Piccolo Padre Restaurant B29 — Restaurant in Angeles

This place rightfully is seated in the Top 5 restaurants in Angeles City as of 2024!

There exists an authentic Italian diamond in the rough and hidden streets of Angeles city; it is born out of an oyster bar called the “black pearl” and of course, The chef is a real Italian guy from Italy. Bless his family and thank God and all His saints for landing this brilliant chef on this side of the world, in Pampanga. And thankfully, this isn’t one of those Italian styles you can scale up and expect the same quality because the ingredients are all the best - and those who know things, like the good of people in this country as far as Alabang travel hours upon hours just to eat a proper authentic Italian dinner at this exquisite and extremely authentic 6 star upscale dining venue. Those who will complain about prices here have never been on airplane to truly know what the taste of masterfully upscale cuisines are - and honestly am glad the seating here is intimate, not just to keep the masses out of here, but because the servers and staff here give it that “you’re part of our family now” vibe. Be gone influencers, stay away vloggers, keep this masterfully crafted...

Pretentious, yet does not live up to the hype. I say this because of one incident that, if you know wines, even just a bit, would speak volumes about the place. Won't write a Marcel Proust type of a presentation, so I will skip the foreplay and get right in it. And by it, I mean a bottle of wine which I personally love, Brunello di Montalcino, which even though it was about 3 times what you would pay for it in Europe, I went ahead and ordered. The bottle was corked. I am no sommelier, but I felt a funky taste, and asked the waiter to ask the chef if the wine is ok, as it doesn't tickle the taste buds the right way. The waiter takes the botte out the back, and rather than shooting it, as he should have, he comes back sayin that the chef said "it" must breathe more. "It" wasn't the case! Half an hour later, they did replace it but not after trying to weasel their way out of assuming the fact that the bottle was corcked. So if the cheff tells you that a bottle is not corcked when clearly it was, would you go there again? He is either smell deaf or just ill-willed. Either way Would I ever go there...

Have eaten at Piccolo Padre MANY times over MANY years. Has been very good up until the post-Covid era, then lots of issues. On this occasion, Christmas night dinner, we had to request service water three times (even though there were only about 8 other people in the joint), there was no complimentary bread offered, our Bombay Sapphire martini was horrid, and the white wine by the glass was not good. I ordered a tenderloin (for P2950) but as all the other meals were delivered to the table I was informed that they had grilled me a rib eye and would I mind taking that instead…..nope, sorry.

To top it all off…we had arrived in a Grab car and had entered the area using a new “man-gate” at the end of a road that fronts the restaurant. When we wanted to leave that gate was locked. Our car was waiting outside the gate but had no way to get to us. I went inside to talk to the owner and we ended up arguing about how to GET OUT….he was no help at all. Our Grab car DID find us but this episode ruined the entire evening.

Overall a 3…used to be a solid...