TerzoPiano1.Venue.jpg
Photograph: Martha WilliamsTerzo Piano

Review

Terzo Piano

3 out of 5 stars
  • Restaurants | Italian
  • price 2 of 4
  • Grant Park
  • Recommended
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Time Out says

Like the rest of the Renzo Piano–designed Modern Wing, the restaurant at the Art Institute is a beautiful space: sleek, pristine and awash with light on even the gloomiest early summer day. But taking a room this flawless and attaching it to Spiaggia chef Tony Mantuano (and tacking on the price tags to show it) raises expectations—even for a museum restaurant—that the food doesn’t meet.

The highlights of the menu demonstrate the same simplicity and elegance that make the architecture so compelling: A tangle of wildly flavorful garlic scapes rests among heaps of the creamiest burrata (milky-soft fresh mozzarella) on flatbread; an enormous pile of fresh, crunchy pea shoots and tendrils comes with wisp-thin slices of sheep’s-milk cheese and crisped La Quercia prosciutto; and a rich, indulgent chocolate-hazelnut semifreddo plated atop salted caramel is one of the greatest desserts I’ve eaten at a restaurant in a long time.

But what came in between that flatbread and the semifreddo is the problem. A trio of mini burgers suffers from the travesty of sliders: The patty-to-bread ratio makes each one taste dry and bready, even when there’s a well-seasoned lamb burger inside mixed with Capriole goat cheese (and especially when the patty is a bland, battered “shrimp burger”). A sesame crust nearly swallowed a fillet of whitefish (why not sesame-crust just one side?). A dollop of lemon-infused ricotta added gentle acidity to a bowl of spaghetti, but once the ricotta ran out, the dish had exactly two notes: butter and salt. And then there was the dessert that dared show its face next to that semifreddo: three tough, dense, heavy espresso doughnuts that not even the thoughtful accompaniment of sliced cherries and fennel fronds could save. In a room fixated on lightness, there was no way the doughnuts could hide their weight.

Details

Address
Art Institute of Chicag
159 E Monroe St
Chicago
60603
Cross street:
between Michigan Ave and Columbus Dr
Transport:
El stop: Brown, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple (rush hrs) to Adams; Red to Monroe. Bus: 3, 4, 6, 14, 26, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 151, 157.
Price:
Average main course: $23
Opening hours:
Mon-Wed 11am-3pm; Thurs 11am-8pm; Fri, Sat 11am-3pm; Sun 10:30am-3pm
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