Black Pepper 義大利餐廳與披薩酒吧 | Italian Restaurant, Pizza Bistro & Bar — Restaurant in Da'an District

Wife booked this Italian place, which came highly recommended. The pasta isn’t bad, the pizza was okay, but there are enough other Italian places around Taipei that this doesn’t really stand out as special.

Their pizza oven is gas-fired, and the pizza crust has a distinct overly-burnt bitter taste instead of the charred finish that it should (in my opinion). This was noticeable on both the Four Season pizza and the Carbonara pizza we ordered. The crust itself became soggy quickly after serving because they serve on lovely lacquered platters that hold the heat and moisture against the pizza, so the crust (especially near the middle) softened and got floppy by the time we had started eating. It wouldn’t hold itself up, and toppings slid off.

The pasta we ordered was porcini pappardelle 牛肝菌菇寬扁麵 which had a creamy mushroom sauce. My daughters loved it, but I thought it was “just good”: the pasta itself was done a bit soft (probably a texture that local people are used to), and the cream sauce was quite nice but a bit thick. Overall, the portion was small for $470, and it wasn’t uniquely “wow”.

(We also had a salad, but as I arrived after it was served I shall refrain from commentary on it.)

And when they’re full, their service speed is embarrassingly slow: we canceled our dessert because it just wouldn’t come out and we were tired of waiting. They said they would check on it, and after 5 minutes, NOBODY came back with an answer: they left us in limbo. As we were paying, they didn’t even apologize for the inconvenience. There needs to be a lot more staff training on this.

Even during the meal, one staff member spoke to us twice but mumbled everything such that we couldn’t even understand what she was trying to say. Perhaps was her first day at the job?

Dunno. Someone would have to convince me hard to get me to try Black...

There was a decent size insect that crawled back and forth in front of our food at the bar seating. When shown a picture taken by us the patrons, the server(s) replied that they can't find the bug. The appropriate response would be to offer a solution like move us to a different seat. When we the patrons suggested that, they said that there's a reservation at 21:30 (at the time it was 21:05 or so). We still had a pasta that hadn't come yet, so they knew we needed time to eat. We the patrons interpreted the server's tone as blaming us for what happened. While we recognize this may not be the intention, the server didn't make us feel any more comfortable. In fact, after notifying staff of the insect, we needed to ask to double check on their response. The response regardless of how busy is to react quickly to what may be a hygiene provlem that would make any customer feel uncomfortable. I added another star bc one of the owners did come to apologize to us with a tiramisu as a token. I appreciate that immensely, and would like to express in no way am I blaming any of the servers or owners. It's not as if the bug was planted on purpose of course, but I still felt very uncomfortable about the attitude toward our (reasonable) discomfort of an insect crawling in front of our food.

Apologies for the lack of clarity of the photo, but our hands were dirty from eating pizza and the lighting was a...

I've visited the restaurant twice, and the food was delicious, but the service quality was inconsistent.

The first time, I had a headache because the air conditioning above our seats was blowing directly on my head. After several interactions with the server, they finally moved my friend and me to a warmer spot. On that day, both the service and the food were excellent, creating a perfect experience. However, during my second visit with my friend to celebrate our anniversary, I had informed them in advance during the reservation that we wanted a quiet table. When we arrived, it was just us and one other group of customers, but they seated us by the entrance, right under the air conditioning vent! We explained that we preferred a table without the air conditioning directly above us, and the server attempted to move us to another table still under a different air conditioning vent, despite many empty tables in the restaurant. When we asked for a table further inside, the server seemed noticeably impatient and simply said, "Okay, but you'll have to leave by 9 p.m." This response made us feel that the server's attitude was unfriendly, especially considering it was our anniversary!

I strongly recommend that the restaurant focus on improving the quality of their service and provide training for their staff. Unfortunately, we didn't have a pleasant anniversary...