Date Night is a two-part road map for everyone who wants a nice evening out, but has no time to plan it. It’s for people who want to do more than just go to one restaurant and call it a night. It’s for overwhelmed parents who don’t get out often; for friends who visit the same three restaurants because they’re too afraid to try someplace new; and for busy folks who keep forgetting all the places they’ve driven past, heard about, seen on social and said, “Let’s remember that place next time we go out.”
In the past five hours, my husband Dom and I have hustled to two youth basketball games, taken rushed showers, attempted to assemble vaguely adult-like outfits, picked up a pizza and the sitter, dropped off both at home and run back out the door.
It’s not the sexiest way to start a date night, but that’s the way it gets done in our world.
We have reservations at Yolan, the new fine-dining Italian restaurant in The Joseph hotel, but we’re not ready to face downtown just yet. We need a place to have a drink and a snack and segue from Tired Tween Parents Getting Our Asses Kicked on the Regular to a couple who remember that we like each other.
The place shouldn’t be too busy — we don’t have time to stalk people for their seats. And it shouldn’t be too expensive — we’re about to drop big bucks on dinner. It shouldn’t be too dirty, too clean or too far from downtown, but it should be far enough away that it feels completely different.
Known for its exterior portrait of Patrick Swayze’s character Bodhi from Point Break — in all his shaggy, beach-blond, tank-topped glory — The Centennial checks off all the requirements.
Just off the corner of 51st and Centennial Boulevard in The Nations, The Centennial is dimly lit, as all good dives are — most of the light comes from the glow of TVs and a few neon signs. There are a couple of sea-themed murals inside, the kind of art an old sailor might have tattooed on his forearm, and there’s a framed rundown of banned patrons from the bar’s previous owners that looks like Santa’s naughty list. Each table has a napkin dispenser, a bottle of off-brand ketchup and a 25-ounce pump of hand sanitizer.
The Centennial
I have a lot of questions about The Centennial, many of which are about Patrick Swayze, but the answers will remain a mystery as inquiries to the owners weren’t returned. Can’t be mad about that: People who are good at running quality dive bars and people who enjoy talking to members of the media aren’t often the same people. Or maybe that’s the secret to keeping local bars local.
We have a drink each — an ice-cold Miller High Life draft for him and a margarita for me — and share a basket of mozzarella sticks as we chat about local breakfast spots with our server, Big Ang. Dom watches golf on one screen and basketball on another. I eavesdrop on a group of 20-something guys in ball caps and beanies describing their chest hair. On my way to the ladies’ room I pass a four-top of women celebrating a friend with a wedding-ring-shaped balloon tied around her chair.
The stall with a door that locks is occupied. The toilet with a shower curtain rigged around it is available. I wait for the stall.
Time to pay up and head downtown.
Now look: I’m as guilty as the next Nashvillian of rolling my eyes when visiting friends suggest going anywhere near Broadway, but I’m curious about Yolan. After more than three decades, Tony and Cathy Mantuano left Spiaggia — the alpha and omega of Chicago’s fine Italian dining — to move here and oversee food and beverage at The Joseph. Their executive pastry chef, Noelle Marchetti, recently made the James Beard Award semifinalist list for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker. And, well, it’s winter, and downtown isn’t quite the chicken-fried clusterfudge it will be in a few months. Now’s the time, friends.
The kitchen offers five-course ($120) or eight-course ($160) regular and vegetarian tasting menus, plus an à la carte option with some crossover between the three. Yolan’s reservation system requires that you choose your menu in advance, and I went à la carte, so I’m confused by the tasting menu on the table. Our server Chris explains it’s a glitch in the system and both menus are available for dinner.
A longtime server, Chris is decisive and confident. We narrow down our choices for each course and let him decide from there. I’ve tried this countless times at various restaurants, and most servers hem and haw, afraid to pull the trigger. Chris also has a gift for leaving the table at the exact right moment before our interactions turn trite or awkward.
He brings us the stracciatella, a fresh, soft cow’s-milk cheese with fennel for bite and dots of Calabrian chili crisp that add a faint heat.
He sends out the gnocchi, which arrives with an Italian chef who shaves a layer of black truffles over the plate by hand while describing its origins. I’m so mesmerized by the thin sheets of black truffle raining down on the plate and melting into the gnocchi I couldn’t tell you what he said.
Made with ricotta, the gnocchi — the sole à la carte menu item that never changes — are as light as gnocchi can possibly be, but nevertheless heavy, as all gnocchi are. Resist the temptation to eat slowly to make them last; the cream sauce doesn’t stay creamy forever. It’s hard to imagine that a better version of this dish exists outside Italy.
We double down on the pastas with bucatini all’Amatriciana — a faintly porky red sauce to pair with the white of the gnocchi. Chris grazes the side of his left cheek with his hand to illustrate the tender part of the pig where the meat comes from.
Trota con Prosciutto at Yolan
He balances out the carb courses with trota, or a trio of prosciutto-wrapped Bucksnort trout in a lambrusco sauce with a touch of smoked roe. I think the lambrusco might make the dish too sweet. I’m wrong.
Do we have room for dessert? No. Do we let Chris bring us the date gelato with sticky toffee anyway? Yes, just to try one of Marchetti’s potentially award-winning pastries. It’s sweet, salty and expertly textured in all the right ways. But if she wins the Beard, and I hope she does, it’ll be for the intoxicating focaccia she makes from a sourdough starter named Margo. Any subsequent visits I make to Yolan will follow this pattern: focaccia-gougere-gnocchi-focaccia.
Date gelato at Yolan
Yolan has a dedicated entrance on Fourth Avenue separate from the hotel lobby, but shares one long room with The Joseph’s bar. That makes it feel more like a hotel restaurant than a regular restaurant, and gives it an inconsistent vibe I found hard to shake. If this is Italian fine dining, I want to feel romanced, cocooned for a few fleeting hours in a world of food and wine. I don’t want to strain to hear my server over day-drunk conventioneers sucking back one last whiskey sour before their Ubers arrive.
Then again, I’m the one who’s out of place in a downtown hotel restaurant, not the tourists and business travelers. Yolan exists for them. I can’t expect the fish to stop swimming just because I want to take a dip in the lake.
Post-meal update: After my visit to Yolan, I noticed a $563.73 charge on a credit card from The Joseph hotel, though I’d paid for our meal on a different card. Yolan’s assistant general manager explained via email that the charge was for a four-person tasting menu reservation I’d secured with that credit card and canceled (well within their 24-hour policy) due to a conflict. Absent any apology, he refunded my card more than three weeks after the erroneous charge was made, explaining that “the amount was not refunded as we have to refund the charge manually.”
