Amici Ristorante Pizzeria — Restaurant in Dripping Springs

After my mostly negative review, the restaurant's owner, Elpida Sarnacchiaro, reached out to me and asked us to give Amici's another chance, and also sent me a gift certificate. THIS is what great customer service is all about! We went with friends last night and had a truly wonderful meal with great service. We really appreciated the extra mile. Upping my ratings and saying "thank you," to Elpida for caring so much about your customers!!!

I was so excited to eat at Amici, as I knew the owners previously had a restaurant in NYC, where I am from. I was even more pleased to find out, once there, that they owned one of my favorite and "go to" restaurants back in the day, Amici II! My husband took me there for my birthday last week, but alas, our experience was extremely disappointing. Food was good, but the service was neglectful at best - one server and back, with the owner bestowing her presence on those she deemed important. My husband and I were sharing two salads - a Caesar and a Caprese. They never bothered to bring plates, so we had to eat it off the serving dish. We then waited almost 45 minutes for our next course. By the time our mains came, mine was quite tepid, but flagging down our server was nearly impossible, and no one came to check on how our meal was. We ordered their famous crustless cheesecake for dessert, one of my favorites from back in the day... They knew it was my birthday, and when it came, I expressed my sadness that there was no candle. I had already taken a bite, annoyed, the server asked if I wanted to get staff to come and sing - I said no - and then he took my cheesecake back to throw a candle on it. Kind of anti-climactic. Very bummed about the whole experience - definitely a far cry from the...

I am a repeat customer. I have gone to this place since it opened. We learned this morning that they were open for lunch on Sundays and were excited so we made plans.

We began with the Mozzarella Caprese. It is a great dish to start with. The mozzarella is very fresh as well as the basil and tomatoes. The one thing about eating a caprese salad is having the freshest cheese. I lived in Naples and was able to get mozzarella balls daily. These are quite fresh.

The next dish was the Spaghetti Carbonara. It is cooked perfectly with the right ingredients. Some of the local restaurants overdo it with too much cream or not enough. This is right next to perfection. And it is a large enough dish that can be shared.

Finally, we had the special of the day which is Nona's Sunday sauce that included some meatballs, a rib, and Italian sausage in a bed of rigatoni pasta. The sauce was amazing. Again, living in Naples, one bite of this took me back to my Italian living. It was as if after I opened my eyes, I would see my entire Italian adopted family around me enjoying grandma's (Nona's) sauce. The meats were so tender. Bravo to the cook! Beware, this dish is only cooked on Sundays and well worth the visit.

If you are looking for a great, (I DO MEAN GREAT) Italian homemade meal, put Amici in your plans. It is a simple, but yet elegant atmosphere very well worth the visit. And if you are looking to simply enjoy a bottle of wine and Italian atmosphere, come on Thursdays, wine bottles are ½ price and there is an Italian video playing on...

Had a lovely date night dining in at Amici. We went on a Thursday, having made a reservation, and we had a cute reserved table waiting for us. Our waitress was actually one of the owners, as their waitress had called in, and apologized that she wasn’t very good - she was lovely and treated us amazingly! Service was fantastic; there was a gentleman who worked there who was helping her and he was kind, courteous and considerate.

The space is shared with Stony’s pizza, which we didn’t realize from the outside. It is also BYOB, which was fine as we weren’t intending to drink.

Bread and oil was delicious. The appetizer was bread with cheese and capers and butter; I found the fried bread to be a little too soggy (still with good flavor) but my partner loved it. Both pasta dishes were very good, especially the giulio. I would probably get the cacio de pepi again without chicken (the sauce was incredible but I didn’t love the chicken texture). We also got a large hot honey meat and goat cheese pizza from the Stonys menu, which was really flavorful and huge. All the portions were large and reasonably priced, and we actually had enough leftovers for us to eat for two more dinners.

Would callout the checks came separately from Amici and Stonys, so take that into consideration if you are using the inkind app or similar.

Overall really delightful experience and food, and it looks like they have varied weekly specials so definitely interested in coming back to try more!

One callout would be that the...