Piada Italian Street Food — Restaurant in Indianapolis

First I wish Google allowed 1/2 stars so I could rate Piada at 4.5 stars. Billed as"Italian Street Food" it's very good, although I have no idea how authentic it is. I'm not too concerned about authenticity since this is a chain restaurant. Personally I think the menu is straight forward which makes it easy to order. While I tend to be less impressed with chains in general, one advantage is consistency. I've only eaten at a handful of Piada's in the last couple years, they have always been great and exactly as advertised.

I ordered a BLT piada and added grilled chicken and black olives, but basically you can create your own and customize it any way you like. I also sampled my wife's pasta Carbonara with Italian sausage. Very tasty, and while I wouldn't compare this to a 4-5 star full-service Italian restaurant, this is fantastic for fast food. I really like places that allow you to customize, another reason for high marks here. Why not a perfect 5? I am a big fan of iced tea and although they have peach and lemon tea, their drinks are from a self-serve fountain and just average in my opinion. However, they also have a couple "Italian Sodas" and a gallon of blackberry hibiscus lemonade which brings some variety and depth to otherwise standard Pepsi offering. Since this is a regional place (mostly in the Midwest) many of you will only have the opportunity to visit one when traveling... I say it's worth going out of your way...

Wow where do I start?! How about if you like feeling great about spending your money, DO NOT GO HERE! My family and I have been to this location several times and the Carmel location twice. EVERY SINGLE TIME we come it’s the same outcome. TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE! It’s like they were all trained on how to p*ss the customer off. They see you coming no greeting, it’s like hurry up and order and get the heck out. One employee at the Keystone location with the black eyeliner in the evening was literally sweeping in the customers and food direction as they were ordering. How disrespectful and unsanitary. I could clearly see the dust floating and whatever she was sweeping hit their feet. The location in Carmel tried to serve us the breading of the chicken and when we asked if we could get fresh chicken (which is crazy that we even had to ask) she looked at us and just told the chef to make some chicken. Then, when the server gave us our food my mom asked if she could get an extra serving that we would gladly pay for she said no you have chicken…. What?! I’ve never heard of a food establishment denying a customer extras that they’ll pay for, but hey if that’s the rules then so be it. I tried to get past the blatant rudeness over and over but the service outweighs the food. I’ll never return, definitely...

Italian fast food -- served with a healthy dose of attitude.

You know -- if you're going to spend $25-30 for two people on Italian food, it makes sense to spend the money on a restaurant where you're going to sit down, have the food prepared professionally, and have it served to you without attitude.

We ate there on 06242018. My partner ordered a pasta dish. The preparer (not a chef) put old, dried out pasta in a bowl and started to add a sauce when my partner stated he would like to have (gasp!) FRESH pasta, rather than old, dried out pasta. The preparer threw out the old pasta, replaced it with fresh pasta -- and promptly put it in a dirty sauce pan where she was going to heat it. My partner pointed out what she was doing was a health code violation and asked her to put the pasta and the sauce in a (gasp!) CLEAN pan to heat it up.

As we were paying for our food, we heard the preparer making snide comments about my partner to the people in the back of the restaurant.

Mine was a BLT wrap. It was OK, but nothing to write home about.

Their hibiscus lemonade is delicious.

Basically, this is Italian fast food, served with a healthy dose of attitude. There are lots of Italian restaurants in Indianapolis. Piada is pretty far down towards the bottom of the list of restaurants we...