the meals could have been brought out together.

I ordered the baked artichoke hearts topped with mozzarella and Mary had a sandwich that looked like a Caprese sandwich with red peppers on it and a bowl of soup. We talked and shared our food and were there for quite a while. The place got very busy but that seemed, mostly, because there was a Porsche rally of some sort and this was a stop on their tour. There were at least ten Porsche's in and out of the parking lot at any given time the entire time we were there. I'm sure our car felt like Herbie the Love Bug at Monte Carlo.

Mary and I both initially ordered the Crab Cakes that were one of the specials of the day but were disappointed when the waiter came back and said "the chef isn't ready to make them yet." Then why were they mentioned as one of the specials?

Sugar Momma's pizza was excellent and my baked artichoke heart dish was superb. I did not try Mary's sandwich as I think I filled up on the bread and dipping oil. In fact, at one point I asked for a second basket of bread. The waiter seemed put out by this as I am sure most people don't ask for more bread but I like my carbs. The new basket of bread was not warm and toasty like the first basket and it took longer to arrive than expected so maybe they went and bought a loaf for seconds. It was clearly a different bread. I was willing to pay for the new basket of bread if that was the issue.

After dinner we went and browsed through their store. They have wines made on the property, of course, and they had interesting food items and a very nice selection of cigars. Cigars that I have not seen anywhere outside of Canada. We decided to do a wine-tasting. It was $6.00 each for six one-ounce tastes (six different wines). We tasted three whites (Prairie Star, Bianco Bello and Brianna) and three reds (Vitino, Piacere and Frontenac). I remember these because they give you a sheet of the wines. Jill loved the Vitino. She loves, and regularly drinks, a wine called Beaujolais Villages and this wine is a Beaujolais-style wine. Though I am not a wine drinker for some reason I want to be a wine drinker because of the romance of drinking wine. Sugar Momma says that "you just need to find a wine that suits your pallet." It's kind of a quest I guess. I am more of the Thomas Hayden Church character than the Paul Giamatti character in "Sideways" I think. I did like the Prairie Star and Bianco Bello okay (of course they turned out to be the least-expensive to match my palette). The only thing that I found negative with the tasting is that the palette-cleanser (bread sticks) were stale. But, I am not normally a wine-taster and maybe that is by design?

Overall the foods and the experience were fabulous. I did not find it expensive but other people have told us that they thought it was expensive. We were there for lunch and the others had gone there for dinner so maybe that is a different menu with different prices. Sugar Momma wants a bottle of Vitino for her birthday so I think that was a hint that maybe we will be back there around August 12th. I would recommend Acquaviva Winery for anyone who is looking to take a drive (or a ride) just a bit west of Route 47. The food is great, the scenery is amazing (especially for where it is located) and I found it moderately priced. There were the few glitches that I mentioned here but they are newly-opened and they are probably still fine-tuning. Sugar Momma grew up in Maple Park and she says "Did you ever think there would be something like this in Maple Park?" No, I don't think anyone did... Bravissimo