Review: Ummo chef José Sosa explores inventive Italian, with octopus chicharrón, in River North

José Sosa might have cooked for you already. Even if you haven’t had a chance to visit his debut restaurant, which opened in August in the River North neighborhood of Chicago. The chef and partner describes his menu simply as contemporary Italian, but it’s more than that.

Ummo is the surprising exploration of inventive dishes tempered by personal culture and chosen traditions.

Sosa was most recently the executive chef at Gibsons Italia. He worked for the restaurant group for nearly 15 years in the city and suburbs. You may have had one of his steaks or pastas previously.

But you’ve probably never had octopus quite like his carpaccio di polpo at Ummo — garnished with a fantastical chicharrón by the chef who immigrated from Mexico. The seafood is not raw but cooked perfectly, thinly sliced and arranged like a mosaic. Dollops of a delicious Calabrian tonnato aioli meld the flavors of chile, tuna and garlic around the tender white canvas, and across a mysterious black shard. That inky cracker is miraculous, crisp and light, capturing the essence of octopus more than the octopus itself.

The dish also captures the culinary and cultural struggles of the chef.

“I love octopus,” Sosa said. “And I just didn’t want to do another chargrilled braised octopus.” Nor just another carpaccio. “When we started doing the tastings, we were happy with the texture and the flavor of the carpaccio, but I wasn’t really happy. I’m like, ‘It’s missing something.’”

He worked on tastings at Tzuco, chef Carlos Gaytán’s restaurant that’s the flagship of the Somos Hospitality Group.

Even with the millefiori presentation, Sosa wasn’t happy with the end product. So he went back to the beginning.

“We layer the octopus with olive oil, Calabrian chile peppers, garlic, parsley, more olive oil and then put something heavy on it,” the chef said. “So it’s cooking very slowly, releasing its own juice. You end up with this consommé of octopus that is so good and unique. And we were using it for nothing.”

They had to use it for something, Sosa said, but again, he didn’t just want another sauce.

“Then I thought I’m gonna play with it, where I can create a texture with it. So that’s how the chicharrón came alive.”

He’s also a good friend of Marcos Carbajal, owner of Carnitas Uruapan, who brought chicharrón and carnitas when invited for a tasting.

“When I was working at Hugo’s, I added chicharrón to the fish tacos,” Sosa said. But he wanted to do something different.

He used the concentrated consommé of octopus to make his own chicharrón with tapioca flour. It’s a technique modernist chefs borrowed from Asian prawn crackers and the airy wheat crackers under Mexican chicharrones preparados.

A chicharrón seems to be a surprising item for a contemporary Italian menu, albeit not listed, as is the choice to call it a chicharrón.

“I just wanted to incorporate a little bit of me into the dish,” Sosa said. “I mean, with my love for Italian cuisine, but also my background being Mexican.”

But it’s a challenge for the chef.

“You’ve got to be careful,” he said. “Where you don’t get too pulled away from traditional Italian cuisine, but also trying something that represents you.”

When Sosa left Gibsons Italia last December, he took a trip to Italy for a couple of weeks to work on his knowledge, he said, and make more connections with suppliers.

I wondered, as a Chinese American woman who cooked in France and Spain, but never in China, sometimes questioned about my culinary identity, if the chef had also fielded those questions about who gets to cook what food?

Yes — it was often fellow chefs questioning his chosen cuisine.

“When you’re Mexican, they’re like, ‘Why is he trying to do Italian?’” Sosa said. “There are no rules where it says that if you’re Mexican, you shouldn’t be cooking Italian. And you’ve got to work harder to prove to them.”

When he left Gibsons Italia, he was still questioned.

“Everyone’s like, ‘Are you going to open up a Mexican restaurant?’ And I’m like no. This is my passion, this is what I do,” Sosa said.

What he also does is steak.

“Ummo is from the word ‘fumo’ in Italian, smoke in English,” the chef said. You can see him cooking some of the menu items on a wood-fired grill in the open kitchen, including a filetto.

The 7-ounce filet mignon tagliata (from the Italian verb tagliare, which means to cut) is served sliced to reveal an impeccably cooked medium-rare, as recommended, requested and expected from the chef with a Gibsons pedigree.

What was unexpected, alongside the accompanying bright green bagnetto verde sauce and a whole head of garlic cooked in olive oil, was a tiny pot of bordelaise.

The classic French red wine sauce took me back to Michelin three-star restaurants in Paris, but also wasn’t listed on the menu.

“The filet was one of the final dishes that I added to the menu,” Sosa said. “We needed a small portion for someone who wants a steak, but they don’t want the big steaks. I started working on a nice veal demi reduction and incorporated foie gras, then it came out really good.”

That is an understatement, especially with secret foie gras.

“I don’t know why we didn’t put it on the menu,” the chef said, laughing. “It does take time.”

And skill. That classic French sauce also takes us back to his first job after arriving in Chicago as a 14-year-old immigrant.

His family lived in Mexico City, where his father is from, then Michoacán, where his mother is from, before his parents split up.

