5 new Sunday Suppers

Each Sunday, a new region of Italy receives the spotlight at this Wicker Park restaurant. The table gets a salad, and the choice of two pastas, two entrees and two desserts for $23 per person. For our Puglia-themed dinner, we started with a salad of beets, strawberries and greens, followed by a perfectly al dente orecchiette studded with garlicky ground pork. The main, a grilled calamari steak, transported me to coastal Italy with each tender bite. A simple dessert of juicy strawberries doused with a sweet balsamic and sprinkled with mascarpone was a perfect cap to a thoroughly delicious meal. July's menu focuses on Tuscan dishes.—Laura Baginski

Four different $30 suppers rotate every Sunday, including an oyster roast and a fried chicken dinner. I tried the Lowcountry boil, a Southeastern staple of broth, corn cobs, potatoes and shrimp, served buffet-style. Unfortunately, Lowcountry boil is not ideal for sitting around: The shrimp had become tough and rubbery by the time I got to it. The cornbread, however, was sweet and moist, and the potato salad was better than most (I've never been a fan), but the cobbler was unremarkable.—LB

You won’t find the Sunday fried chicken dinner special on Gemini Bistro’s website, or on its menu and, if your server is anything like ours, you’ll have to listen to a litany of other offerings and specials before this one is even mentioned. Gemini's Sunday supper comes in a five- ($28) or 10-piece ($48) dinner served with mashed potatoes and biscuits, though both the chicken and the sides are unremarkable and lacking in flavor. The chicken was cooked well—moist meat beneath a nice, crispy skin—but in a city now overrun by fried chicken restaurants it’s no longer enough to serve a chicken dinner that’s just OK.—Erin Delahanty