The best Italian dinner in the suburbs is not in Oak Brook, or in some giant lifestyle center with a valet stand and a fountain.
It is on Green Bay Road in Highwood, where Del Rio has been at 228 since 1923 and Alex's Washington Gardens has been at 256 since 1932.
They are roughly thirty doors apart.
Both are still run by the founding families.
Both serve dinner.
Neither seems especially interested in making this easy for you.
Del Rio is closed Sunday and Monday and never opens before 5 p.m. Alex's opens at 5 every day and does dinner only.
That is the first thing to know about suburban Italian: the oldest family rooms are still here, but you have to plan around them.
The second thing is stranger.
A dozen suburban restaurants that read like separate neighborhood independents are one company: Francesca's. Different names, different towns, same operator, same general hours, same useful ability to seat you at 8:45 on a Sunday when the hundred-year-old place has long since made other plans.
And somewhere between those two worlds is DeNucci's in Hinsdale, a newer red-sauce restaurant that opens seven days a week and gives you weekend lunch.
So there is no single "best" suburban Italian restaurant here.
There is the place you plan around, the place that reliably takes the reservation, and the place trying to split the difference.
Every address and every posted hour below was checked against the restaurant's own website on August 13, 2026. No aggregators. Campagnola is the one exception on hours because its own site does not publish any, so I am not inventing them for the sake of a prettier table.
On this page: Highwood · Other independents · Francescas · DeNuccis · Who is open when · South and southwest suburbs · FAQ
Highwood
If you want the old family-run version of suburban Italian, start here.
Not the North Shore in general.
Highwood.
Del Rio
228 Green Bay Road, Highwood
Del Rio has been serving dinner on the same street for more than a century.
The restaurant traces itself to 1923, when Linda Bosselli Pigati, twice widowed and recently arrived from the mining towns of north-central Illinois, took over a tango club named for film star Dolores Del Rio.
Before that, she had been running a boarding house and serving meals in the living and dining rooms.
The white tablecloths have been there since the beginning.
The cooking is what Del Rio calls il Grasso, meaning the rich cooking of the hills above Bologna. The restaurant is still run by second, third and fourth generations of the Pigati family.
The current weekly rhythm is old-school enough to need a calendar: osso bucco Tuesdays and Thursdays, cannelloni Wednesday, live music Wednesday and Thursday.
The catch is the door.
Tuesday through Saturday, 5 p.m. onward. Closed Sunday and Monday. No lunch.
You do not wander into Del Rio because you happened to be nearby.
You decide you are going to Del Rio.
Alex's Washington Gardens
256 Green Bay Road, Highwood
Nine years after Del Rio opened, Alex's Washington Gardens opened thirty doors away.
It has been there since 1932.
The restaurant's own site still leads with "Authentic Italian Cuisine in Highwood, Illinois since 1932," and the Scornavacco family is still behind it.
The pizza is billed as Scornavacco Chicago-style thin crust, cut in squares. The restaurant dates it to 1944 and calls it the first pizza to reach tables on Chicago's North Shore.
If your idea of suburban Italian is red sauce, thin crust and a room that has been doing the same thing for generations, Alex's belongs on the list.
It is easier to schedule than Del Rio.
Monday through Thursday and Sunday, 5–9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 5–10 p.m.
Still dinner only.
The gluten-free crust comes in medium only, because apparently even dietary accommodation has a house size.
If pizza is the reason you are here, our suburban deep-dish guide covers the other local argument.
Pastificio
122 Highwood Avenue, Highwood
Pastificio has been around since 1977 and belongs in the Highwood story.
It is a pasta shop selling northern Italian take-home food, so plan on carrying dinner home rather than sitting down.
The hours make that fairly clear:
Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Closed Sunday through Tuesday.
If you drive there at 7 p.m. expecting a dining room, you have misunderstood the assignment.
Other independents
The best of the rest are less clustered, which is another way of saying you will be driving.
Massa Cafe Italiano
7434 W. North Avenue, Elmwood Park
Massa is the easiest independent on this page to use.
It opens at 11 a.m. every day and stays open until 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
The Lollino family has been in the business since 1968, and Angelo and Giovanna Lollino opened the Elmwood Park café in the 1990s.
The format is broader than a formal dinner room: gelato, house-roasted coffee, Sicilian pizza.
That cuts both ways.
If you want a white-tablecloth anniversary dinner, there are better fits.
