Piennolo Land Food — Restaurant in Sorrento

My friends and I have had a wonderful trip to the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento. The food has been exceptional thus far, and we even remarked earlier today that we haven’t had a bad meal yet. We should have knocked on wood because we had it tonight.

We chose Piennolo Land Food based on the great Google reviews. We ate at Inn Bufalito last night and had excellent food. I remarked that I was surprised that we even went there given the lower 4.4 star review, and I was excited to see what 4.7 stars looked like in Sorrento.

There were a few people eating at the restaurant when we arrived. The restaurant smelled a bit fishy, but we chalked this up to the strong seafood selection. Our waiter was pleasant and charismatic and made us laugh as we ordered. We ordered some appetizers including the stuffed zucchini squash blossoms and the beef carpaccio. The squash blossoms were great (although not the best I’ve ever had), and the carpaccio was decent. They served us some bread while we waited for our main course and all was well.

I ordered the linguine with urchin which was a daily special and was priced at a hefty 30 euros. I asked our waiter which was better between that and the risotto (priced at 22 euros), and after thinking about it suggested the linguine. My friends ordered the ravioli and the linguine with tuna. When the food was served, I was unsure of what to expect. The ravioli was plated well and looked good. My plating was nice, but I smelled the urchin strongly and hoped that the taste would be better than the smell. My friends tuna pasta had extremely large portions (good because we were hungry) but did not look appetizing in the slightest.

As we started eating, I could tell right away that I ordered the wrong thing. The urchin tasted bad, and the sauce didn’t make it any better. The pasta was cooked fine, but the dish was marred by the heavy flavor of urchin. I realize that urchin is a powerful flavor and not for the faint of heart, but I’ve had it in its raw form many times before at sushi bars and in pasta. I’ve always enjoyed it before, and this time I didn’t. My friend tried it and said that she thought it was disgusting. Unfortunately I agreed. I thought her ravioli tasted decent (certainly not great, but not horrible). I didn’t try the mussels, but she found the broth to be flavorless and the mussels to taste funny and a bit sweet. Our friends with the tuna linguine found it bland an off putting.

Since I picked the restaurant, I had to face the disappointment of the whole table, which I was not pleased with. When the waiter asked us how the food was, we had to tell him that it was “okay” or even “not good.” The reason I’m docking a few stars for service was that he actually recommended the urchin to me and didn’t point out any slam dunks. If he had recommended something good or we hadn’t accepted his recommendation, I’d have given higher marks.

To the restaurants credit, they reduced the price, but dinner was still a pricy 134 euros after the deduction and without consuming any wine or desert. They gave us 4 shots of limoncello on the house, which we appreciated but didn’t make up for the quality of the food.

Based on their responses to other low reviews, there is a chance they blame this on us or otherwise mischaracterize our review. All I can say is that there is a pattern of low reviews calling out the poor quality of the food and questioning the validity of the high star reviews. I’ll make another contribution to this pattern because I truly hope that you can avoid the bad experience...

Was recommended to try this restaurant out for dinner by some friends we met here in Sorrento. I went with high expectations based on their review & from what other people were saying ..

We were seated promptly without a booking but we had arrived early and it had been raining so perhaps the crowds hadn’t arrived yet for dinner so no lining up for us

We found the waiter & waitress to be really pleasant friendly and very helpful when ordering

The boss, the Owner, was really passionate about his restaurant he was involved with serving and attending to our requests with such a pleasant happy personality he was funny and liked to humour us during the course of our meal when we had opportunity to chat with him.

I like to be guided by people’s recommendations for choosing off the menu which I knew first up would be to order the bruschetta and wow that was probably the best I’ve had, the freshness of the toasted bread and ingredients were really delicious.

My husband ordered the Spaghetti anchovies tomato dish and was very pleased with it (he gives a five star review) for his experience tonight

I wanted to order the Eggplant Parmigiana which someone had commented it was the best they had eaten but I couldn’t find it on the menu so I mistakenly ordered the wrong dish wasn’t my favourite meal but it was ok (I thought I was getting a zucchini parmigiana) but their Tiramisu for desserts was a real winner light smooth & creamy 👍

Fantastic service really clean premises extremely clean & well maintained bathroom have to agree it’s been the best I’ve seen in 7 weeks of travelling in Italy Lovely staff made us feel welcomed and yes I would definitely go...

We chose Piennolo for our final holiday meal, and we were so glad we did! We arrived at 7pm and were informed they had no space until 8:30, so we easily made a reservation for then, and went for a quick drink elsewhere in the meantime.

All of the staff were amazing and so lovely. We had a limoncello and an aperol spritz and they were both the best ones we’d had the entire holiday. We chose the zucchini linguine and gnocchi for our mains, and the meatballs and the calamari and squid on the side.

All of it arrived in a good time and was all delicious- but I’d have to give the meatballs a particular shoutout. Definitely the best ones we’ve ever eaten and the sauce was delightful too. My partner also appreciated that the tomato sauce in his gnocchi was different to that with the meatballs.

The particular cherry on top, was that we’d expressed our interest in the tiramisu (after seeing such good reviews) but noticed there were only two left when we came in. Halfway in to our meal, our waiter (red top - sorry I didn’t catch your name!) came over to say he’d reserved one of the tiramisu for us. This was so so lovely and really made our evening as we hadn’t actually asked him to, we’d just mentioned at the start we noticed there weren’t many left. So we had that and the cherry cheesecake for dessert - both also amazing.

The service overall was just fantastic and attentive - from the manager when we initially walked in and all of the waiters throughout our entire evening. It was a great final dinner.

We were also given a complimentary limoncello shot at the end of our meal!

Prices moreeee than...