Pio Peruvian — Restaurant in Calgary

Pio has been open in Calgary for quite awhile. Many times before we moved away years ago did we talk about visiting, but never did, instead opting for a similar Peruvian eatery. Well, 4 years later, that eatery no longer exists and Pio is still going strong, so we decided to stop in. (This review is actually an amalgamation of two visits).

We started with an order of Anticuchos and Salcipapa. The Anticuchos menu entry encouraged adventurous behaviour as it is skewered grilled beef heart, and while very simple it was also very tasty. The Salcipapa is grilled sausage and fries. You get a mountain of fries and a decent amount of sausage and I enjoyed it all.

Both times, my partner has opted for the Pio Chicken, once with the fried yucca and once with the patacones. Both times, the chicken has been absolutely phenomenal, and while the fried yucca are tasty, the patacones are next level. I highly recommend them as your side.

You also have your choices of Pio sauces. White is a creamy, flavourful sauce with minimal spice, green is a very herbaceous sauce with minimal spice, yellow amps up the spice some and red even more so (but not excessive.) White and Red is the optimal combo in my opinion.

The first time out I opted for the Aji de Gallina which is a curry-like dish with Aji sauce, pulled chicken and garlic rice. I went with medium spice level and while I noticed it I wouldn't call it amazingly spicy. Huge portion size left me thoroughly sated.

Second time around I went with the adobo which has pork instead of chicken but the same garlic rice as the Gallina. I opted for full spicy rather than medium this time, and you can definitely notice a difference. It wasn't "curled up in a ball crying" spicy, but it was definitely hot. The pork was super tender and tasty. As much as I enjoyed it, I think I would still opt for something involving their rotisserie chicken, because it is consistently amazing (and a far tastier, far better value than the place that rhymes with zandos.)

Despite being so full we wanted to die the second time out, we still opted to try the tres leches cake for dessert, and it is tremendous. It's super sweet and rich, so I highly recommend sharing it, as if you ate an entire one to yourself you might not have teeth left at the end. (this is not a complaint).

As an added, environmentally friendly bonus, they give you metal straws with your drinks, so if you care about turtles and earth, they have you covered.

Plus, check out the sweet bathroom art.

Refills are included on fountain pop (but not inca cola), and the second visit bill (app, 2 mains and dessert) came to $50 before...

I wanna start off by saying that I have been to this spot multiple times, my wife is from Colombia and her brother in-law is from Peru. Everytime he is in town we head here for lunch and whenever we're in the north east we'll stop by for a quick bite. This one visit ruined everything for us, when we got there everything was perfect as usual. The hostess was young girl and maybe not as experienced but she offered a booster for my 16month old, I said yes and she brings me a plastic booster that you strap onto a stool which they don't have. I told her it's fine he'll just sit beside me, when we came to leave I noticed right by the door they had the normal booster seats that he can just sit in but it is what it is. The waiter comes takes our order and he's so friendly with our kid and was just overall a cool dude. My wife ordered her chicken and rice dish and I order a deep fried sea bass with rice and salad. We get our food and everything is going good, I eat the first half of my fish, turn it over and start on the second half when I noticed a hair in my fish. It was at least a foot long hair, my wife looked at it and said no it's a string from the plastic bag they come in giving the benefit of the doubt since we been there plenty of times. I take a closer look and I'm like naaw this is hair it snapped just like hair when I did a pull test on it. I wasn't mad at this point, we call over the girl inform her and she tells the guy who comes over. This is where everything went down hill. He brings over an attitude and asks what I want, I was like swap out the first for the beef screwers and we'll be good. He says okay and takes my plate brings it back with an attitude. I was so put off I took one bat and took my food to go. I came to pay and the entire time I can feel this guy is radiating hate and anger towards me. Even tho I tipped 15% and left, I work in hospitality and know how far tips go but safe to say I will never be back. If he would of apologized and showed any embarrassment for what happened I would of been okay. Sometimes it happens and hair falls in the food, not every dish is gonna be 100% every time but don't come back at me with anger and attitude. That is whAt ruined our experience not the hair. I paid for everything in full except the beef screwers as he didn't charge us for this. But I know this is not a business I will be attending or come...

Went to Pio a few weeks ago with a big family group, we'd been before and had a decent time, this instance was honestly one of the top 3 worst restaurant experiences of my life. We were seated quickly and order taken, drinks came within 10 min but then we sat for over half an hour, had to ask for our appies to come 1st, which they did, then we sat and sat and sat for over 45 min with no contact from the server (I suspect also owner gent). It was busy but not slammed, other tables seated after us, at least 2, were served before us. We did not have a massive order, maybe 3 main dishes. He was busy socializing with other tables in Spanish, we could see our food had been sitting on the pick up counter for ages just getting cold. There was another girl working too and she obviously did not care either, mostly minding takeout orders. We tried to get the guy to come over multiple times, eventually we told him we would pay for what we had eaten but would not be eating cold mains. He was extremely rude about it, said he'd bring it now, did not apologize, and some customer/friend of his actually tried to get in my Dad's face for daring to expect service. He told us not to pay and to "just leave" with aggressive gestures, he didn't want to acknowledge his fault just to make it go away. To note: we were the only white folks in there, it was abundantly clear that we were not getting the same level of service as the Peruvians. 0/10 terrible. Do not go here if you are...