Casa Arpino Lounge Bar — Restaurant in Bra

Casa Arpino is a café-restaurant with great food, great service, great atmosphere and very reasonable prices. No wonder they're quite busy. A good sign is that a lot of patrons are loyal locals which demonstrates they're getting a lot of things right. We started off with a 'tagliere' (literally a wooden cutting board), a big rectangular platter that was heaped by about 5 types of cold cuts: salami, mortadella, coppa, and 2 kinds of ham. I eat a lot of cold cuts and these meats were superior, which was a pleasant surprise because a lot of places will try to wow you with quantity or presentation only for you to realize they just served you some industrial low grade stuff. The platter included a good amount of bread sticks (grissini), wedges of a good mild cheese, and cubes of a spinach omelet. I couldn't believe it only cost 9 dollars. My Italian friends ordered pasta Amatriciana and were VERY pleased: they say the guanciale (roughly, a kind of bacon) is key to this dish. The quantity was also abundant and they brought us a nice, big wedge of cheese and a really good cheese grater so we could make it 'snow' on the pasta. Casa Arpino is in the town of Bra so it's no surprise that they offered burgers with Bra sausage, which is made of veal (vitello), and this is the dish I ordered. Although Bra sausage is traditionally eaten umcooked, these burgers were cooked, and served with sweet sauteed red onions, with a copious side of french fries. They were delicious, juicy and tender. The fries were good too, not underdone. Like a lot of places in Italy, the condiments they give you, mustard, ketchup, mayo, are in little packets; I would prefer fresh-made, but you can't have everything. The hamburger buns were good too, later I found out one of the owners is a baker and runs a separate bakery which explains why their baked goods are so fresh. One of us got a nice octopus dish (polpa) served on a bed of mashed potatoes, and we also ended up ordering a secondo of Guancia, which was a big hunk of calf cheek, with a nice dark brown sauce, succulent, rich. We accompanied this feast with a couple of bottles of Prosecco and 2 bottles of red wine, including one that really stood out, not sure if I remember correctly, but it might have been 'Angelo Nero.' Finally, we had a hazelnut tart, a typical piedmontese desert (after all, this is the land of Nutella!). This was a great meal and a great time. The service people were attentive, very friendly, and fast, even though the place was cracking full inside and on the terrace, and there were no mistakes...

Pessimo. Iniziamo con il sederci al tavolo, qualche minuto dopo il barista esce urlando alla cameriera che il cocktail era da finire e si mettono a discutere in mezzo ai tavoli, e lo ha strappato di mano alla ragazza al tavolo a cui era stato destinato, tra le risate di chi nel degor, assiste alla scena. Ordiniamo 2 spritz e ci vengono portati dopo quasi 20 minuti senza ne patatine o piatto da aperitivo. Solo a due tavoli sono stati portati patatine e piatto con pizzette e altro, gli altri... Tutti figli della serva. Quando vado a pagare, totale 12 euro, gentilmente faccio presente che noi non abbiamo ricevuto il piatto da aperitivo e mi viene detto, pazienza oggi ti è andata così, e faccio presente che pago senza problemi ma che non ci si comporta cosi, che o lo portano a tutti o a nessuno. La titolare, non italiana, si mette a ridere e mi dice "pazienza capita". Incredibile, non ci tornerò mai più. Maleducati, personale incompetente e mal gestito, che non sanno a quali tavoli vadano le comande, maleducazione e strafottenza la fanno da padrona. A Bra è pieno di locali che si comportano decisamente meglio, e per sfiga ho pensato di tornare qui e riprovare ma ho...

This is where most of the action happens in bra for the fancier kids in town. Dress up in your lounge-bar best. Beware, this is one of the crowd hotspots of the weekends and there will be a lot of people there. They screeb for green passes at the door and it'll be a little more...