Pietro's Trattoria — Restaurant in Lodi

I've heard a lot about Pietro's for the past couple of years and finally tried it. It was a little bit of a drive from Stockton to Lodi to check it out, but my wife and I came for our anniversary so the special occasion merits a short trip. The place is beautiful. They get 5 stars for aesthetics. Once you get inside the smell of the cuisine immediately greets you, and then I immediately noticed their cooling system was perfect. It's been fairly hot out recently but it was nice and cool inside and very comfortable. They have a huge dining room, as well as a huge outdoor seating area. This is a very big operation with lots of staff who are all dressed impressively in clean and neat uniforms. The kitchen is open so you can watch the chef's prepare appetizers, pastas, and whatever else they are sautéing on their line. They have the most modern and up to date technology visible for taking orders and getting them to right stations and back out to the servers. So the food was coming out extremely quickly as we were ordering. I was worried when our server didn't immediately take our dinner order after we ordered appetizers. But surprisingly, they were very busy for a Tuesday night and our food came out very much faster than I was anticipating. Our server came back and got our dinner orders in as we were getting started on our appetizers and the entrees were delivered to our table before we even finished the appetizers. They also bring out fresh baked bread for you to snack on as soon as you are seated and we got a refill on the delicious bread before our entrees came out. The bread was definitely amazing. Appetizers were very good as well. We had bruschetta and arancini. I would say the bruschetta was 8/10 and arancini 9/10. I would definitely come back here just for the bread and arancini. We also had cocktails. I enjoyed my Spanish Steps tequila cocktail with agave and whatever else they put in it. I give it an 8/10 and would have that again. I ordered the Chicken Picatta for dinner and my wife had Chicken Parm. I was expecting a little bit better for the entrees for a fine dining restaurant. For me, a chicken piccata should be an encrusted chicken breast, typically pan fried. I received several slivers of chicken and they didn't look like they were breaded at all. The sauce was good. Potatoes were overly salty and some were very burnt and crispy. I would have liked a very nice and soft, well seasoned potato more. I give the Chicken Piccata a 4/10 although I did enjoy the sauce. The sauce that came with the arancini was also very good and was great for dipping my bread in. I would definitely go back just for that. Final thoughts on the visit, they had a ton of staff and everyone was nice and professional. Everyone was prompt. They had music playing but I felt like it was a bit too loud, for dinner, but they also had a very full dining room and their customers were very loud so maybe the loud music helps mask multiple loud and boisterous conversations. It didn't turn out to be quite the intimate dining experience I was expecting. I thought it was be a smaller, quieter, candle lit type of setting. It felt more like a Denny's/Olive Garden feel with a bunch of people in a large dining space. Lots of families. Loud. People enjoying themselves, laughing, eating. I guess you could say maybe it was business casual/country club more so than a high end steak house dining setting. Kudos to the owners for building such a huge and impressive operation. They've done great...

Summary: Food is decent. Host manager? or Front of House Manager? has a bad attitude and is unwelcoming, to say the least.

Longer Version:

I dined in on Dec. 8th. Family had made a reservation for 4 people, but we showed up with 5. I notified the front desk that we had the reservation for 4, but we have another. The host turns to the host manager and immediately the host manager (didn't get her name) snaps that they wouldn't be able to accomodate us. She then quickly says, "You can try and find seats at the bar, or to can take the food away." Mind you she said all this in a bit of a nasty tone.

At this point, I'm worried she is literally not going even seat us. We had zero attitude with this lady, but she had enough for our whole group. lol. I tell her we don't mind sitting in a booth all five us, after she told us that a chair at the end the table or booth wouldn't be possible because it would be a fire hazard (we never actually asked to put a chair at the end, she kind of just gave us that info). The way she was acting, we were bothering her, and she seemed to just be trying to get us to head back home.

We actually finally got sat. Woohoo! 5 in a 4 person booth. A bit tight, but our own fault. We made it work.

I kid you not, half way through dining a group sits at the table across the aisle from us, and the staff puts a CHAIR IN THE AISLE! I guess its not a fire hazard anymore, huh?

