Chicago Sun Times - Weekend Plus

Worth Shouting About - Classy Gabriel's lets great cuisine do the talking

Friday, February 6, 2004

There are chefs who lend their name and visage to promote knives, pots and pans, burgers and hot dogs, and a lot of other products that are not even remotely connected to the culinary arts.

Then there are those chefs who have been launched into superstar orbit based solely on a three-letter word, a funny pair of shoes or some quirky thing they do on a cooking show. That's fine with me, as long as they can cook up a storm.

The wacky world of restaurants and cooking is what it is. But when push comes to shoving real food around a kitchen, the chefs that I respect and admire the most are those who are flying just below the radar. One such man is Gabriel Viti, the chef and owner of Gabriel's Restaurant in Highwood.

Leaving the vaunted Carlos' just across the tracks in Highland Park and opening his own place around 1993, chef Viti, in short order, became the toque of the town. Highwood had never before seen the likes of his cuisine, a masterful blend of Italian and French that would make your jaw drop. Training, being very savvy about food and paying your dues is what it all boils down to.

One of Viti's stops (and there have been quite a few) along the culinary trail was under the auspices of the legendary Fernand Point at Restaurant de la Pyramide in Vienne, France. La Pyramide was, in its day, the greates restaurant in France. (I had the pleasure of eating at La Pyramide, but it was after Point had died and the restaurant was being run by his wife. Still, that meal remains one of the most memorable I have ever had.)

Viti is working with a culinary palette that is interesting and innovative. There are the usual hot and cold appetizers, some eight pasta dishes, seafood, meat and poultry. Woven into this setup are dishes like carpaccio, foie gras, oysters Rockefeller, papillote of sea bass, osso bucco and rack of lamb with ratatouille.

It was said that Point insisted that great food must be pleasing to all the senses - taste, smell, sight and even touch. Viti's cuisine embraces those characteristics and then some, which are captured most vividly in one of the appetizers, carpaccio of beef. The almost paper thin leaves of beef were a true red, flecked with the gold of a nutty tasting Parmigiano-Regiano and a veneer of fruity extra-virgin olive oil.

Similarly, the cream of wild mushroom soup fanned the sight-and-smell idea the moment it was set down. But it was the earthy and lush taste that brought the soup full circle and wrapped me in a blanket of comfort.

The kitchen doesn't let up one iota with salds (there are but two), such as a vibrant, cool and delicious salad in which sweet beets were tangled with peppery arugula. And those flavors were counterbalanced by an assertive Gorgonzola, which in turn was tempered by a sweet yet husky balsamic dressing. Pine nuts were added for a bit of crunchiness.

I would come here just to eat pasta. Granted, these pasta dishes carry a hefty price tag (most of them in the $20 range), but the idea of price fades away after the first bite. Take the homemade gnocchi with fresh spinach and creamy tomato vodka sauce, for example. The plump nubbins of gnocchi came out perfectly al dente and the vodka sauce was one of the liveliest (I could pick up some of the peppery effects of the vodka in the sauce) and most delicious I've hda. Three was such a perfect flavor balance to this dish. I just didn't want it to end. A lot of Italian restaurance feature a vodka sauce these days, but none can compare with this.

A bit of French influence came into play with the roasted rack of lamb with ratatouille. The kitchen gussied up the overall flavor with an elegant thyme sauce, and that added to the enjoyment immensely, but it was the wonderful flavor of the lamb itself (medium-rare, thank you) that carried the dish to a higher level.

One of the glories of Lombardian cookery (think Milan, Italy) is osso buco and risotto. If I had to pick one meal for my dying wish, this would be it. Gabriel's does this classic pairing as well as any I have had in Italy. The veal shank was so tender, with the meat practically falling off the bone. Digging out the marrow from the hole in the bone enriched the pleasure. The incomparable flavor of the the lush risotto, which was cooked perfectly al dente and tinted a subtle shade of gold from precious saffron, deliciously exemplified the idea of the taste, smell and sight brought to the proper level of enjoyment.
Gabriel's desserts feature a bite of Italian (tiramisu) and a sampling of French (creme brulee and profiteroles). Or you can satisfy your sweet tooth with the likes of an incredibly good North Carolina pecan cake that stood on its own delicious flavor but got an extra bit of stature from a rich roasted pecan ice cream. Or opt for something as basic as pear cake and vanilla ice cream, but after one bite, you just might wish that the portion was a lot bigger.
- Pat Bruno