Piccolo Buco by Cooper's Hawk — Restaurant in Naperville

We went to the newly opened Piccolo Buco at Block 59 tonight. The restaurant has an indoor section and an outdoor covered section. Even though the temperature outside was warm, inside was freezing, and I was glad I brought a sweater. Our table froze all night in the covered outdoor area. Probably because of the concrete floor. This restaurant is also extremely noisy. It was hard to carry on a conversation across the table. The outdoor patio where we sat had no sound panels at all to help with the noise level. The restaurant in Oak Brook is much more comfortable and aesthetically more pleasing than this location. Our server was D’Angelo, who was extremely friendly and engaging. Unfortunately, he was split in so many different directions because of this location being short staffed. it definitely is not his fault for the service we experienced. I overheard that there were no cooks in the kitchen and the managers were on the line. D’Angelo greeted us promptly, but we sat for an hour until he came back. I asked a busboy for a bottle of water in our server’s absence since we went through the one that D’Angelo brought Our table decided to order cocktails and our dinner at the same time because of this extended time delay. I split the delicious arugula salad with roasted grapes and thinly sliced apples with my friend. The restaurant was kind enough to split the salad onto two plates for us without asking. Nice! I had the margarita pizza for dinner and it was very good. The crust was the perfect Napoleon thin crust with puffy airy edges. Unfortunately, our dinners came out before the salad. It was a little backward and D’Angelo acknowledged that and said he would comp the salad, which he did. This restaurant has some glitches to work out. Mainly, time management as we waited for service and also delivery of food to the table.. Having said that, the manager Caroline came to our table to check on us and apologized for the mishaps. That’s good customer service. I know this restaurant has good food because there’s a sister restaurant in Oak Brook that I’ve been to so I’m confident that the dishes they make will be tasty. Like all new restaurants, it takes time to get on your feet especially with a skeleton staff. After relaying my experience to my husband who was going to dine there the next night with his executive team, he ended up canceling his business dinner at this restaurant. I’m sure this restaurant will work out the glitches in time, but in all honesty even though the food was good here, the comfort level and aesthetics of this restaurant aren’t appealing to me and I’d rather travel to Oak Brook to that...

If you enjoy dinner theater, Il Piccolo Buco is worth a visit—though the play is titled Chaos in Aprons.

The atmosphere: Lively and modern. The food? A mixed bag. The calamari was excellent, the pizza was very good (though sized somewhere between “personal” and “blink and you miss it”), but half of our main pasta dishes came out stone cold and at very different times. For $240 for four, you expect consistency—not roulette.

The service was its own spectacle: a cloud of college servers flitting around with dishes like butterflies, unsure which table to land on. We waited a long time for anyone to even approach us, starters arrived before the drinks, and we had to beg several times for the bottle of wine we’d already ordered. Our (lovely and super friendly) server didn’t know what beers were on tap, struggled heroically with the wine opener (I was this close to offering to help), and twice tried to upsell Pellegrino when I asked for club soda. The highlight of the entertainment: watching the pizza slide gracefully off a serving plate onto the table next to us. Five stars for slapstick comedy, if not service.

The upselling felt like a subplot—before we even ate, we were offered a “wine club of the month.” Perhaps Cooper’s Hawk corporate could invest in staff training, or at least offer a “Week One: 20% Off While We Figure It Out” promotion.

We’ll give them six months to rehearse before coming back. Until then, three stars for calamari, comedy,...

Unfortunately didn’t have the best experience from start to finish. When we walked in the bartender welcomed us with a smile and lots of energy, he was so friendly! But we walked up to the host stand and nobody was there for a couple of minutes. Eventually someone came up but the individual didn’t even acknowledge us or say hi. Someone else came and greeted us and took us to our table but barely even looked at us when they sat us down.

My partner used the restroom and one of the workers was in the stall and left the restroom without washing his hands, then unfortunately he was the same individual to serve us our food shortly afterwards.

When we got our food my partner’s meat was ice cold in the center. Meat was also not seasoned. My dish was over salted. We enjoyed the pizza however the other dishes seemed like Olive Garden/corporate/fast food quality. Our server kindly took my partner’s dish back and gave us a new one, meat was hot in the middle however again not seasoned.

When we got our bill we noticed we were charged twice for the dish that was sent back so I had to find the server to get a refund for it. The server was very nice, but overall experience was pretty below average and we do not plan on returning or recommending. I do think the atmosphere inside looks...