Ventrella’s Caffe
Ventrella, whose grandparents emigrated from Italy in the 1920s and ’30s, modeled his cafe on the establishments in Chicago’s old Italian neighborhoods. “I wanted to pick up a store from Harlem Avenue in, like, 1950 and just drop it here on Damen,” he says–hence the many vintage pieces, such as a red-and-chrome cistern sink from a 1930s-era Pullman car and a fridge from the mid-’50s. “I want somebody to walk in here and go, ‘Has this place been here forever?’” The building itself dates from 1923; the cafe’s tin ceiling is the original one. Even the mint in the iced tea is vintage in a way: Ventrella gets it from his mom, who transplanted it from a garden that her father planted 80-some years ago.
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Don’t expect opera on the sound system though. Ventrella used to play drums in the Gin Palace Jesters and other rockabilly bands, and roots music is always playing overhead–old R & B, western swing, straight-up rock ‘n’ roll. “It’s funny to come in a place like this and hear that kind of music,” says Ventrella, “but I’m a rockabilly. It’s in my heart.” For now Ventrella’s keeping the bulk of his vintage clothing at his sister’s house, but he often wears cuffed-up jeans and a newsboy-style cap of a type known in the 40s as a “big apple.”