If you want somewhere you can go at noon, 3:30, 7:45 or nearly any other civilized hour, Massa is much easier to live with.
For more western-suburb food worth driving for, see our hidden-gem restaurants guide.
Campagnola
815 Chicago Avenue, Evanston
Campagnola is a real independent kitchen doing seasonal food.
The menu includes house pasta, wood-fired vegetables, diver scallops with fava beans, and wood-fired radicchio wrapped in bacon.
Its sister venue is Union Pizza.
The food is fine. The website is the problem: it publishes no hours, and the copyright line still says 2018.
So I am not going to tell you when it opens.
Call first.
This is the one entry on the page where "call first" is not boilerplate.
Carlucci
6111 N. River Road, Rosemont
Carlucci is the weekday business-lunch version of suburban Italian.
White linen. Murals. Tuscan room. O'Hare next door.
The restaurant says it has been around for more than 35 years.
The hours tell you who the room is built for:
Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m. Saturday, 4:30–9:30 p.m. Closed Sunday.
Happy hour runs Monday through Friday from 3–6.
If you need a weekday lunch near O'Hare, this is one of the clearest fits on the page.
If your plan is Sunday dinner, Carlucci has already declined.
Convito Café & Market
1515 Sheridan Road, Wilmette
Convito is French and Italian, with a café and attached market.
That makes it one of the more useful daytime options here.
For spring and summer, the café starts seating at 11:30 a.m., with Sunday brunch beginning at 11.
The restaurant is explicit that its published hours are seating times, not the minute the room empties.
That matters because the exact closing windows vary by day and season.
This article publishes in August, so the spring/summer set applies now. Convito also publishes a different late-fall and winter schedule, so check again if you are reading this after the weather turns hostile.
If you want strictly Italian, this is not strictly Italian.
If you want lunch, dinner and a market under one roof, it is one of the more useful places on the North Shore.
Chicago Prime Italian
700 N. Meacham Road, Schaumburg
Chicago Prime Italian is the independent Schaumburg option.
The restaurant describes itself as family-owned and operated and, in its own words, "one of Schaumburg's ONLY locally-owned restaurants."
The menu leans traditional, with house-made pasta and sauces.
The hours are less traditional than the room:
Closed Monday. Tuesday through Friday, 3–9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 2–9:30 p.m.
So there is no weekday lunch.
If you are meeting someone in Schaumburg after work, fine.
If you are trying to take a client to lunch on Wednesday, everybody involved will need a backup plan.
We get to Schaumburg a few times a year. A weekly newsletter that lives out there does not have that problem.
Francesca's
Twelve names here turn into one company.
Francesca's operates twelve suburban Illinois restaurants under different names:
- Mia Francesca in Lincolnwood
- Intimo in Lake Forest
- Famiglia in Barrington
- North in Northbrook
- Tavola in Arlington Heights
- Amici in Elmhurst
- Fiore in Forest Park
- Mio Modo in St. Charles
- La Sorella di Francesca in Naperville
- Fortunato in Frankfort
- on 95th in Oak Lawn
- Vicinato in Palos Park
There are two more in the city.
This matters because two restaurants that look like separate neighborhood choices may be the same operator.
It is also why this group is the reliable answer when your real question is not "which room has the most family history?" but "where can I get a table at 8:45 Sunday night without discovering the kitchen closed three hours ago?"
La Sorella di Francesca
18 W. Jefferson Avenue, Naperville
La Sorella sits in the old city hall greystone in downtown Naperville and describes the food as Roman.
The hours are the practical part:
Sunday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.
Happy hour runs Monday through Friday from 3–6.
That is roughly ten hours of service a day, every day.
If you are already in downtown Naperville, our best bars in downtown Naperville guide can handle the part before or after dinner.
Francesca's Fortunato
40 Kansas Street, Frankfort
Fortunato runs the same posted schedule:
Sunday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.
Happy hour Monday through Friday from 3–6.
If you are deciding between the Naperville and Frankfort locations, you are choosing geography and room, not two unrelated kitchens.
That is useful to know before spending 45 minutes comparing menus as though one of them was founded by somebody's grandmother in 1947.
DeNucci's
8 E. 1st Street, Hinsdale
DeNucci's is the newest restaurant here and very aware of what it is trying to be.
Its own description is "An Italian-American Red Sauce Joint."
