Mancini’s

–1 degree weather was a great reason to order in. Having only tried their toasted ravioli, I was reluctant to order deep dish but with Lou’s & Eduardo’s closed for the evening, we had no other option that did not involve a drive.
We ordered a pizza and tossed salad for delivery which took less than an hour on a Sunday night. Despite it weighing 32 pounds, we dug into the pizza and thoroughly enjoyed it. While it is not the my preferred style deep dish, the ingredients and crust were extremely memorable. The sausage was some of the best we ever had — lots of flavor and there was lots of it. As for the best veggie, the green peppers were super fresh. I like my sauce with a hint of sweetness and Mancini’s does that right too.
I made the mistake of eating pizza first so I was too full to eat any salad, but «Mr.» loved it especially the hearts of palm and cucumbers.

This is my absolute favorite Italian restaurant in Oak Park. (Having dined at Il Vicolo Trattoria, La Bella, Cucina Paradiso, Lou Malnati’s and Trattoria.) I love their chicken limon. The prices are good and the portions are huge. On my most recent visit I sat in the window. Almost immediately we were asked for our drink orders (we ordered a bottle of Chianti). Our waiter was helpful and attentive though not overtly talkative. After we ordered we received bread for our table. My boyfriend raves about their bread and typically eats an entire baskets worth himself. Our entrees were served at the perfect time. My dish was piping hot and delicious. The limon sauce is light and buttery. The caper breading is the best part. It is thinly applied and not goopy or oily like some other restaurants I have tried. Also the fact that I received 2 breasts meant that I had lunch for the next day as well. I finished off my meal with an excellent cup of cappuccino and cannoli. The filling is the perfect mixture of creamy and not too sweet, dusted with pistachios.

My bf and I love Mancini’s! It is our go to place for pizza and we are never disappointed. Its a cute restaurant too with friendly staff.

My girlfriend and I purchased a groupon deal and tried them for the 1^st time yesterday. I hate leaving bad reviews but I was very disappointed with the pizza and I’ve been running to the toilet since eating it. =(
The pizza was very greasy, the pepperoni curled up and you can see grease puddles forming. I placed paper towels over it to soak up the extra grease. The sausage pizza seemed fine and the taste was much better. The pepperoni pizza wasn’t that good and reminded me of cafeteria pizza. Within an hour I was exploding on the toilet! lol. We ate the pizza around 7pm and I’ve used the bathroom over 5x!
The place looked great, the cashier was very helpful, other reviews look great. My pizza didn’t look like the one from the pictures below from other Unilocal users. I’m thinking they created a cheap version for GROUPON? I’m willing to give them another shot because it seems like a good place. Maybe they simply messed up on the pepp. pizza? It was VERY greasy as well, maybe that caused my sickness? If management reads this, I’d be willing to try another pepp. pizza and update my review but my 1^st impression wasn’t the best. =(

We ordered from Mancini’s tonight for delivery. The food arrived after over 45 mins, and the delivery guy delivered the wrong order. We had to call and let the restaurant know and 10 mins later, the driver finally arrived with the right order saying he saw the lasagne on the other order and that’s why got confused — but there was no lasagne on the other order. Okay, mistakes happen — the restaurant was not even very apologetic and seemed like they did not care that the driver had messed up the order.
When we opened the food, the food was barely warm. I got the Baked Mostaccioli and it was basically just mostaccioli noodles, with marinara sauce and melted cheese. I can make that in my microwave. We also got their ‘Our Special Homemade Lasagne’, which had cheese that was not even fully melted.
Lastly, the salad that comes with the meal had soggy cucumbers.
Overall, not very impressed. We tried to like it, but it is nothing special. Would not go back or recommend it.

I want to say the food and the wine is excellent at Mancini’s Reataurant. A special shout out to Natasha the Manager and the new be Tammy. Thanks and will return soon. Jeff Scott

My sister and I are regulars at Mancinis and I’ve always received great service but last night took the cake. We received the best service from Carrie last night. She was friendly, attentive and very knowledgeable about the menu. She suggested an entrée that absolutely delicious. If you’re ever in OP go check out Mancinis and ask for Carrie. You will receive the best service, wonderful food and some delectable wines!!!

My kids love it because of the gelato that comes with a kid’s meal. So if it’s one of those nights were if the kids are happy, I’m happy, it’s a good place to go. I’ve had the Mediterranean salad and the lamb ragu, both of which were good. The service isn’t great though, especially considering the 2 times I’ve been it hasn’t been busy.

We asked for grilled chicken linguini with vodka sauce and coming from Bolzano myself we know Italian food. The sauce was very bland my date had to douse her pasta with parmesan for flavor and the chicken was not hot it was just warm to the touch, if it was freshly grilled it wouldn’t be warm and very very dry, after a bite of the chicken I stopped eating. The only part I enjoyed was the beer and the bread.

