Volare

We went to dinner at Volare in Oakbrook Terrace after seeing the Chicago location featured on Chicago's Best.

Rolled Eggplant

Rolled Eggplant - this is the dish that was featured on Chicago's Best, thinly sliced eggplant and stuffed with ricotta.  We both really enjoy eggplant so it was nice to have it served in a different way (not just as eggplant parmesan). This would be a fun dish to try at home as well.

Warm Kale Salad

Warm Kale Salad - the name is a little weird but this was a great salad with lots of stuff in it - garbanzo beans, prosciutto, pancetta, brussel sprout leaves, red onions, white beans, shaved parmesan; this is normally an entree sized salad but they were able to make a half size order so we wouldn't get too full on it. For not being kale lovers it was smoky and crisp but still salad-esqe.

Black Pasta with Seafood

The pasta dishes were huge and we probably were only able to eat about 1/3 of the dishes at the restaurant and then took the rest as lunch for the next day.

Fussilloni al Ragu di Vitello - pasta with ragu of veal, porcini mushrooms and peas (lots of peas). This was a very hearty dish with lots of veal.  The peas were a bit excessive.

Spaghetti Neri al Pesce - black spaghetti with shrimp, scallop and lump crab meat, lots of seafood. This was tasty.  It was a bit over-sauced as you couldn't really see the black pasta underneath.

Pasta with veal and peas

Dessert - We weren't going to order a dessert but we found out they have several small desserts (kind of like Season's 52) and that was good because we didn't have much room.  But they had a cannoli cream dessert that we split, basically cannolis that we stuffed ourselves.  It was a small but good end to the meal.

Cannoli

Final thoughts on Volare:
Food - tasty and we would go back since they are close to us. But we would keep in mind that the pasta entrees are massive and therefore maybe only order one and a full size kale salad.
Service - not memorable. We were there on a weeknight without a lot of other customers so we weren't ignored but they seemed to be setting up for a larger party coming later.
Atmosphere - typical Italian restaurant look. We didn't get too much of a sense of it because there weren't that many people there.