Nelly’s Saloon

PHOTO: BRENDAN LEKAN

In a town with only a handful of Romanian restaurants, this Avondale gem has served the Eastern European crowd for 23 years. Today, empty tables dressed in white linens frame an also empty dance floor, but not long ago, the air was thick with Romanian dialects, whiffs of slow-cooked pork and plumes of cigarette smoke.

Although that comforting pork aroma remains, the customers left with the cigarettes. “European people like to drink, smoke and talk. Now people don’t stay, they eat and leave,” exquisitely coiffed owner Nelly Barbulescu explains. “We have very good coffee, but nobody drinks coffee now.”

This year’s cigarette ban was a hard blow for a joint that started out as a smoky saloon. It wasn’t until 2000 that her love of cooking and role as surrogate mother to her young Romanian clientele prompted the proprietress to take to the kitchen. Now, she spends each morning chopping vegetables, peeling potatoes and preparing the meat for her tiny bill of fare. “We make it today, we sell it today. Tomorrow we start from the beginning.” Though scant, her menu packs a wallop, especially after a trek through the bitter Chicago winter. Served in huge portions with mild chiles, fresh sour cream and housemade bread, Nelly’s soups—tripe, meatball, beef vegetable or navy bean with chunks of succulent pork shank—are hard to choose between. Regulars follow with the mititei, grilled skinless sausages served alongside a heaping pile of fresh fried potatoes. Now if only they’d stay for an espresso.

3256 N Elston Ave between Francisco and Henderson Sts (773-588-4494). Lunch, dinner (closed Mon). Average main course: $9. El: Blue to Belmont. Bus: 56, 77 (24hrs), 82.