Il Piccolo Bufalo — Restaurant in New York

Visited this place for late night pizza. Was handed menus with water and waited 10-15 minutes to order our entrees. This time wait is reasonable for a dinner rush but it was an hour until close time and there were 2 tables including ours…Our waiter (Raquel) was also the manger on duty. She was seen and heard in the back talking to her employees about non business stuff, she was also on her phone/phone calls. Shortly after the 10-15 minutes she came over, took our orders and walked away. Food came and we ate. She came over once to ask if they had over cooked our pizza because the party next to us had complained about their pizza. After that she didn’t come again to ask if we wanted refills nor when we had finished eating did she come over and it was noticeable that we were done because i still stacked up my dirty plates to see if she could catch the hint but she didn’t!! She was too busy talking with employees. At this point we were the last table left and we asked one of the older men who lured us in from the outside for a box( for pizza) and a check after 10 minutes waiting. Again 10 minutes isn’t a big deal if it’s busy, but if we were the last table and they were about to close so we should have received attentive and kind service. I kindly asked the older man if i could take the gratuity off our check (20%) because i didn’t think she deserved it with the lack of service she gave. He said to talk to the her because she is the manager. She heard me already so all she said was something along the lines that she couldn’t take it off because it’s already added and it says it on the menu. But again i told them that she made us wait awhile to order and that her service wasn’t good. All she did was take my check swipe the card and say “sorry about that.” First of all that’s not how a manger should handle situations like that. If gratuity is added the least she could’ve done was give the expectation of 20% or be communicative with her customers and not give a attitude because she rolled her eyes at me and gave me a stank look!!! Not a good image for the restaurant if that’s how the manger RAQUEL herself is going to treat her customers!! Horrible horrible horrible!! Do...

OK, this place was a blip on an otherwise excellent trip to New York so far. We wanted to go "Little Italy" for some Italian & stumbled upon Il Piccolo.

The guy outside encouraging us in was friendly & convinced us, upsold the menu, got us sat down on table outside, took our order etc...

Then we were waiting a few more minutes then a lady came up to us who worked there as well, didn't even say hello or was friendly to us & asked us out of the blue "what did you order?".

We told her we'd already ordered with the guy but she insisted she was the one who needed to take the order, so we told her what we wanted then they seemed to be taking their sweet time even bringing our drinks over which we had to remind them about.

The lady working seemed to be in a genuinely bad mood throughout, she barely smiled or seemed interested while the guy working was nothing but polite, we noticed that the two of them seemed to go to the back of the restaurant a lot & looked like they were having disagreements about something as well judging by their body language.

When it came to adding a tip, gratuity wasn't included so it was at our discretion, we left a few dollars cash tip after paying on our cards but the lady tried to say "oh, we normally put gratuity on the bill"... quite frankly, her attitude rubbed us up the wrong way & they were lucky to get a cash tip from us at all for average food (mine was tasty enough, my companions was run of the mill).

I challenged her on the fact that tipping is discretionary & she then backed off but that was the last straw for me, we got ourselves out of there ASAP before I used more colourful language... I feel sorry for the guy working there who gave us an apology so that was worth 2-Stars.

We shall not be back, try other places...

5pm on a monday I come in with my boyfriend. We ordered the fettuccini alfredo with shrimp and a penne vodka with chicken. We alert the waitress that he has an egg and potato allergy, she lets us know his dish can be modified. I had high hopes, especially since his allergy is difficult to accommodate, bread sticks come out and it was really good while it was warm. Food comes out and it looks good but looks were deceiving. Penne vodka was bland, lacked flavor, the chicken was drenched in pepper AND it was 5 pieces the pieces were THIN!!! PAPER THIN!!! not worth the extra $5. My boyfriend ate his meal, I tried it and it tasted like heavy cream and cheese. Service was not good, from the second we sit down we are asked about drinks, we ask for a moment not even 2 minutes later she comes back and asks if we’re ready to order or get drinks. She dropped our food off and did not come back. I had to let another person know i did not like the meal and that alerted her. Item was removed from the check however when we saw the check its $34 for a fettuccini alfredo, shrimp and a drink. 20% gratuity included. Ridiculous. Not worth 20% not even 18%. It’s like the server does not care and knows they’ll get ripped regardless of how they treat us. I will not be returning.

Also as I observed the server used GLASS CUPS for SCOOPING ice. #1 rule of food service you NEVER USE GLASS IN THE ICE BIN. Seriously the lack of care is astonishing. Do better. God forbid the glass breaks.

Should’ve known better when this place was absolutely empty compared to every other restaurant...