Gio’s Café & Deli

From the street, Gio’s looks like any other Chicago corner store. But this is Bridgeport, and Gio’s packs a restaurant plus an array of imported Italian groceries into the tiny space. The food is unspectacular (though the arancino is a nicely fried risotto ball packed with meat sauce and peas), but the cast of characters kept us amused. Our waitress did everything short of pulling up a chair to make us feel at home, and we love the frozen lemon flute, a tart limoncello-and-cream concoction.