O'famé Italian Restaurant [Meeting #34]

O'famé Italian Restaurant
750 W. Webster (GoogleMaps)
(773) 929-5111

CPC invaded O'famé on 10/05/06

O'famé is a family-run Italian restaurant boasting recipes that have been handed down through several generations, after originating within the neighborhood food businesses of Chicago's Taylor Street. Though inconveniently located in the center of a spiritless neighborhood calling itself "Lincoln Park," the restaurant itself is in a warm and simple two-room space. They accommodated us with a large table for twelve by the window, and the servers were friendly and attentive. A very nice touch for the squinting crowd: reading glasses at a table by the entry to help tired eyes peruse the menu in the dim lighting.

O'famé has a broad selection of pastas, salads, and sandwiches, but clearly the Chicago Pizza Club was there for the P to the I-Z-Z-A. They serve thin, pan, and stuffed pizzas, all topped with mozzarella and aged parmigiano cheese. We did not notice a big difference between the pan and stuffed varieties, though the pan pizza was certainly doughier, and at least the one we had was a bit soggy, but still pretty good. O'famé offers a variety of fresh ingredients, including their own homemade Italian sausage, ricotta cheese, roasted red peppers, and all the staples.

We enjoyed the following pizzas:

• Pan pizza: O'famé Specialty Pizza - Ricotta and Tomato with Basil
• We added basil to this specialty pizza and it went well with the ricotta and tomato. The dough of this pizza was a bit soggy, but it was also soft in a good way, going well with the delicate flavors of the ricotta and other ingredients.

• Stuffed pizza: homemade sausage, roasted red peppers, garlic
• The crumbled homemade sausage in the stuffed pizza was really good, and evenly sprinkled throughout each slice. The roasted red peppers were also nice. The stuffed pizza was soft like the pan pizza, but not quite as soggy.
  

• Thin crust pizza: bacon, artichoke hearts
• Both thin crust pizzas were nice and crispy. This pizza was topped with long, crispy slices of bacon, just like you make for breakfast.

• Thin crust pizza: O'famé Specialty Pizza - fresh garlic, oil, tomato
• This specialty pizza was the crowd favorite. The crust stayed thin and crispy and had a good amount of salt to complement the delicious fresh ingredients.

There was more than enough pizza to go around, and the cost without alcoholic beverages came out to $12/ person. Petey forgot his watch, but all of the pizzas came out hot at the same time (stuffed pizza lagged just a few minutes) after what seemed to him like about 45 minutes.

Petey gives O'famé a 6.8 / 10.