Food is great! Warm and Friendly local place to come.
If you’d rather take home the food is equally as delicious.
Service could be a bit better.

Machini’s is the perfect local place to go for a slice. The atmosphere is quaint and friendly, and the pizza and sides are always warm and tasty. Two thumbs up for a casual quick bite.

Great atmosphere. Food was EXCELLENT! Service was Great! I will definitely come back again and again. Salmon was on poiint BEST I EVER HAD!

Have always had great experiences here! Food is very good! And don’t forget about the gelato!
Decided to write a review because of a situation that happened at the restaurant the other night. My friend and I had ordered a pizza through Grub Hub for pick up (because we didn’t want to wait for delivery) only to come to the restaurant at the time it was to be done and it had not even been started. Disaster right? Well at least it was to us at the time because we were quite hungry and had not had dinner by 10:00 p.m. But to make a long story shorter, the manager (at least I assume she was the manager on duty, wish I had gotten her name) was very apologetic, 100% took care of dealing with the Grub Hub refund, and was quick to make us a pizza so we could eat.
Anyways, everyone makes mistakes at one time or another! But how you deal with those mistakes is what makes the difference in whether or not you will have return customers in a business setting. And I will certainly be returning to Mancini’s soon!

Come for the Food (if they aren’t out of it), Stay away for the Service. We were instantly greeted by «Prunella», the hostess.
Prunella: «Yes»
Me: We have a reservation.“Smith” party for 7:15
Prunella: You aren’t here.
Me: I made the reservation on Opentable.
Prunella: Oh, hold on. (walks away, 3 minutes passes). OK, it will be a few minutes. Would you like to sit at the bar and wait? (Translate: we screwed up, but would you like to have some of our liquor… on you of course?)
OK, so no apology, nada. we ended up opting for the high top table in the back by the bar because we missed the memo that it was screaming kid night.
Once we were seated, I couldn’t help notice that despite ordering entrees, no bread was served to our table. Not that I really wanted any, but still. nice to be treated like the rest of the diners.
The waiter to his credit was pretty nice. But he seemed to have communication problems with the kitchen. 2 of the 3 items that were ordered they were out of. and he wasn’t aware of either until 5 minutes after we ordered them. (And he had to come back a separate time to announce each dish that was no longer available since apparently, the kitchen can’t tell when 2 items are out at the same time on one ticket). Again, 7:30pm and you are out of 2 of your dishes? The server did then give our drinks on the house. (Yeah.)
My Cavatelli was OK, and the sauce was good, but the meatball was a bit on the dry side. No complaints on the Pumpkin Ravioli or the «something» alfredo dish the other diner ordered. Finally, it seemed they were in a hurry to get rid of us. We were not even offered the option of dessert. someone else (not the waiter) just gave us the check and slipped away…
Fortunately, being in downtown Oak Park, there were plenty of dessert options so we took advantage of enjoying a waffle bowl at Cold Stone (didn’t know they were still open but I digress), instead of dessert or coffee or cappuccino at Mancini’s. Maybe they were out of all of those things too.
Oh, and by the way, the manager was informed of our unfortunate experience, but apparently, «I’m sorry» with no other explanation offered was the best she could do. I understand off nights, but I will come back and recommend a place when they can figure out how to turn the frown upside down. Not at Mancini’s apparently.
And my quest to find decent Italian in Oak Park shall continue…

*EDITED 2/​27/​15*:
Downgraded to 4* because no matter how awesome the rest of the meal was, their ‘french onion’ soup was so far removed from what it should’ve been, it’s nearly unforgivable. I’ve had a few FOS’s since dining here, and Mancini’s was easily the worst offender. Just a pathetic attempt at french onion, quite honestly.
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Caty D and I felt like trying something different, so we hit up Mancini’s for Monday dinner, and I’m very glad we stopped in.
I got SO excited when I saw that their soup special of the day was french onion (of which I am a huge fan), but when it arrived it wasn’t at all what I expected.
Soup tangent: a good-​quality French onion soup should be made with a dark beef broth, plenty of onions – almost caramelized in a way – topped with a large piece of bread and *covered* with a layer of cheese. Ideally, it’s served in a ramekin that gets put under the broiler for a bit so the cheese gets nice and melty.
Mancini’s…well…they dropped the ball on this one. Big time. Their «french onion» was made with a very light stock – either veggie or chicken broth – onions that weren’t caramelized at all and a small piece of bread with a tiny sprinkling of cheese on top. It came out and I was like «uhhhh I ordered the french onion soup, not whatever this nonsense is.» The taste was subpar, and I hate to rip on a restaurant for their take on a classic, but calling it french onion is a total misnomer, because it’s not even close to what it ought to be. No sugar-​coating, it was a disgrace to french onions everywhere :’(Sad day!
As disappointed as I was with my starter, everything else was wonderful. Really, it was. My glass of pinot noir was modestly priced, and although the entrees weren’t cheap, the taste was impeccable. My chicken ‘al Limone’ was absolutely delightful, and Caty D’s lobster ravioli came with a vodka tomato sauce that was out-​of-​this-​freakin-​world. ‘Sarah A’ took great care of us and was patient when I couldn’t decide on my order initially. We shared a coconut & dark chocolate gelato for dessert; the perfect way to cap off a great meal.
So, despite a giant step in the wrong direction with their abysmal french onion soup, they eventually atoned for it. I would return.

