PURPLE REIGN

In Oak Brook, Tony Mantuano unveils a sparkling new Purple Pig outpost that redefines dining at the mall.

We may be entering the golden age of mall dining. With every passing month, yet another Michelin-starred chef or James Beard winner seems interested in transplanting one of their beloved concepts into a shopping mecca. Consider José Andrés, the global celebrity chef and patron saint of culinary nonprofits, who recently opened a new Bay Area outpost of his mezze concept Zaytinya in a Stanford shopping center. Or David Chang, snarky overlord of the Momofuku empire, who launched his Korean-Americana mashup Super Peach in the middle of the Westfield Century City Mall in Los Angeles.

And now, more importantly for us, Tony Mantuano of Spiaggia fame has leveled up the concept by opening a 11,000-square-foot, 300-seat satellite location of his pan-Mediterranean treasure, The Purple Pig, in Oakbrook Center.

At first glance, it’s hard to believe this is the same restaurant. The original Purple Pig, which opened in 2009, was shoehorned into a space so cramped it could have doubled as a coatroom. It was crowded, noisy and joyously unpretentious. It felt, especially in the early years, as if someone had smuggled a plancha into an old Prohibition-era wine cellar. Oh but it was glorious because the menu refused to play dress-up. Mantuano and his former partners curated a blue-collar small-plate menu that channeled the heart and soul of Chicago. It served offbeat star attractions—clams, quail and piggy tails—that were fired, seared, and sizzled in a dining room that refused to discriminate between the post-work corporate suit crowd and the drink-till-dawn nighthawks.

The new location offers more gleam than grime. Gone are the original’s rustic wine cabinets. The house vino is now entombed in gleaming glass. Romanesque arches divide the massive dining room. Globe lights dangle from the loft-like ceiling. And a giant skylight streams starlight onto the mosaic patterns on the floor.

Mantuano’s skilled kitchen team—Culinary Director Brian Motyka, Executive Chef Michael Elliott and Executive Sous Chef Eryn Cisneros—plates orders in full view atop a giant island three steps from one of the largest open kitchens in the western suburbs.

Despite the sumptuousness of the room, the menu at Oak Brook retains much of the raffish spirit that continues to make the city-version of The Purple Pig—now located in a different space along Michigan Avenue—such an enduring success. I can’t think of a single item on this new menu that I didn’t yearn to sample.

There were more than a few Purple Pig classics—the chicken skewers, the pig ear salad, the bucatini amatriciana—we skipped because we’ve ordered them so many times I can guarantee them without reservation. But what continues to be so magnetic is The Purple Pig’s willingness to simultaneously go high and low in so many of its dishes.

This isn’t a punk-rock, traditions-be-damned menu nor an artfully curated roster of dishes in search of a Michelin star. It’s elevated back-alley fare, a bric-a-brac menu inspired by Greek tavernas, Italian trattorias and family-run ristorantes. Consider, for example, a recent risotto preparation that’s dappled with coal-roasted squash, glazed with balsamic and topped with crumbled Amaretti cookies. Is that a dressed-up classic Italian risotto or a whimsical simplification of a dish that could appear on a $200 tasting menu?

At this point, it’s become sacrilegious not to have a platter of meatballs in a restaurant like this, but The Purple Pig’s polpette are made with pork neck and balled up into rounds that are as fluffy as cake pops. They’re then slathered, in an obvious ode to the South Side, with a gooey slice of melted Fontina cheese.

The Purple Pig’s rigatoni is dressed in a thick white ragu, rich with carrot notes, that glazes the pasta as if were an East Coast chowder. For every conventional pasta choice—fusilli matted with a spring onion pesto or burrata-stuffed cannelloni—there’s a quirky option thrown into the mix. Our delicious bowl of creste de gallo (ruffled half moon pasta named after the comb on a rooster’s head) not only sops up sauces like crusty French bread, it’s tossed with bits of caramelized duck sausage and strands of bittersweet rapini. And as colorful as the kitchen’s tuna crudo might look on the plate—the ruby-red slices of seafood gilded with dimples of nasturtium aioli, schmears of pickled fennel salsa verde and tweezer-dropped flowers—the core flavors are instantly familiar: a deconstructed play on a classic veal tonnato.

For those of us who have a long history eating Mantuano’s cooking, some dishes feel like culinary Easter eggs from past menus. This includes a fantastic char-grilled branzino filet, topped with sweet-pickled green olives and a lacey fennel salad, which tastes like a subtle reinvention of a branzino he used to prepare at Café Spiaggia.

In short, these are the kinds of full-bodied dishes that great chefs, away from the prying eyes of critics and Michelin-star judges, tend to cook for themselves on the weekends. Case in point: A gloriously tender lobe of milk-braised pork shoulder showered with crispy parsnips and flat-leaf parsley that’s set atop on a mound of polenta so creamy it would make your grandmother’s cream of wheat quake with envy.

There’s a giant grilled porkchop slathered with both a rhubarb glaze and a green garlic puree. There are diaphanous snacks here, too—including flywheel-cut charcuterie—plus salads that read like four-star picnic fare. Imagine a snap pea salad dressed with strawberries, almonds and mint yogurt. The dessert list is equally dreamy, especially a yuzu-whipped ganache citrus bar that blends the sweet-sour profiles of a classic lemon bar and a slice of Key lime pie.

It was only after dessert that I wandered to the back of the restaurant, where a wall of photos includes candid shots of Mantuano and friends enjoying the good life. Some are rolling fresh pastas, others sailing across a deep blue Mediterranean Sea. There was another image, however, that really spoke to me. It was a shot of Anthony Quinn in his post-Zorba the Greek days dancing his way between a set of restaurant chairs. In the picture, he appears to have enjoyed his meal so much that he couldn’t resist dancing in its wake. And while I didn’t have the courage to tango my way out of the dining room after our visit, I did skip my way into the parking lot, overjoyed to know that in Oak Brook this pig really can fly.

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Cocktails

Sogni d’Oro

A strong shot of calvados, in all its tart-apple glory, mingles with passion fruit, lime, and cucumber to produce a luminous amber-hued tipple that pairs beautifully with The Purple Pig’s charcoal-fired seafood and beefy steaks. 

Stranded In Sicily

Imagine an Italian-born bartender trying to reinvent a mojito using local ingredients. That’s what you get here: a gin sparkler blooming with bergamot, mint, lemon, and a little extra fizz courtesy of a top-off of sparkling wine. 

The Purple Pig is located at 15 Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook. Call 630.581.0158 or visit thepurplepigrestaurantgroup.com/oak-brook.