Pellana — Restaurant in Peabody

SUMMARY - Pellana is a cookie-cutter restaurant that offers pretty good food if you're looking for a steak and has a great environment (even if it is tucked behind a gas station). However, it seems quite expensive, and at these prices, you might as well make the drive into Boston unless you're coming from even further up north.

THE DETAIL - They do a very good job for the main dish you come here for: steaks and other meat cuts. The other side dishes and appetizers were generally between “acceptable” and “good”. The environment reminds me mostly of The Capital Grille: upscale, low-lit, dark-wood, "rich" environment, and leaning more towards the intimate side. My waiter and the staff all did a very good job.

However, the cost for steaks here is generally between $50-$80. That seems to be on par with the cost of steaks at the higher-end steakhouses in Boston (with exception to maybe 1-2 menu items). The other items also seem to be of Boston-equivalent price. You might as well make the trip into the city if you're going for a fancy night out with your date, family, or friends. However, if you don’t care for city lights and energy, and rather prefer a bland-looking building located behind a BP gas station, BMW dealership, and an Aspen Dental, Pellana is fine. I will concede: not having to deal with city parking is quite nice since they have a parking lot.

One thing did bother me, though: the “specials of the night”. I’ve always felt that when coming up with the “specials”, it’s a chef’s opportunity to add some color and variety to a patron's experience at a minimum, or to experiment/test if he’s daring. However, the specials might as well have been part of the normal menu. Nothing was unique about them. For example, some of the more memorable specials offered to me included the calamari and the ‘surf-and-turf’. I mean, I can get that anywhere else. I'm pretty sure The Cheesecake Factory has both of these.

ITEMS ORDERED - Clams Casino; Prime Porterhouse; Lamb Chops; Roasted Mushrooms; Lobster...

Wanted to take my wife out to a nice dinner for our second anniversary. Figured, where would be better than pellana, as this is where we had our first date and many other special dinners. Our dinner started out with a waitress that was giving all her attention to 1 specific table, of business men (I think you get the point), and she ignored all the other 5 tables, including ours. Our order was finally taken, the waitress was very cold to us. We ordered the Tomahawk steak med-rare to medium, which comes out pre-sliced for presentation and it came out very rare and cold to the touch. Our waitress came back 10 minutes after receiving our steak, asked use how it was, and I responded: ‘it is cold’. Her response: ‘oh, is it too rare for you?’ (It was obviously not even cooked medium-rare). They took our steak back, and reheated the same sliced meat, and served it back to us, instead of cooking us a whole new piece; you don’t re-cook sliced steak, especially when it is $120+ piece of meat, you know how that comes out. I ate nothing, except for the few bites that made my blood boil. My wife ate enough so she wasn’t starving (she did say the sweet potato was delicious). They knew it was our anniversary, they were clearly aware that they ruined our anniversary dinner, and they still charged us for everything but the steak, where they shouldn’t have charged us for anything. We’ve been there many times, and loved it, but this was a huge let down…now that I am writing the first review of my life for a restaurant, I really wish that I had taken photos of my steak before and after to add to...

Let me start off by saying that the steaks at this restaurant are very good. However, that’s about the only thing good about this place and you can get just as good of a steak at other places that don’t lack in other departments as this one does. First of all we had a reservation for 8:45 pm and didn’t get seated until 9:15/9:20. This is unacceptable with a reservation in place. On top of that no one apologized to us or even mentioned it at all. No one seemed to care. Not to mention we walked up to the front desk and no one greeted us or acknowledged our presence either and we stood there very awkwardly until someone paid attention to us. The next thing that struck me about this place was the decor. It looks like something you would find in a funeral home. Gave me very creepy vibes and reminded me of my grandparents funerals. It’s also extremely dark in the whole restaurant and very loud. Think funeral home with loud music blasting and that’s what this restaurant is. I couldn’t even hear myself think. The service was atrocious and extremely slow. It took forever just to get our drinks by the time we got our entrees it was basically time for breakfast. Now like I mentioned , the steak was very good. However everything else was just mediocre. the food wasn’t bad it just wasn’t anything great and not worth the bad service And horrendous atmosphere. Also very very pricey for what you get. Over $500 for 4 people and we were treated like garbage and the food was just ok. Definitely would not go...