Dinner, Drinks, Dancing
By Naperville Magazine
September 2024 View more Table for Two
By Phil Vettel
AltaVida offers a Latin-infused night on the town
Edwin Rios has lived in Naperville for 45 years and spent most of that time working in the food and beverage departments at some of Chicago’s best-known hotels (and one significant restaurant), before chucking it all to create AltaVida, which opened two months ago in downtown Naperville.
It’s a move Rios described, self-deprecatingly, as “selfish.”
“I got tired of the drive,” he says. “I brokered a deal to turn a one-hour commute into a 10-minute one.”
Taking over the former Two Brothers Barrel House, Rios created AltaVida (16 W. Jefferson Ave.) as a three-in-one complex of pan-Latin food, drink, and entertainment. On the first floor is Publico, the restaurant. One flight up is Rumba, a contemporary live music and dance hall (dance lessons offered regularly), inspired by 1940s Cuban supper clubs. The top floor is Altura, a private-event space that will be capable of hosting indoor and outdoor parties for up to 100 patrons. (Altura has yet to open; Rios is hopeful that the space will debut in early November.)
As it happens, this is not Rios’s first Rumba; his original was a lively nuevo Latino hot spot with live music. It was a good restaurant in a too-quiet corner in River North and didn’t last as long as it should have. “It was luscious but too much of a best-kept secret,” he says. “It was in a C-plus location. Now I have an A-plus location.”
Publico seats up to 127, including a cozy sidewalk cafe. Inside are bare-wood tables and woven chairs, including the taller chairs that line the long, marble-topped bar. Pinpoint lighting illuminates tables without disturbing the otherwise low-lit atmosphere. Farther back is more seating, a second bar, and a super-intimate table for two surrounded by crimson-colored glass.
The menu by chef Saul Roman is a globetrotting assortment of dishes focused on flavor, not authenticity. For instance, the menu lists a jibarito, which is a steak or pork sandwich made with plantain; at Publico it’s a salad in which fried plantains function as croutons, and proteins (shrimp, chicken, steak) are optional add-ons.
The lunch menu includes a torta Cubana; the filling of ham, adobo pork, pickled pineapple, Fontina cheese, and Dijonnaise is quite tasty, but the sandwich is served on focaccia rather than pan Cubano (traditionally Cuban) or telera (traditionally Mexican).
By the time you read this, however, some of these dishes may have been changed, or eliminated completely. Before AltaVida was a month old, Roman and Rios had tweaked the menu half a dozen times. On my first visit, I tried the seafood-laden paella congri, which was quite good (though I thought the portion ought to have been larger); that dish, along with the similar arroz con mariscos, has disappeared. “They just weren’t strong enough,” Rios says. “Great in theory but not in execution.”
The dishes that I hope get to stick around include the mejillones rojos, green-lipped mussels bathed in a spicy guajillo sauce, with garlic toast. The pulpo asado (roasted octopus)—with almond mole and aji amarillo sauces, purple potatoes, and cactus—is another dish that deserves to stay on the menu.
Of the three guacamole dishes offered, the one to try is the habanero ashes guacamole, in which the guac, topped with dices of coconut and dragonfruit, is sprinkled with ashes of charred habanero pepper. It sounds lethal, but it’s actually mild (if anything, I think the kitchen should raise the heat a smidge) and absolutely delicious.
I very much like the empanadas, which are Argentine style (baked, not fried). The beef empanadas with chimichurri sauce are quite good; other versions are chicken tinga (shredded chicken with tomato and spices) and margarita (tomato, mozzarella and pesto, as you’d find on a pizza Margherita).
Peruvian anticucho (skewered meat) come in beef, chicken, and cauliflower, each arriving nestled in bao buns. Which sounds like an odd pairing, but Chinese influence on Peruvian cuisine is considerable (Chinese-Peruvian dishes are called chifa.) The chicken anticucho, with aji-marinated yuca, aji amarillo, and pineapple, is particularly good.
Elsewhere on the menu are four steaks, chicken en mole, pork chop, and a couple of fish entrées.
AltaVida is serious about its cocktails; naturally, the two I sampled have been replaced on the menu. There’s also a good-size selection of wines, and about a dozen sipping tequilas and mezcals. There are a fair number of nonalcoholic options, a growing trend at serious restaurants.
Sometime in September, AltaVida will introduce a Sunday Mambo Champagne brunch that Rios hopes will raise the bar on the brunch experience. “It’ll be high end,” Rios promises, “live band in tuxedos. You can have your brunch and dance to it. It’s just going to be fun.”
Photos: Alvaro Calderon (food); Jen Banowetz (interior and exterior)
