By Rick Karlin

Staff writer

Geppetto’s

113 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park

(708) 386-9200

Geppetto’s is that no-frills kind of restaurant that is getting harder and harder to find in urban areas. The food is good, cheap and plentiful. The waitresses (note, they are waitresses, not servers) are young and what they lack in polish they make up for with cheer. This is an Eye-talian restaurant, not a trattoria, not a ristorante, just a restaurant, with Formica tables, mismatched floor tiles, paper napkins and a salad bar. Not just any salad bar, but a “serious” salad bar to quote the menu.

You’ll find the usual fare; spaghetti and other assorted pastas, burgers, sandwiches, pizza and entrees such as chicken and eggplant parmesan, garlicky chicken with spinach and, of course; chicken vesuvio. The pastas also tend to run toward typical Italian American fare. That’s not to say that the food is typical—perhaps familiar would be a better descriptor. Familiar and comforting. Familiar, comforting and filling. None of us could finish our entrees, even though we passed on appetizers.

We did, however, do some serious eating at the salad bar. In addition to the ubiquitous Caesar, there were also bowls of baby spinach and iceberg (both looking a bit the worse for sitting too long) and a tureen of soup (lentil vegetable—healthy, to be sure, but not too appetizing-looking.)

The salad toppings spanned the spectrum of the food pyramid, from chopped carrots, broccoli, chick peas, and beets to fresh crumbled bacon, crumbled bleu cheese, pasta salad, crab (real) salad, Jell-O, fresh fruit, chopped nuts, jumbo croutons, pudding and Hawaiian salad. Add to that fresh biscuits and cheesy foccacia and one can understand why Geppetto’s is proud to call its salad bar “serious.” The salad bar comes with all entrees, but adding it to a pizza or sandwich runs about $8 extra (it’s not worth that much.)

Two of the most popular dishes are the spaghetti pie and the baked ziti. The pie features spaghettini piled in a parmesan cheese crust and topped with layers of ground beef and Italian sausage, topped with marinara and mozzarella cheese. Although the sauce was applied a bit too generously, this dish proved a winner. Baked ziti, while flavorful, was a bit less successful. Two of our party ordered it and to look at the dishes as they were presented you wouldn’t know it was the same item. One was served en casserole and featured tons of ricotta and Italian sausage, with a few slices of Portobello mushrooms. The other was plated and while rich with sausage, offered much less cheese and almost no mushrooms, but a lot more sauce.  

The stuffed small pizza easily serves two for dinner and manages to strike the perfect balance between a flaky and chewy crust. Our diners opted for plain cheese (which was anything but) and found the zingy tomato sauce used as the base for all pizzas to have a unique, pleasant undertone of flavor. After numerous tastings we couldn’t pin down the exact spice used, and our waitress wasn’t much help. Even after eating the leftovers I can’t pinpoint the herb, but it sure is good.

We didn’t even consider dessert, as not one of us was able to finish our entrée. We did have some wine and decided to try the unusual sounding “white merlot” which turned out to be a Zinfandel. Tasty, not great, but hey, it was $7 a glass.

The Bottom Line: A pasta entrée, salad bar and a glass of wine or dessert will run about $20, tax and tip included; add $5 more for a meat entrée.