BigLove — Restaurant in Paris

Atmosphere: despite being charmingly cute and quaint at first- the tightness of the space can be a little suffocating and then scary if you add the layer of Covid running rampant now. Expect your elbows to touch the neighboring table, and to be squeezed or bumped into while walking anywhere in the small space. It definitely does have a cute pizzeria vibe with interesting antiques and Italian objects on their shelves.

Food: i tried 2 items only as i arrived half full from previous snacking. The first was the linguine cacio e pepe. I could taste the freshness of the linguine an i give them props for that, however it was extremely salty (i know pecorino is salty however this was next level) and was lacking enough of the star ingredient of PEPPER (you can see how lightly specked it is in the photo). It ended up tasting like a very salty pecorino based alfredo. As for the pizza, we chose to try the En Bomba Bebe. The dough was tasty, as was the tomato sauce base, props for that- however the odd addition of Tarragon really clashed with the flavors of the pizza. What was the biggest let down however is the use of fior di latte mozzarella that is used as well as coeur du burrata- the problem with using these on a thinner pizza dough is that it makes the pizza soggy very quickly to the point of having an entirely liquid center. Thicken the pizza dough or better yet just stick to a high quality mozzarella. I was also hoping to find one plate of greens to help wash down these heavy meals and that was missing too- a simple rocca.

Service: staff was friendly and courteous. They did a good job. Price point is fair

Final notes: although this group is very famous, their food is a little bit of a let down. The atmosphere and service are cute though. As i understood Biglove is the smallest space of all the group- this might be something to consider when choosing...

We were in front of the restaurant at 9:10pm for our 9.15pm reservation. Other customers were outside and informed us that they also had a reservation but that we had to wait for the hostess to seat us. At 9.31pm, we approached the hostess to ask how much longer we'd have to wait, and she informed us that our table had been given to other customers as we hadn't shown up within 15 minutes. However, the hostess clearly saw us outside, and there were only two couples who came in before we did, and both had reservations for 9pm. What's more, we showed up at 9:31pm. We asked the hostess why the next table couldn't be allocated to us, and she replied that there was nothing she could do for us. We subsequently witnessed other groups being called into the restaurant without having come forward beforehand either. We are outraged by the hostess's lack of consideration and respect. We had booked weeks ago for a special weekend in Paris and we were right on time. We can understand that a mistake might have been made and our table given to someone else, and we were prepared to wait for the next table, but the hostess simply told us that she could not assure us that we would have a table. We were deeply disappointed and humiliated to have waited 30 minutes in the cold only to be refused a table we had reserved in front of a dozen other witnesses. We don't understand such a lack of work ethic. We hope to have informed you sufficiently so that this situation does not occur...

I know this place is fairly popular and the food wasn’t bad but we were entirely underwhelmed. For an Italian place that is known for pizza and they don’t serve it on Sunday? And only two choices of pasta? They don’t give a paper menu but when you upload it there are all of these choices but we were not told that Sunday it’s different? It may have been on the screen but there was enough to navigate through that all four of us missed it if it was there. No verbal introduction whatsoever. It was 1:15 and we weren’t up for brunch so we all got the same pasta dish. It was served in a big cheese bowl but the completely low effort and lackluster presentation of the guy glopping the pasta out into completely different portion sizes…two of us got no cheese on it other than sauce, and the other two got a couple nice size shavings on theirs. It was fine (but extremely al denté) but with so many great restaurants in the area there is no reason whatsoever to come back. I don’t think the waiter said anything to us other than to let us know all of the things we couldn’t order. Including a Bloody Mary even though it was brunch. After we had chosen them. We live here- so we know we followed all of the etiquette rules etc…not the worst restaurant we have been to in Paris in two years, but certainly the most disappointing. We expected better. If it is only brunch on Sunday that needs to be very clear when you walk into the restaurant and when...