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Home / Businesses / Elina's

Elina's

Super GemWest Town · Italian-American (red sauce) Community-sourced, unverified
📍 1202 W Grand Ave, Chicago, IL 60642

Elina's doesn't try to reinvent red-sauce Italian-American cooking — it just does the classics without embellishment, in a narrow, dimly lit 28-seat storefront that Time Out compares to shuttered local favorites like Sabatino's and Francesca's. Chefs Ian Rusnak and Eric Safin keep the menu built around familiarity: rigatoni alla vodka, a crab-heavy angel hair scampi, a tangy chopped salad with crispy salami, and 'Silvio's meatballs,' a beef-pork-veal blend cooked medium rare in red sauce.

$$$
Silvio's meatballs and mozzarella en carozza, from a tight 28-seat red-sauce storefront named to Patch's Best Places to Eat IL 2025 (OpenTable Top 16)

The mozzarella en carozza — a fried grilled cheese with a crispy, mozzarella-stick-like shell, served with marinara — is the kind of starter that sets the tone for everything after it.

It opened BYOB while waiting on its own liquor license, which only adds to the feeling that this is a neighborhood spot still settling into exactly what it wants to be, with the cooking already fully there.

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Specials at Elina's

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Elina's

Super Gem
Silvio's Meatballs
West TownCommunity

Hours

Tue-Sat5:30pm-11pm (per Time Out; some other sources show 7-day service
confirm before visiting)
🥡 Takeout unconfirmed 📞 312-929-2249

Amenities & accessibility

❔Takeout: unverified
❔Wheelchair access: unverified

Location

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