Il Piatto

For what its worth, I appreciated having Il Piatto around — Portland could use always use another Italian restaurant or twenty — at least the ones that made a halfway decent effort to feature something more than the average Italian American dish. With Il Piatto, there was always effort, but little consistency.
Like any business, they had their good and bad days. On their best days, the service was fabulous, the food was wonderfully presented, and vibe was good. For the other end of the spectrum, the service had their wishy washy moments, the food was extremely subpar, and the experience would be disappointing. Through it all, the prices felt a bit on the high side and the inconsistency resulted in fewer visits whenever I was back in town. As time went on, it seemed a little too dead during their dinner hours.
My fellow dining companions and I would marvel at the décor — a mix mosh of Portland weird with a little Italian old world throughout the place. It felt busy, yet intimate, and I was always afraid the drapes for the tables would be a fire hazard if they used more candles. I almost always appreciated the smell of pasta when it was fresh and it would permeate the room, along with whatever else they had going on to keep it light.
For every ending, there are new beginnings. Thankfully the folks behind Il Piatto are back with a new venture in The Slide Inn (
), a place that specializes in American and German comfort food. I’ll be stopping by very soon.

Tried Il Piatto for the first time last week. Unfortunately for me, it was also their last night in business. The server told my friend and me that they were closing for a month to reopen as a different business.
Too bad.
I enjoyed my salad, pasta (Cariofi?) and dessert (flourless chocolate blackberry torte) very much. However the prices were quite high.
We ordered the special: salad and pasta for two people, $ 28, and desserts were separately priced at $ 8 each.
The décor was really interesting with some nice artwork.
I wonder what will be in that space next month?

I am very sad that Il Piatto has closed it’s doors only to soon reopen with a menu that will now focus on German food… sorry won’t be in… I am very glad I got to spend one last afternoon enjoying the Italian food I grew to love so well.
Li mancherò molto.

In my spare time I like to make up words and the one I came up with for Il Piatto was averagissimo!
I went in recently for a birthday celebration and for a neighborhood restaurant, many of the tables were empty. The whole restaurant was cleared out expect for our pretty large party by 8pm. If it weren’t for us, the night would’ve been dead! After we left, it was completely empty.
When my companion and I first arrived, the server/​host guy seemed clueless about whether or not there was a reservation for our party. After finding out that there was a reservation, he sat us at the table and we got going with some drinks.
The waitress and the bartender were great. Nice, conversational, broke down all of our tabs if we requested. I thought it was amusing that the drink I was served came in a glass similar to what I have at home (Ikea anyone?). Bonus for using fresh squeezed grapefruit juice for a greyhound. However, it took way too long to get our first round of drinks out. Not like the joint was hopping!
It was just the one server guy who was a bit off. He told the birthday girl to «drink responsibly». I don’t know if that was a knock on what she was consuming or the rate? Either way, he could have delivered the message a lot better or he could have just done some neat little OLCC techniques like giving her more water, or taking a bit longer to bring out the drink or offering more bread. It was a bit condescending and more than annoying.
Onto the food. Now, we had a big party and all of the orders were taken at once. How they were delivered on the other hand, where the 2^nd person who ordered got their food practically last, was strange. I enjoyed my arugula & beet salad with fried leeks and goat cheese. I thought they were skimpy on the goat cheese and the salad was smaller than I expected if they were going to be charging $ 11 for it.
My companion had the gluten free potato gnocchi with pancetta and pesto. If you took a bite of the gnocchi alone, it had flavor as soon as you put it in your mouth, but once you chewed it, it devolved into a glorp of questionable edible. Take it with the pancetta and you had something to work with. I did like the pesto that remained at the bottom of the bowl. How that was the most flavorful, I will never know.
The décor is quaint and has a nice old world antiquey feel to it, but I can’t say I’m heading back soon to revel in what they have to offer.

This was horrible, pure and simple — I had not gone in to this place with high expectations, just a quick bite for dinner as I had an hour to kill.
And killed it was, thoroughly and completely:
I had decided on the clams in a saffron tomato broth, and while waiting, was given something which I assume is bread, only it fell apart in my hand when I picked it up to eat it. It didn’t taste very good or very fresh at all, so I tried to dip it in the hummus which it came with (Why hummus? But okay, whatever.)…
When I realized that the hummus wasn’t very good, I reached for the bottle of very pale definitely-​not-​a-​virgin olive oil and asked for some balsamic vinegar to mix with it. I don’t know about you, but the few times I do use balsamic vinegar, I want it to be thick and somewhat syrupy and slightly sweet and tart. I do not know what these people have been doing to their balsamic vinegar, but I think they might be cutting it with water, and even adding sugar to it because it tasted just *wrong*.
So far I am disappointed but not terribly. But when the clams finally got to my table, they tasted fishy and wrong, swimming in a huge red sauce pool, and there was nothing remotely saffron about this plate. It was as though a can of stewed tomatoes had been dumped into my plate and mixed with some salty broth. The clams tasted old, and had definitely been overcooked. I didn’t finish it, just politely paid and left.
I know people have left glowing reviews and the only thing I can say is, take your chance if you want to. A place which has inconsistent service and food really is gamble. Eat at your own risk. I think the problem is probably the standards of the kitchen… get a new cook or something. The owner should care enough to not have this happen. The service was fine, no problem.
They get one star for their adorable décor and good music. No more.

