About the Del Rio

In the early 1920's, Linda Bosselli Pigati,  a young woman twice-widowed, left the mining towns of north central Illinois and moved with her three sons to the quaint village north of Chicago called Highwood.  

It was a working man’s community nestled between and surrounded by the friendly municipalities of Highland Park and Lake Forest on the old North Shore train line.  

Here, she opened a small boarding house with food served in the living and dining rooms. There were, at that time, three such places in Highwood, each creating uncommon meals with both skill and joy  from their distinctive areas of Italy. The reputation of these eateries soon gained fame and made Highwood a destination for both Chicago and the North Shore by train and by car.  

In 1923, a great friend of Linda asked her to take over a well-known tango club, named after Dolores Del Rio, the Latin sensation of the time. And, therein lies another story.

Since its first day, Del Rio has always been a white table cloth restaurant. The cuisine is "il Grasso," from the mountain hillsides overlooking Bologna in Northern Italy.  Here, it is oft written, lies the home of the greatest of Italian cuisines, occasionally disputed by  Italians from other regions.

With our second, third and fourth generations still welcoming friends to our table, the Pigati family continues to make our dinners from scratch. Dishes are authentic; the finest, freshest ingredients obligatory; flavors easy to enjoy, yet elegant in their simplicity. And, of course, our guests are family. ​