Allegro Pizzeria — Restaurant in Monterey

In the face of hunger-motivated homicidal urges, there is only one reliable method of quelling the physiological and psychological discontent: Spaghetti. The question is, when you are young and government bound to attend a schoolhouse each week day between the months of August and June, how do you acquire such a delicacy when the moment calls for it? As it happens, we are released from said prision for approximately 35 minutes per the several-hour long daily toil, although not without proper certification to leave the monitored premises.

Alas, 35 minutes may not suffice for the transportation, ordering, cooking, serving, and eating processes that are associated with the consumption of spaghetti. Confronted with this predicament, we turned to yet another obscure saving grace: ordering ahead. Now this particular process is typically conducted via phone call, but for reasons unknown to myself, we chose another avenue to ensure timeliness. We used a smart phone application by the name of Slice. Through Slice, we were able to contact Allegro Pizzaria and inform them of our desire to dine at the given minute within our brief window of freedom.

To our great enjoyment, the placement of the order was successful, and upon our arrival, we were greeted with two extra-large slices of pizza and a container of spaghetti, warm and ready to go. The 35 minutes of freedom was well spent in the courtyard of Allegro Pizzaria even though we (or at least I) ended up exceeding our designated window. Overall,...

So, we came to Carmel after a morning hike in Big Sur and were ready to eat just about anything. Unfortunately, every other restaurant had a long wait and Allegro falls under a subset of “anything.”

Our meal radiated chaotic energy, as we were served foamy beer in a soda cup, a quarter-full bottle of the incorrect wine, Sahara-dry bread, and sad looking soggy fries. The pizza was undercooked and drowning in oil and we only made it about halfway through. Somehow this ended up being about $125. The guy running the place / taking orders seemed overwhelmed and on the verge of a breakdown (highlights included dropping some food and declaring the “two second rule” and declaring to the restaurant that “it was turning up in the club tonight”). He mentioned several times he was the only one working, so we left a pretty sizable tip because he seemed overwhelmed, but upon reflection we realized there were only three parties at the restaurant, which probably shouldn’t be sufficient to cause descent into such madness.

We understand COVID is a challenging time for restaurants and wish them all the success, but had to leave a review because this experience broke our spirits. I am leaving two stars because it could have taken longer and it was an extremely memorable...

My husband and I eat here almost every week. Jon too is a New Yorker and so is particular about his pizza. We think Jeano's is the best on the Peninsula! The pasta is wonderful too - great sauce in the Lasagne Bolognese. Yes, the wait staff is all young folks. We have been going here for 17 years and have known and become friends with many of them. It's great to see them progress in their skills and sad when they go. I don't get upset when the service is a little slower -- just ask for more focaccia and maybe another beer :-). There's a brick fireplace and a fire when it's chilly out, nice Italian art, and music that allows you to talk to your dinner companions. "Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came." This...