It is really sad that il Piatto hosted a Valentine’s dinner last night. The meal with reservations took two hours for 3 courses. The fondue first course was cold, the filet we both had for the 2^nd course was gamey, cold and practically inedible. The dessert was slightly better but i am pretty sure was from a Costco box.
This meal to me was just another bad meal I could live with. It made me sad for those first time couples trying to celebrate or those couples that may only go out a few times a year. Every table around us was complaining.
My brother & sister in law loved this place years ago and recommended it to us. I want to say that the front end staff was very nice and moving quickly. Must be a kitchen issue. Il Piatto needs ta major overhaul in the kitchen and maybe the management.

Wow… gotta say I am sorta shocked at the negative reviews of this place. But in a way, I guess… good for me. I always hesitate in posting gushing reviews on Unilocal,because I sorta wanna keep the place to myself. So, I guess I won’t complain…
Recently moved here from SF, and it has been QUITE a chore to find a really, really GOOD Italian restaurant.
Up until now, even after trying some very reputed places, I had to put Sub Rosa at the top of the list. Good place, quaint, nice service, very fresh fare but a very limited menu.
I am stoked to have just discovered Il Piatto. First Italian place I have come across which actually is at the level of the better SF Italian establishments, or a bona-​fide Italian trattoria (as in… in Italy… where I once lived, BTW).
Nice interior, kinda romantic, very warm and invitng; friendly service, good timing on the food. Great winelist (with a nice hint of irony, I might add). Our table partook (is that a word ?) in the Calamari Fritti, House Salad, Veggie Lasagne, Fettucine with Chantrelles, and Gambieri… finishing up with their polenta Tiramisu.
Exquisite…all around.
This place kicks. 5 stars. We’ll be back.

I had to try this twice, just to give a fair perspective. The food is good, ambiance is nice, the tables along the walls are individually draped with a chiffon curtain — kinda cool. Most of their dishes can be prepared vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free…AND bread is included.
The wine list also isn’t too bad — especially because they have a selection on the menu «wines under $ 25» which are really a good deal for the price. Also Sunday and Monday they have «family style» meals which include salads, and 1 entrée to split for 2 people $ 28. Highly recommend this!
The service, meh. OK the server was nice, knowledgeable, etc. But one server for the entire restaurant — ugh. We were seated promptly, and brought water. Then we waited for a half hour for the server to make it to our table. By that time we were ready to place our entire order, but the moment we ordered wine, she left and didn’t give us a chance to finish our order. Odd, but at least she was pleasant.
Thing is, this has happened twice — one server, extremely busy, waiting a long time to place an order, having to ask for our leftovers which were wrapped up for us… just never got back to the table.
I do recommend this; however. Don’t think you’ll get in and out quickly, because chances are there will be one server, and you will need to patiently wait your turn.

The two stars are for location and ambiance, the place is really cute. The food on the other hand, sucks. I got the happy hour bolognese on rigatoni. The sauce was way overly sweet, with very little meat, and the pasta was overcooked to the point that I didn’t even need to taste it to know, it was swollen, and you could see by looking at it. My wife got the lasagna, which had a lot of stuff in it, including sweet potatoes. It was mediocre at best, I am pretty sure I could get the same quality out a frozen Amy’s lasagna.
My brother and nephew ordered the special, which was some kind of seafood/​mushroom/​fettucini alfredo. It was by far the worst of the night. It simply tasted like canned mushrooms. It was disgusting, they had to send it back. The replaced it with the carbonara, which is actually decent. Two normal people could split one though, it is VERY rich. Combine the quite bad food with the rather high prices and this place fails on most levels. I would not come here again.

Went here with my living social discount for lunch. The place is lovely. I had the clams with fennel broth and a beet salad. Both deliciously prepared. The menu is so broad and extensive it was hard to decide what to get. I’ll put this on my list of places to try for dinner. The ambiance was lovely and service friendly.

