Passero — Restaurant in Wheeling Township

This was our first time here, and I was meeting a friend who I hadn’t seen in several months. We both had a taste for some authentic Italian food, and the menu looked good, so we decided to try Passero. I have mostly good things to say but a couple criticisms, and hope they will take it to heart. Our waiter was delightful very attentive, warm and kind. We ordered a meatball appetizer, which was delicious. He brought us an extra plate just like I had asked, he filled our water often and came back a couple of times to ask if we needed anything.. The other staff also checked up on us. Now moving on to the main dishes. My friend had pasta with vodka /ricotta sauce .. it was very good although it could’ve used a little bit more ricotta. I had Pasta with bolognese sauce. The first two bites were delicious and I am very picky about my Bolognese sauce. I make a really good five hour slow cooking Bolognese myself that everyone raves about I use 4 kinds of meat. (ground beef, veal, pork, pancetta)I chop up the vegetable soffrito very fine with wine before the summer with olive oil, and add and just a little bit of spice and a couple cans and San Marzano tomatoes. I welcomed their variation with beef, short ribs. Very flavorful and their homemade noodles however, as I dug further into the bowl, I became very disappointed. Very little meat and just a bunch of large chunks of vegetables. Yes large ! Onions, carrots and celery chunks are supposed to be chopped very very fine. Instead, I got big veggie chunks and rather than a nice meat Bolognese, it tasted like veggie pasta and under cooked veggies at that. I thought why on earth would they do this and ruined a good sauce? Laziness and cheapness and cutting corners. I will have to think hard about coming back. The service was very good up until the end when my husband decided to join us for a coffee.. they asked my friend, and I moved to a very small table to open up for a larger group which we were happy to do . We had been there 90 minutes and my husband just planned on joining us for some coffee and dessert. Shockingly, this really rude girl asked us when we were leaving five minutes after we sat down and said aren’t you ordering anything else and we told her family but politely that we just spent almost $100 on food, dessert and drinks and are now eating birthday dessert and drinking coffee and certainly have the right to sit a few more moments to finish our coffee and dessert. She did not apologize and just walked off rudely. Has it not been for the 2 incidences. I would have given them five stars. If somebody notices the review and reaches out, I will surely be willing to try again, but they are pretty busy and I honestly don’t think they care about...

I've been obsessed with downtown Arlington Heights recently, and I was super excited to try out this restaurant because I love Italian food.

I made a reservation for Friday the night before, and they gave us the option for outdoor/indoor. We went with outdoor because we're trying to savor the weather before winter comes #GoT! I was shocked we were able to get a reservation the day before AND have the option of where we wanted to sit, especially since we were booking for a Friday night.

We got our table on time, which was nice. The tables are very small, so we really didn't have much room to utilize the space and our items kept falling off the table, which was a buzzkill.

The waitress was really nice and was able to take our order pretty quickly. For appetizers, we got the popular cheesy garlic pull apart bread and whipped ricotta. I had pretty high expectations for the garlic pull apart bread because everyone hyped it up in the reviews, but I didn't think it was anything special. It really just tasted like homemade garlic bread with melted cheese on it. Basically, something I could've made at home. The whipped ricotta was AMAZING though. The pecans added such a nice touch. It is a sweet appetizer, so keep that in mind if you're considering it. I love all things sweet, so I loved it.

For entrees, we got the apple pecan salad (seasonal), cacio e pepe, and lobster arrabiata (seasonal). Apple pecan salad again tasted like something I could make at home, especially the dressing, and the apples in the salad were VERY sour to the point where it turned me off. The cacio e pepe and lobster arrabiata were good however!

To celebrate my friend's birthday, we ended up getting a gingerbread type cookie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, which was really good!

Some critiques with service: I'm not sure if the waitress was also in charge of the tables inside, but we barely saw her and thus if we needed something, it took a good 5-10 minutes to get it addressed. Example: when given our pasta, we didn't get silverware, so we waited for her (or any waiter) to come back outside to address the situation. Also, I requested a new glass of water because mine file (due to the small table), and it took two times to ask to finally get it. Our table was wobbling back and forth, and the waitress handed me her water jug so she could get on the floor and fix it. I just thought that was a bit odd.

Overall, food wasn't THAT great in the sense that it left a lasting impression. I loved the vibes, music, and the decor, but I think I just had higher...

I took my wife and son here this evening(Friday). We had a 7:15 reservation, when we arrived we were told there was a few minutes wait. Ok, no problem right? Except we stood there waiting for 45 minutes before we were seated. This is flat out a hostess issue with seating the restaurant. Once we were seated things were a bit of a roller coaster. When we were placing our orders, the waiter proceeded to let us know that a flat bread pizza our son ordered may come out after our dinners came out…like much later. What?! It’s a flatbread pizza and professional kitchen staff should be able to handle the volume. But ok, we proceeded anyway. The pizza came out in about 10 minutes, our food came out about 10 minutes after that. My wife ordered the Fusili pasta, I ordered the Short rib ravioli. I can assure anyone considering dining here with the expectation of being served pasta, will be let down dramatically. The pasta dough for the ravioli was so thick. The sauce was more like a chicken gravy with rosemary - no truffles in the pasta whatsoever - truffle mushroom scent is kinda hard to miss..I didn’t get past one ravioli before I gave up. Then I tried my wife’s fusili. Same issue, the pasta was so thick, almost like a spaetzle or a peirogi dough. She also didn’t finish. Everything was extremely one dimensional in flavor. All in all, for $158, I won’t go back. There’s so many options at that price point that this restaurant really needs to step up executing customer experience and more importantly, dial in a real pasta recipe using 00 flour and not ap flour thick dough and then execute what the menu says. If it says porcini mushroom broth with truffle cream sauce, why in the world would you serve me hen of the woods mushrooms with a chicken gravy on thick boiled dough meat pockets?!! Do...