Bistro Albertino — Restaurant in Upper Moreland Township

Small and very easy to miss mini strip mall BYOB Italian restaurant on York Road in Willow Grove. Highly recommended. Menu contains Italian standards that are not heavy on the cheese and red sauce. Dishes tend to be well seasoned and maybe slightly lighter than typical Italian American restaurants in the area.

We enjoyed the chicken piccata served over capellini pasta, and a pasta special with shrimp and hot Italian sausage. My dining partner stressed that the chicken cutlets were cooked to perfection. We enjoyed a side of spinach that was the best we’ve had anywhere.

Stuffed mushroom appetizer with gorgonzola and spinach was good, not great. It was maybe a bit of a gorgonzola overload. The bread served with dinner is freshly baked, but white-white, soft, and not great. It is served with pesto, which is an appreciated extra, though not really pesto because it contained no cheese, and if there were nuts, I wasn’t tasting them. So really just basil + oil, and the oil did not taste like high quality olive oil. Still a bit better than what most local Italian places serve to accompany their bread though. Dark chocolate mouse for dessert. It was wonderful. We appreciated the complementary orangecello shots given with dessert.

Parking here is limited, but enough, since it’s a small place, and so is seating. The lot is easy to get in and out of onto York road. Some reviews here mentioned a credit card surcharge – I paid by card and did...

This is definitely a place to check out that is somewhat hidden and easy to pass. From the looks of the outside I thought this restaurant was closed but it was actually open and I’m glad they were. The waitress told me the specials for the day, and I opted to go with The Hand cut ribeye with lump crab meat with the white sauce on top with garlic sautéed asparagus and potatoes. The potatoes were so good. They seemed as if they were parboiled then sautéed in a pan. The inside was nice and fluffy. The outside was crispy. The ribeye Was cooked to perfection. I asked for my steak to be medium and that is exactly what it was. The crab meat on top paired with the steak with the cream sauce tasted like butter. It was extremely flavorful. The appetizer i ordered was the marinara with goat cheese. It was OK, very warming to my soul, but I wish it was drizzled with something sweet like honey, to kind of balance it out. The robust taste of the marinara, along with the salted goat cheese, it needed some kind of balance. The crème brûlée, I absolutely loved this. I like that it wasn’t overly sweet. I was stuffed from dinner, and I just had to finish that dessert at the restaurant. I did take one entrée to go, and that was the oxtail Ragu, which was tasty as well. Would...

I feel like my rating should be just a bit under 4, but I'll keep at at 4 for now.

We came in without any reservation and was still rather promptly seated. The waitress was friendly, quality of the food was very good, and portion was decent for the price.

Here's where (I feel) things went wrong and could've been managed better:

After being seated, it took about 10 minutes or so just to receive complimentary bread. Afterwards, about another 20 minutes to get our starters, followed by another 30 minutes or so to get the main meal. While the wait time separately may not seem long, a total wait time of 1 hour is a bit long.

It was a Friday evening so I can understand the staff being busy, but not to the point where I have to wait that long for our food. I feel like things could've been better managed. Throughout our order, our food was swapped with the table next to us twice. I can overlook that part because, again, busy Friday. But the wait time? 1 hour is steep even for a busy Friday.

TL;DR - Quality of food is very good and portion size is reasonable for the price, but the wait time should...