Disappointing.
I used to go to this place all of the time when I lived in the neighborhood and it was so good!
I saw a living social coupon for this place, so I thought great I would love to go back there it has been a while.
Our appetizer was great, goat cheese fritter, yum so good. The atmosphere is funky, whimsical, romantic and comfortable.
Then we get a Cesar salad which took a while. Terrible. The dressing had zero flavor, the lettuce was kind of soggy, but the croutons were great. Still it was the worst Cesar salad I have had a restaurant in Portland.
Then we get our entrees which took way too long. We both ordered Gnocchi. I ordered Gnocchi with parsley pesto. The Gnocchi was completely dry and the pesto was greasy and lacked a defined flavor. I did not eat much of it. My husband ate both of our entrees.
My husband had gnocchi with mushrooms and pork. It was better, but still the gnocchi was dry.
The service was fine, but a bit slow.
The prices of the food were not cheap and charging $ 3.00 for a soda without refills we decided we do not need to come back any time soon. They really need to work on the food. It is the worst I have had there. It used to be so much better! What happened? Pastini is so much better and is way more affordable.

I want to kindly give you three stars as oh so long ago when I first moved here over thirteen years ago, I loved you.
My first complaint is the $ 11 salad we split the spinach was on the way to wilt-​land and the raspberry vinaigrette was bland and not heated as advertised on the menu. The Gorgonzola was also bland and had no funk for a funky cheese.
I will give you a star for the generous pour of the Willamette 2007 Pinot. I will give you a star for the generous helping of my gnocchi which I much enjoyed seared lightly brown with a parsley lemon vinaigrette and panchetta. Also thank you for the generous helping of parm.
My BF’s bolegnese, well tragically, my whole wheat Italian noodles are better a dente out of a box and my momma’s sauce rocks the house so meh!

I have been to this restaurant twice now but I have heard people rave about it for years and years. Imagine my delight then at finally getting to eat there and imagine my disappointment when both meals were bland, lifeless and boring. I am not sure how one takes a large selection of amazing ingredients and removes their flavor but this restaurant managed to do so. The service was friendly but took forever even though there were not that many people in the restaurant. I will say that desert both times was amazing but I didn’t go there for desert and I only had room for it because dinner was so uneventful.

Il Piatto is cozy inside — I especially loved the illusion-​at-​privacy curtains around the tables.
The caesar salad was really excellent, it had amazing polenta croutons that start crunchy and then melt away in your mouth and their caesar dressing was kind of a vineagrette-​consistency as opposed to your typical thick and creamy variety.
My mom and I ordered the steak and the Carbonara, respectively, and while both of us thought our entrees were good, neither of us were overly impressed with either. The Carbonara was a little too stripped-​down and not very flavorful, and the steak was a little too saucy.
We both agreed the best parts of our meal at Il Piatto were everything EXCEPT the main affair. They serve warm bread while you wait, my Italian soda was perfect, we both had coffee drinks and dessert and that was all delicious. And that caesar salad really was one of the best caesars I’ve ever had. But our entrees left us kind of «meh» — they were good, but didn’t match up with the expectations we had given the salad and the great atmosphere. I will say the service was excellent and attentive, although our entrees did take a little longer than expected to come out to us.
I will probably return, but I wasn’t impressed enough to leave thinking «I can’t wait to come back!»

Went here to meet the parents, and I couldn’t have had a better meal for such an occasion!
We ordered the clams, ceasar salads, pumpkin raviolis and osso buco.
Let’s start with the clams. They came in a beautiful broth in a big bowl – definitely meant for sharing. I was really pleased that there were no disappointing grains of sand that you sometimes get with clams.
The ceasar salads were garlicky goodness on fresh fresh fresh lettuce. Mmmm.
Didn’t try the pumpkin raviolis, but his dad looked super happy.
Osso buco was maybe the best I’ve ever had. Extremely tender and flavorful. We had to take half of it home for the next day because the portion was so generous, but it made for great leftovers.
The service was attentive and gracious.
As for what to wear… you can go in jeans and nice sweater/​blouse or dress it up a bit with a pretty day dress /​slacks and button down.

