Piccolo Buco by Cooper's Hawk — Restaurant in Oak Brook

I’ve tried to love this place. I truly have. I’ve been a patron since opening, and while the food is wonderful, service is horrible. In probably the half dozen times I’ve gone since opening, I haven’t had good service once. I’ve been frequenting CH and their offshoots since before they were bought by VC, my parents are wine club members since then, and I’ve had multiple milestone celebrations at CH restaurants, so I’m familiar with the chain. From my experience tonight:

first and foremost, the restaurant was at half capacity

stood at the hostess stand for 5 minutes while the hostesses gossiped with their backs turned to us

had to ask for water (apparently that’s a corporate policy, servers are supposed to offer it but that does not appear to be the case)

waited 20 minutes for a sample of a wine. Our server took our order for food, and when we inquired about our tastings, they were “so busy” and “I’ll put your order for drinks soon” while trying to take the menus. We asked for a taste to make sure we’d enjoy the wine we were ordering and I asked to keep it so I could still place a wine order. I ended up going to the bar to ask for a taste and the bartender was like “didn’t even know that someone requested a taste” with a shocked face

while asking for the sample (by the way, bartenders are probably the best people in the establishment), I saw 7 servers standing by the kitchen talking and casually hanging out. I saw another half dozen actually doing things. Why are they so understaffed if they can afford to have so many people giggling (literally) in a corner?

server finally brought us a sample. One sample. She had just realized that my requested sample was out. I told her no worries, I went to the bar and they already informed me. In a rude tone, she clips back with “I didn’t know you were in such a big hurry,” and when I clip back with “if I’m eating in the suburbs, I go to places that offer good food and service, and waiting 20 minutes for a sample is not good service”

manager came out. She gave a half apology before covering it with excuses and assigning a new server to us (and while we had minimal interaction with her, she was absolutely lovely)

went to the bathroom before my drive home. Ran into the first server we had. She gave me the nastiest look on my way out

This is only from tonight. I’ve had other horrid experiences with them. Like I opened with, I tried to love this place, but simply cannot. Between the constant bad service and incorrect orders of the (at least) 6 times I’ve been, I cannot recommend this to anyone looking for a mid-to-upscale restaurant. I intend to never return after so many failures.

Edit: I saw the other reviews that just gave the generic email and said “please tell us what location!” Isn’t it pretty obvious? There’s only...

This was my first time dining here and first restaurant that I visited on my weekend vacation and I was very excited to try the food, especially since the rating and reviews are so well. I walk in, there’s a very obvious style of people dining in. I’m not dressed up at all, nor is anyone in my party. We get told there’s a one hour wait and we don’t mind because we were excited to try the food because of the reviews. We come back in after an hour and we have to wait another 10ish minutes. We get sat and the only thing on our tables is plates. No napkins, no silverware, no pepper, no parmesan. I shouldn’t be asking for napkins and silverware at a high rated dining establishment. Our server, Megan, comes over and asks for our drink order. We don’t know what we want so she asks if we need a minute and we say yes. While we wait for 10 minutes without any check in, she is serving other tables and checking in on them. She comes over and asks for our order and we put in our drink order and my friend asks for a pizza and she goes “Is that all I can get for you guys?” I think that’s uncalled for, considering there’s 3 of us, and only one person ordered. What if we wanted an appetizer or other food items? We put in our order and she left. While we waited, we saw her being attentive to other tables and never checked in on us, I mean I get it we haven’t gotten anything yet, but checking in is the bare minimum. One friend and I got our pizzas and they were not hot. You’d expect fresh pizza to come out hot, but no. My other friend’s pizza came out hot, which we thought was weird since ours was warm, but whatever. I also don’t know if everyone gets this experience, but we saw a lot of people’s pizza getting cut for them at their table but we just got our pizza brought out to us cut into 4 slices. We eat our pizza and she doesn’t check in on us at all and we have to ask for napkins as she was about to leave without saying anything when we see all the other tables around us already have napkins and silverware. We finish our food and she drops off another water, which was nice, but we didn’t need it and clearly were ready for the bill. She sees us not touching the new water and decides to come over and pour it for us, which is nice, but felt performative.

While it’s a nice restaurant, there is no dress code listed anywhere and I felt like I was being judged and stared at because I wasn’t dressed as nice. This is the most uncomfortable experience I’ve ever had at a restaurant. Really think we were treated poorly because of the way we looked. Very poor service. It raises the question, what if I was following the unspoken dress code? Would I and my party have been treated better? It’s not hard to check on your tables, especially when it’s their first time at...

As a Cooper's Wine Club 3 Bottle a month member, and a regular diner at the traditional Cooper's Hawk restaurants, we were excited to try this new "concept " and we were expecting a great meal. We started with the Arancini appetizer. It was very tasty, the sauce and small meatball size arancini was very very good, however the entire appetizer was just mildly warm like it had been sitting around awhile waiting for the server to bring to the table. We were seated literally a 5 second walk from the kitchen, and the restaurant was not that busy, so I would think this shouldn't be an issue. However, when the appetizer was presented, the server had another plate of food in his hand for another table. That seemed very odd. We have never been served like that at the traditional Cooper's Hawk restaurant. Food items are always brought out, hot from the kitchen, individually for each patron even when we eat at thd bar. For the main course we ordered a red sauce Italian sausage pizza to share. First of all most of the pizza was crust which was partially burned. The crust had good flavor and texture, but it also comprised at least 50% of the pizza. The restaurant claims that they serve "real" Italian pizza. However, the brick oven style pizza I've had in Italy featured not only a tasty crust but also a well cooked center with ingredients you could see. The center of the Piccolo Buco pizza was not good. It was very soggy with barely any cheese and tons of sauteed onion which on the menu was listed near the end of the ingredients list which indicated that it was NOT a main ingredient. After all it was touted as an Italian Sausage pizza! The star of the Italian Sausage pizza were tiny pebble size pieces of crumbled sausage which looked like they were precooked, slathered with red sauce and added after the pizza came out of the oven. The sausage was not baked into the very little cheese that was on the pizza. Frankly, I couldn't really taste or see any cheese at all. The center of the pizza was a gloppy mess - uncooked crust, red sauce, and very few ingredients that did not appear or taste to be oven baked. We were very disappointed by the food and prices and expected a far better experience from a restaurant featuring the Cooper's Hawk name. Being frequent Cooper's Hawk diners, we expect to pay a premium when dining out, but we have always received great food, served hot, and decent portions at the traditional Cooper's Hawk restaurant. We walked away from Piccolo Buco feeling that we had a really overpriced lunch - $16 for 5 small arancini and $18 for a pizza that probably cost less than $3 to make. We...