“My mom’s family was here in Chicago,” the chef said. They came with nothing and had to start working immediately. Sosa didn’t attend high school, but went to English classes and earned his GED diploma. Through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, he received his first work permit.

But his first job here began before that.

“It was this restaurant called the Rosewood in Rosemont,” the chef said. It was a white tablecloth establishment open for 23 years, before closing in 2014. “They used to make veal stock, au jus, everything from scratch. Really nice. I learned a lot. I was there for three or four years and I started as a dishwasher. Then the chef moved me to garde-manger, so I started working the cold station. We worked different stations there.”

Now he has one of the hottest new restaurants in River North, with a second-floor cocktail bar and lounge called the Loft, open Fridays and Saturdays only. On my second visit, I had dinner upstairs in the lovely lounge, overlooking the rowdy pumpkin patch across the street.

One thing he doesn’t have, especially shocking in Chicago, is any kind of pizza.

“Trust me, I love pizza,” Sosa said. “And everyone was like, ‘Are you going to have pizza?’” They were thinking about a pizza oven on the second floor, in the private event space kitchen. “But then I changed my mind. I’m like, ‘No, no pizza.’ Because then we’re gonna add it on the first floor.” And he just couldn’t focus on that right now and do it right.

The focaccia, cut into tavern-style squares and piped with ricotta and honey, could satisfy some pizza needs with its golden gilded crust.

The ravioli di aragosta al nero di seppia, a supple black squid ink pasta with lobster, has become something of a signature on social media — possibly due to the dramatic presentation with a whole lobster head. A server carries it out, only to awkwardly reveal it’s empty. The shell is meant to herald the lobster within, but it was foreshadowing the scarcity of my serving in flesh and flavor.

The garganelli, small hand-rolled cylinders tinted green with spinach, is one of the chef’s favorites. Served with a lamb belly ragu, fresh ricotta and mint pesto, I wish there was something more to the dish, which the labor-intensive pasta deserves.

A seven-year aged risotto rice ai funghi with wild mushrooms and Parmigiano-Reggiano is finished generously with 10-year-old balsamic vinegar at the table. I would’ve gobbled up every single pearlescent grain in the house if I could, but the shallow plate cools and coagulates the dish too fast, and the intensely sweet vinegar should be judiciously applied drop by drop in the kitchen.

The desserts — pomodoro e basilico, cantaloupe with flowers and tiramisu — by Spanish pastry chef consultant Jesús Escalera, are all pretty, precise and playful, but oddly out of sync with the Sosa’s thoughtful savory menu. The faux tomato, made from molded yogurt mousse and filled with a raspberry compote, would have been far better replaced by a bigger scoop of basil sorbet and a lot more olive oil, which can turn into a stunning fruity Magic Shell.

An ambitious melone cantalupo e fiori with limoncello-infused melon, brown butter lemon cake and citrus caviar tasted overwhelmingly of a nonna’s favorite perfume. The tiramisu, with a promising amaretto chocolate sauce poured tableside, was a nice chocolate cake, but please don’t promise me and fail to deliver my beloved sticky and chewy meringue layered with whipped cream.

You might skip dessert and get one of the many espresso martinis your fellow diners are having instead. Or try the Numero Due, a refreshing take on the classic Corpse Reviver No. 2, but with Lillet Rosé, ginger liqueur and passion fruit. Do note it’s a sneakily strong drink. The spirit-free Saturno with Lyre’s nonalcoholic agave blanco spirit, lime juice and more passion fruit offers soothing complexity.

My servers on both visits each made my drinks, as part of an excellent service team, from the moment I walked into the stylish sanctuary, to the attentive busser who cautiously cleared my silverware without judgment after I absurdly insisted on keeping too much.

A dish I nearly missed was the branzino arrosto. The wood-fired fish with roasted tomatoes and pickled onion petals is served head and tail on, but mostly deboned. The hint of smoke and crispy skin evoke memories of an early fall campsite, real and imagined.

Was there ever a question about keeping the head on the branzino, which is admittedly aesthetically unlovely among fish?

There was a concern at first, but not for the chef.

“To be honest, we were expecting more like, ‘Oh my God, take it back, no head, no tail!’”

They can be removed in the kitchen if requested. It happens, he said, but eight out of 10 keep it whole.

“When you remove the head, it doesn’t have that wow factor.”

And this is a head worth keeping.

Ummo

22 W. Hubbard St.

312-374-8736

ummochicago.com

Open: Main dining room on first floor, Sunday to Thursday 5 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday to 11 p.m.; Loft on second floor, Friday and Saturday, 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.

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Prices: $14 (focaccia) to $150 (bistecca alla fiorentina); cocktails $12 (Saturno nonalcoholic drink) to $22 (Ummo Old-Fashioned)

Noise: Conversation-friendly mostly, but conversation-challenged when packed

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible from street by entrance to left of main door by elevator with restrooms on lower level and second floor

Tribune rating: Very good, 2 stars

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.

lchu@chicagotribune.com

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