Having lapsed the expiration date on the Groupon, I called Il Piatto today, one day post-​expiration, to see if they would continue to accept the promotion for any longer. [In my experience with Groupon promotions, most businesses do extend the service as a ‘good business practice’ — myself included when my business did a Groupon promotion.]
Not only would they not extend the promotion on their own, but they offer a measly $ 11 credit for it. Why not just say «no, you no longer accept the promotion».
I was utterly shocked to hear of the $ 11 credit for the Groupon — the same $ 11 that they were paid (it’s a ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ split with the Groupon company for those who didn’t know).
When told that most businesses in the past have extended their offers, I was fed the «That’s the only thing we are able to do right now» line.
Having had some subpar dining experiences there in the past, and after wanting to give it another chance through this promotion, I’m sorry to say that there is simply too many MUCH better options for my business in this town. Not to mention much better service and consumer etiquette. The bad service continues with this place… Il Piatto… you’re dead to me.

Note to self: Next time you see a Groupon for a restaurant, look at the Unilocal reviews first!
I remembered, many years ago, having a good meal at Il Piatto. When a Groupon popped up, I grabbed it. I wish I had read the reviews first. And the worst part? We accidentally went at happy hour and now we have to go back!
The food was totally uninteresting to us. We ordered 3 appetizers: calamari, arancini and gnocchi off the happy hour menu. I thought the arancini were basically hard little tasteless balls. The calamari and gnocchi were unremarkable. We also had two salads: arugula salad with roasted beets and pancetta wrapped shrimp on greens. The pancetta wrapped shrimp were the only thing I liked that we ordered. We also looked at the dessert cart and ended up ordering the flourless chocolate cake. The problem with that? On the cart it was plain and when they brought it, there was some kind of berry sauce on it. I don’t like chocolate and berries so I would have asked her not to put it on. If I’d known.
The restaurant is cute and I do remember having a good meal there. But all in all I was disappointed.

LIke another poster, I also asked myself, why didn’t I check Unilocal before I went to Il Piatto?
Awful, gross, disappointing.
I got a groupon for this place, and it wasn’t even worth the ½ off coupon.
I could get better food out of a Lean Cuisine Microwaveable meal, and I would have eaten in a fraction of the time… i waited an HOUR to get my food.
As for the good, like I said earlier, it was awful. The gnocchi were bland and life-​less. Plus the sauce (marsala based) was too salty and lacked any balanced flavor.
My boyfriend had the lasagna, which sounded good in theory (butternut squash, plus kale, plus hazelcut crust on top), but the execution was quite poor. The flavors weren’t blended in any way, they were just kind of «there.» Plus, the tomato sauce tasted as though it came directly out of a can.
I wouldn’t even recommend this place to my worst enemy! Just awful food, which is really too bad, because my friends have told me that it was amazing several years ago.

I really wanted to like this place…
I really wanted to transcend the negativity surrounding some of the recent reviews…
I just can’t give this place good marks though. Most of the complaints by the one-star-ers…are dead-​on (and usually I dismiss these folks as whiners)
The service… oh man. Service has to be pretty bad for me to even bring it up… and it wasn’t very good here.
My father and I dined here and the the elephant in the room was our server. Finally Dad says «I don’t think our server likes us very much». I was thinking the EXACT same thing. She was not friendly to us and almost seemed to be talking down to us because we weren’t dressed nice and couldn’t pronounce the overly-​ornate names of the dishes. I got this odd vibe of passive aggressive contempt… like she thought we weren’t going to tip. Keep in mind, we are both EXTREMELY laid-​back dudes… almost to a fault.
Then the bill came.
She set it on our table, then picked up again… because she forgot to add the dessert. Well, she overcharged us a solid twenty dollars… ouch. It’s a good thing we read the tab, I usually just blindly surrender my credit card.
The hostess, however, was the polar opposite. Very warm, nice, and welcoming. It was a very odd dynamic.
The food: was very, very, very rich. The kind of rich that if you ate too much the smell of it would make you sick. I’m not sure about it’s authenticity nor do I really care (if you do, it’s not like anything I’ve eaten in Italy. but it is a BIG country and I only stopped in 3 cities). It was tasty, don’t get me wrong, but it was a bit much. The bread they bring out is cold… and so is the sauce… I’m not sure if that was done for authenticity’s sake… but I was not a fan of it.
This place is extremely close to my home, it’s a shame I probably won’t be returning.

Il Piatto used to be a favorite place of ours, with everything you want in a top notch restaurant: great food, great service, atmosphere, they had it all. Sorry, I’m writing in the past tense, never a good thing as a writer or as a reviewer.
These days I’d have to say, «what happened!!!» The interior, once quirky, now seems dilapidated and a bit shabby. The food, once stellar, is a shell of its former self (salty. bland. chewy. not good choices.) Once it was a great place to go with a group and have a lively meal, now, well, let’s just pay and get out of here, no thanks, no dessert or coffee… well, OK, the desserts are still first class.
It’s a familiar arc with restaurants, sadly, like empires they rise and fall.