The Hinsdale location is the third, after Lincoln Park in 2023 and Highland Park in 2024. Takeout began in December 2025, and full service followed in January 2026.
The menu includes Tavern-Style Mondays, New York-style pizza, Spaghetti Limone and Chicken Marsala.
It is part of Ballyhoo Hospitality, so this is not a tiny independent family room either.
But its hours place it in a useful middle ground:
Sunday through Thursday, 4:30–9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4:30–10:30 p.m. Plus lunch Friday through Sunday, 11:30 a.m.–4 p.m.
That gives you weekend lunch, which neither Del Rio nor Alex's offers.
The address also has some restaurant history of its own. Il Poggiolo operated for years at 8 E. 1st Street before closing. DeNucci's now occupies the space.
Who is open when
Every posted hour from above, in one place.
| Restaurant | Best timing note |
|---|---|
| Del Rio | Tue–Sat from 5 p.m.; closed Sun–Mon |
| Alex's Washington Gardens | Dinner only, 5 p.m. daily |
| Pastificio | Wed–Sat daytime only; not a restaurant |
| Massa Cafe Italiano | 11 a.m. daily; easiest independent hours |
| Campagnola | No first-party hours published; call first |
| Carlucci | Weekday lunch; closed Sunday |
| Convito | Open daytime and evening; seasonal schedule |
| Chicago Prime Italian | No weekday lunch; closed Monday |
| Francesca's | 11:30 a.m.–9:30/10 p.m., seven days |
| DeNucci's | 4:30 p.m. daily, plus Fri–Sun lunch |
If you want the old family rooms, go to Highwood and plan the evening around them. For daytime service, Massa, Convito, Carlucci or Francesca's are easier, and for a late Sunday table, Francesca's is the most predictable option here.
And if you were planning to drive to Campagnola based on a random hours widget, call first. The restaurant itself has declined to participate in this portion of the internet.
South and southwest suburbs
This guide is much stronger on the north, northwest and near-west suburbs than it is on the south and southwest.
The only restaurant in that part of the region verified to the same first-party standard for this refresh was Francesca's Fortunato in Frankfort.
The Buca di Beppo in Orland Park closed in August 2024.
I am not filling the gap with places we did not verify just to make the map look balanced.
If you have a south- or southwest-suburban Italian restaurant you think belongs in the next pass, send it in.
FAQ
What is the best Italian restaurant in the Chicago suburbs?
There is no honest single-name answer from this reporting.
If you want the old family-run version, go to Del Rio or Alex's Washington Gardens in Highwood.
If you need reliable hours and a late table, a Francesca's location is easier.
If you want the newer red-sauce version, DeNucci's in Hinsdale is the clearest fit.
Which suburb has the most Italian restaurants?
This reporting does not support a full restaurant count by suburb, so I would not name a winner.
What it does support is this: Highwood has the strongest surviving cluster of old family-run Italian restaurants we found, with Del Rio at 228 Green Bay Road and Alex's Washington Gardens at 256.
Is there a Little Italy in the suburbs?
Not in the formal neighborhood sense.
But two blocks of Green Bay Road in Highwood come closest to functioning like a small historic Italian restaurant cluster, with Del Rio and Alex's still operating roughly thirty doors apart after more than 90 years.
Pastificio, a longtime Italian take-home shop, is nearby too.
What happened to Buca di Beppo in Orland Park?
The Orland Park location at 15350 S. 94th Avenue closed in early August 2024, days before the chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
A Lombard location was reported open in 2024, but its current status was not verified for this guide.
Which suburban Italian restaurants are open on Sunday?
Among the restaurants verified here:
- Alex's Washington Gardens: 5–9 p.m.
- Massa Cafe Italiano: 11 a.m.–9 p.m.
- Convito: Sunday brunch, lunch and dinner on its current spring/summer schedule
- Chicago Prime Italian: 2–9:30 p.m.
- Francesca's locations: 11:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m.
- DeNucci's Hinsdale: lunch 11:30 a.m.–4 p.m., dinner 4:30–9:30 p.m.
Del Rio is closed Sunday. Carlucci is closed Sunday. Pastificio is closed Sunday. Campagnola does not publish first-party hours, so call before going.
If I were planning one dinner from this list, I would start by deciding whether I care more about the old family room or the freedom to show up when I want.
If it is the first, go to Highwood.
If it is the second, check the hours table before leaving home.