My sister, Madeline Shea, and I have been coming to the Italian restaurant La Cantina in downtown Chicago since the respective ages of eight and seven, so it wasn’t without trepidation that we visited its successor, Sotto, for the first time in early December.

The cheeky, Italian American bar (Bar Sotto) and restaurant (Ristorante di Sotto) combo from the fourth-generation owners of Italian Village is the latest addition to this four-restaurants-in-one temple to Italian American cooking, which first debuted at 71 W. Monroe St. in 1927, as the Village.