Zampano Pizza & Pasta — Restaurant in Frankfurt

Let's get this out of the way first: the food at Zampano Pizza & Pasta was quite good. Or, at least, my colleagues said so. My food never arrived, and the food two of my colleagues received was not what they ordered. But after an hour, they took whatever the waitstaff left at the table. Despite not being what they wanted, these guys said it was very good.

The problem with Zampano Pizza & Pasta was the service. Yes, it was a busy mid-week evening and the restaurant inside and outside was quite full. From what I could tell, there were three waitstaff - two men and one woman. They kitchen had at least four or five people making food.

But it was complete chaos. Service was beyond slow and the staff kept getting the orders wrong. Our party of six had three meals arrive after about 30 minutes. Two others in our party had the wrong meal delivered after an hour, as mentioned before. And mine never arrived.

After several diplomatic requests, the waiter and waitress literally dropped off whatever meal was ready at the time.

The staff was visibly very frustrated on one hand, but also completely void of any sympathy for guests. Diners were getting up and leaving, staff was yelling at each other and patrons. At one point, we saw a woman grab two plates from the waitress outside, taking them inside and putting the plates in front of her starving children. I am sure it was not what her family ordered, but you can't keep toddlers from eating, and the mother did what she had to do.

After not getting my food, I asked the staff to take one round of drinks off our order to make up for our troubles. They agreed. Of course when the check came, instead of one round being taken off, another round was ADDED.

I literally had UberEats queued up to deliver a pizza to my table, but I didn't have the heart to do it. But I should have since my meal for the evening wound up being a falafel wrap and can of beer from the grocery store a few blocks away - on my way back to the hotel.

It's a pity that Zampano Pizza & Pasta has THE worst service I've had in decades, a complete lack of basic customer service best practices, incompetent staff, zero organization, or any clue of how to run a restaurant.

The covid-era labor crisis is over. There's no excuse.

Recommendation: Avoid this place, no matter how good...

Tasty pies are slung every day at Zampano. They specialize in Neapolitan-style pizzas here where the dough is stretched thin and baked to a blistered, cracker-like finish in their wood oven.

As a new addition to the neighbourhood, they operate midday until 11pm every day, making it a good place to go after work for a quick bite. The interior is dark but cozy, it's mostly communal sitting or there's plenty of seating outdoors (weather permitted). You can see the pies fired in their hot oven, making it quite the show.

Food wise they also serve pastas, but it seems that pizza is the popular choice. Beer here is also a bit more unique as their selection is more varied than the usual Italian beers you might be more familiar with.

I ordered the salamino and salsiccia pizzas to go as it was quite busy for a weekend. Both pizzas had good char on the crust and held up well by the time I got home. The flavour was great but I think I would've prefered a slightly chewier dough. Pricing is fairly standard.

Staff is friendly and you'll get a bit of the Italian hospitality with their jokes. Service...

I usually don't write negative things about restaurants, but since these guys like leaving "funny" responses to ratings, I'll make an exception. Here's a "funny" review for you.

Service is okay, nothing special, typical german restaurant.

The atmosphere is ok as well, relatively clean, the outside seating area is quite nice.

Now, for the food. I ordered a carbonara, and received some deformed monster instead unrelated to the dish. So here's my advice, give the intern writing these "funny" responses a break and send him to your nearest optician, get your "cooks" some glasses, maybe that way they will be able to see that the pasta is overcooked and the bacon is burnt. Oh and as a side note, this might come as news for you, but carbonara isn't made with bacon.

What a trainwreck of a kitchen,...