The family had a couple drinks, we had a bottle of wine. My gf enjoyed her cinnamon pear drink. I had the Pork Milanese it was pretty good, not amazing, but definitely not bad. 2 people ordered the lasagna, they said it was standard lasagna. The apps were tasty. (I'm trying to add some good points here too.)

As a last little twist. The reason we were there that night was for my birthday dinner, which I didn't mention to that manager earlier. Why should it matter, ya know? Well my family brought a cake (after the whole reservation talk), which the hosts took from us and stored behind the host stand (weird place, but right on.) Then when my familly asked for the cake to cut and sing at the table, they said we weren't allowed to eat outside desserts here. No one mentioned that when we gave them the cake, which I thought was weird. But ok. So we halved the cake there on the table so each separate group could take some home. Then we left and I got a birthday song in the parking lot instead of there at the table with everyone.

The cake thing is not a huge deal, but it just was a bit of a "Let's make sure we really put the nail in your birthday dining experience here."

I'm really writing this review to bring notice to the horrible attitude we were greeted with, which set the tone for the experience. No one expects miracles when we show up with an extra person, but we definitely don't want the sassy attitude when we were nothing but nice and flexible about it. Not to mention the occasion and the hour drive we had each way to check the place out.

Saving grace was our waitress Bailey. She pretty much executed her job exceptionally well.

My brother and father who live in Lodi had been coming here for a while and were singing praises about this place. So I drove from Modesto to check it out. They both were upset about the manager's tone and how she was acting. My brother went as far as to say that he wouldn't eat there again.

Honestly, I wouldn't drive that far again for...

We went here for a cousins birthday. It was a Saturday afternoon, 106 degrees outside and the placed was packed, thankfully we had a reservation. Here were 5 brown women enjoying their late lunch when the head server I believe approached our table asked us if everything was good, I assumed she was just checking in. She was a very young lady who looked extremely nervous and then she tells us that our table is too loud as another table had complained. Already the place was packed and loud to begin with! As she's speaking to us this old white guy from about 2 empty tables away walks over and says you ladies are loud we're trying to enjoy my friends birthday and we told him we were doing the same and the place is noisy as is and he has no right to come over to our table with his threatening behavior. He was agitated and was ruining our meal and after a few words back and fourth and us specifically telling him to go back to his table he left. The head server or manager just walked away. Then the owner came and started his conversation by, 'shooshing' us. We all told him that was disrespectful and he needed to talk to us as adults and not shoosh us. He started by saying yes he saw we were having a good time and it was a little loud. We explained hey it's a public space it's already so loud with so many people and we understand if we needed to turn it down a notch but for that other customer to just walk over to our table with his privileged behavior that was so threatening to us. As the owner is speaking again another one of the older white guys comes over and starts saying we were wrong and at that point one of ladies from our party had to show him why she's a little loud as she has a hearing disability and uses a hearing aid. The 2nd guy apologized and walked away but then again the 1st older white comes back and starts accusing us of being disrespectful and such, then his friend comes to grab him and takes him away. We go back to speaking to the owner. Again our friend with a disability shows him her hearing aid and says this is why I may have been louder than most because I have this disability. The owner just keeps talking and talking instead of de-escalating the situation ans ending it there he just keeps speaking. We had to ask him to listen to us for a minute. I did advise him that that behavior was uncalled for and that my friend did not even need to show them her disability and its against ADA ( Americans with Disabilities Act) to discriminate anyone this way. I told him if a person has a physically visual disability such as using a wheelchair I am sure another customer or even the restaurant would accommodate them and not question or ask them to get rid of their wheelchair, this discriminatory and biased behavior should never have happened. The entire restaurant was loud and for those white men to come to 5 brown ladies talking down to us telling us we are loud was discriminatory behavior and the restaurant should have stopped them from the beginning. The owner gave our meal complimentary which we didn't even care for but the embarrassment caused to our disabled friend and the demeaning and rude and racist behavior of 4 white men is going to forever scar us. The restaurant needs better training of ADA regulations and adherence and also conflict management. We're so blessed to not even be from Lodi if this is the type of behavior...