Piccolino — Restaurant in Artesia

Our family stayed in Artesia while on a trip to visit the Carlsbad caverns, and decided to try this place out despite the bad reviews about the service. We walk in and no one greets us so I look around and there is a table where all the waitresses are sitting. One of them yells from the table we can sit anywhere. We sit down and after about 5 minutes one of them gets up and brings us silverware. She never speaks and looked like she didn’t want to be there. She comes back and brings us bread and dip which is really good. I ask her to wipe the table down because it’s dirty(food and crumbs). She says ok and goes and tells another waitress and she ends up cleaning it for us. After another 10 minutes our waitress comes and brings us drinks and takes our order. My sons food (chicken Alfredo) comes out but my husband and I have to wait another 15 minutes for our food(we shared a pizza). We never got any drink refills. Our waitress only checked on us once and that was before we got our food. Never went by and asked how the food was or if we needed any refills through our whole meal. The food was delicious but the service was trash. Work on the service and you’ll get some 5...

Recommendations: shrimp fra diavolo

From research this was the only Italian place in Artesia(local too). Popular by locals I came here to see what the hype was about. Walking into the restaurant I was not greeted by a waiter/waitress so I assumed it was order by the cashier type of place. Waiting in the line for 5 min, the cashier tells me to go ahead and sit where ever I want for dine in. Cool.

They started me out with bread and marinara sauce but Bread was tasteless with no character to it. Anyways, I asked the waitress for recommendations and she told me to try shrimp fra diavolo and stracciatella soup, And I did. Stracciatella soup had eggs, spinach and cheese, Interesting and flavorful mix. Not a soup I'd go back over and over again for but one that I'll try once in my life time. The diavolo, sauce was amazing with parsley and the spicy that had me addicted to it. The only disappointment was the pasta, felt like one I could just buy off of a walmart shelf and it definitely dropped the quality of the whole package.

That bread I mentioned earlier, went perfect with the left over sauce from diavolo. Just know that theres alot of sauce with most of...

If no one ever listens to anything else hear this. Drive to Hagerman. The one there is 1000 times better. The service is mediocre but the food difference is off the charts way better in Hagerman. I would say it was just me of four meals 1 was eaten. The only part of the meal that was even close in Artesia to the one in Hagerman is the noodles themselves. Sorry about the harsh review but hopefully this helps some other unsuspecting person from ordering a hundred bucks Wirth of food that is thrown away.. calamari was good and so was tea. Update several months later still the worst excuse for Italian food I've had. Dont know what makes chicken Marcella into spaghetti with chicken to these folks but maybe someone failed to tell them all Italian food is no spaghetti cooked different ways. Come on you have destroyed the whole menu. Chef boy r dee can do better than this. Kids throwing up after one bite of calamari which she will probably never eat again and was her favorite. Service always barely exists. Ive said it before but sticking to it this time I'll never ne back. Hagerman place should force you to change the name because yall make them look...