Little Platoons: Pisolino Italian Market

Friday, January 8, 2021 I Issue #7, Vol. I

The ‘WSJ is thrilled and honored to announce to addition of Nick Puglisi to the masthead. Nick is a mechanical engineer by training, part of Fletcher Street’s own high-end furniture design company by trade, and observer of the world by habit.

For his first column he is really trying to earn some free bruschetta from the good folks around the corner at Pisolino. If you’ve not visited the restaurant-turned-market, well, in the first place, what’s wrong with you?! in the second place, here’s some video accompaniment to help set the scene.

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2755 W. Belmont I www.pisolinochicago.com

I’m certain that I could stand in Pisolino Italian Market all day long and just talk to the owner and employees while others came and went. I’d pause as they took someone else’s order. They wouldn’t pause, succeeding at holding two conversations at once, one commercial and one social. Melding the two. The customer and I made acquaintances by a genius stroke of hospitality. A hospitality learned through years’ worth of pinballing through the perpetually half-finished conversations of large family gatherings; constantly arranging and rearranging the conversational participants.“Hey, c’mere cousin, you said you were working in construction now, right? Michelle and I were just talking about a new building we saw going up. Grab a beer. Oh hey, grandma! Yeah, I made cannolis for later. Hold on a sec, 10 minutes until bedtime kiddos!”

When you inhabit a world that chaotic and full you become well versed in the knowledge of how to quickly get deep and intimate with one person and then welcome in a new participant through silly nonsense and long running inside jokes. 

Being one of five children and the oldest of around a dozen cousins, I recognize the sense of unending motion and welcoming that I get inside Pisolino as a sense of family. As they build sandwiches and pour americanos they can’t help but get to talking. In between stirring batches of sauce and giving suggestions to a customer on how to make their own pasta they ask me about my day and we talk about recent meals we’ve had.

Their kitchen is an open look through to the market, so you are literally brought into their kitchen and feel at home. You aren’t looked at as a transaction. They seem to care first and foremost about the food, next about people, and then about keeping the lights on. 

This isn’t a restaurant review, more an ode to a group of people that make fantastic food and care about quality and community. Vegetarian Bechamel lasagna, Sandwiches doused in oil. Baked goods that make your mouth water. Espresso. Biscotti that was so good I had to hide it from myself. I eventually (four or five whole minutes went by) found it and ate it all. I was waiting for a coffee one day and they brought out a coconut apple bread to put on display. It smelled and looked so irresistible and it was only $5 so I bought it. It was worth five times as much. 

There’s a focus on the sincere pursuit of craft and quality in the Rockwell area and Pisolino is an example of that pursuit realized. Years of training and refinement and risk taking leading up to something worth sharing with the world. Wander Rockwell and Belmont and Elston and the close environs. You’ll find plenty of similar stories.

In that way, Pisolino is a perfect neighborhood spot for Avondale. People that talk, people that are aware of the daily hum of their surroundings, people that make something that you want to come back for.