First visit here ever — went with family to celebrate my nephew’s 13^th birthday. My brother had reserved a table for eight of us on a Saturday at 6:30PM — definitely a wise thing to do. Table was ready and we were able to sit immediately.
I ordered lasagna which I often do when I first visit an Italian restaurant as it gives me a good idea of how they might stack up against other Italian places. This was a good sized portion with all the good stuff that lasagna should have. Only bummer was that the sauce lacked flavor — it was pretty much straight forward tomatoes. Salad was OK too — nothing to write home about, but decent.
Fried calamari was good, service was fine. Here’s the bottom line though — with so many good Italian places in the area, I really want something to wow me to get me to come back. No «wow» moments here though. The gelato did look good — might be worth a try at some point.
I’ll probably try Mancini’s again to give it a second chance — nothing wrong about the place, just yet to find anything special.

I’ve only had the delivery service so I can’t comment on eating in. That being said, we’ve ordered twice now and the food arrived piping hot. The tortellini is some of the best that I’ve had even after being in a car for 10 minutes. Both the alfredo and the pesto are good. I can’t recommend the fries, but those rarely travel well. I’ll update the review once we get a chance to make it to the actual restaurant, but for now this is a great place to have a nice dinner delivered rather than what you get from those generic catch-​all places on GrubHub.

I zipped over here from Evanston to meet a friend. I had the eggplant parmigiano. Eggplant was yummy however I found the sauce was… lacking in flavor. I hate to say that it tasted canned so boo.
Now. …The gelato… A.MA.ZING!!! 5 stars & then some! If I lived closer to this establishment, I’d weigh 500 lbs & have to go on the Biggest Looser! It’s all I could do to NOT take home a kilo of this deliciousness!
Oh! One of my companions had the grilled calamari appie. So good he had two! It definitely was way yum!
That’s all. :)

I really tried to like this place but didn’t! I was looking to try to something different; the fried ravioli got my husband and I attention and we decided to go! We got seated promptly and we looked over the menu. Of course we ordered the fried ravioli which were delicious!!!
I really couldn’t decide what to get but our server was very patient. As I was sitting, I noticed that another table had received bread, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese and we didn’t. Maybe our server forgot to give to us, because I had to ask for it and wasn’t too pleased about it.
Tilapia Livornese: that’s what I ordered and I tried to force it down! Each bite was salty (because of the capers) and unbearable to eat! I loved how creamy the polenta was and the tilapia was great, but I couldn’t really enjoy it with the tomato sauce that was on top. My husband couldn’t bear looking at my unpleasant face and asked if I could get the same dish without the capers, she said that’s how it’s made and did I want something else.
To make a long story short, we were supposed to get free desserts (didn’t get them), almost paid for a dish that I didn’t like, and ended up ordering another plate of fried ravioli (which was on the house). IF we go back, I’ll just order the fried ravioli and stick with the basics! LOL

A day in Oak Park and my stomach was growling. Since I’m trying to gain weight, I wanted something with some carbs in it. Italian food. You can’t go wrong with upping the carbs that way. And if the food is good, you’ll be glad you had decided to indulge Italian anyway.
Italian bread. Fried ravioli. Salad with raspberry vinaigrette. Shrimp fra diavolo. Gelato.
Although complementary, the Italian bread was still worthy. The fried cheese ravioli was a big hit. After having raspberry vinaigrette on my salad, forget about the usual Caesar salad. And the shrimp fra diavolo was so blooming flavourful that I know some other Italian eateries in the metropolitan area that would turn green with envy. And to top it all off, the flight of gelato — stracciatella, nocciola, dark chocolate, and banana — left me hankering for a cigarette afterwards. Yes, it was «that» good.
While the aesthetics of the restaurant seems a bit on the up, the service and the food reminds of the good eats I have had at holes in the wall. You just can’t beat the comfort you develop with the staff and the taste of the food that wows you.