Ciao Papi at River Lodge — Restaurant in Paso Robles

Full discoluse, one star because my wife and I got food poisoning from Ciao Papi on Christmas Eve, which has ruined our Christmas holiday.

Even without that, Ciao Papi is looking at a two-to-three star review. The atmosphere and decorations are top notch. The server seemed pretty green, and the food wasn't great. Lots of little "we don't know how to run a high end restaurant" things like having mismatches between years on wine labels and the menu, "whole" branzino without the head, etc. If this were a moderately priced restaurant, a lot of this would be excusable. At $100+ per person, it's pretty bad.

Focaccia: $7: Served with a tellingly un-Italian pre-mixed olive oil and balsamic cup. It is good that they managed not screw up focaccia.

Broccolini Florets: $10: Yeah, sure. Nothing wrong with these, but I don't see why an underwhelming little pile of 3 grilled broccolinis draws a $10 price tag.

Shrimp and Polenta (part of $75 prix fixe): The shrimp was quite good, but otherwise this dish missed hard. Polenta was loose without being velvety and lacked flavor and salt. Underdone onions didn't help things at all, and the peppers sort of barely worked. As a dish, this was a mess.

Scallops (part of $75 prix fixe:) The scallops themselves were good, but the bacon they were wrapped in was overcooked and sort of grey. The brussels sprouts salad they were served with was good for a few bites, and then became a chewing fest. Some softer greens to offset the brussels would have gone a long way.

Branzino with confit potatoes (part of $75 prix fixe:) the fish was fine. Underflavored, but not egregious. However, it was listed as "whole," and did not come with the head. We asked for the head, and we were informed that those get thrown out. The potatoes were terribly overcooked. There's a good sauce here, but it's hiding under the fish and potatoes. Better plating to make this more obvious would really help the dish. The server was also pretty clueless about wine pairing here. She was unable to make any recommendation beyond "Lots of people get the red and say that they like it." Asking "which red" made her nervous and she rushed back to the kitchen.

Hangar steak (part of $75 prix fixe:) terrible. Low quality piece of beef, heavy on the red wine, light on the salt. Could maybe work if cooked slow and low, but this seemed like a braise n' sear number. Obviously I'm not impressed with the menu overall, but this was exceptionally bad. Go to Denny's for a better steak.

Pasta Putadesca (part of $75 prix fixe:) the only impressive bit of cooking we had. Excellent flavors, elegantly balanced, with pitch-perfect pasta. I could gripe about the olives being heavily concentrated, but it really would just be a gripe. This was genuinely quite good.

Struffoli (part of $75 prix fixe): Fine. Like the focaccia, it'd be more impressive to see someone screw this up.

Ciao Papi shows some promise, but they either need to drastically cut prices or bring their kitchen and service staff up to speed. Paying $400 for a meal that most people present throw up 6 hours later is obviously a very negative experience, but even without food poisoning, there is not a good value...

Based upon an earlier visit where we ate in the restaurant the atmosphere is lovely. Based upon tonight's takeout order the food is not good, tasteless and ill prepared. The veggie pasta with chicken was so bland and the past undercooked. The fig pizza lacked any seasoning including the "hint of Rosemary" and the buratta salad? It was a box full of chopped tomatoes, no arugula as the description said, and totally no flavor. The bill was over $100 and one of the worst wastes of my money in along time. Will not be returning or...

You’re paying for the vibes — and they are excellent — but everything else is mediocre.

$20+ for brunch items that are solid, but not intoxicating in their majesty. Pizza’s with incorrect descriptions (eg Uovo had no salsa verde and when we inquired we were brought pesto).

Folks working there were sadly understaffed for Saturday brunch, leaving the wait to be long.

Still, lovely atmosphere and everyone was friendly. Just not a place I would seek out unless I were staying adjacent to...