We visited Ristorante Pieno, a favourite among Glasgow World readers.
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00:00This is Ristorante Pieno, an Italian restaurant on Hope Street in the city centre.
00:04Our readers named this as one of their favourite places to eat in the city.
00:07It won Best Family-Run Business in 2022 and Glasgow Restaurant of the Year in 2022,
00:122023 and 2024. It's one of our absolute favourites.
00:16It's a family-run restaurant. You've got me, my husband, our two nephews,
00:21my husband's brother and his wife, so we all work together. We opened during Covid actually,
00:28so that was a kind of false start, but we've been open for three years
00:32and we are right across from the Theatre Royal, so we're perfect for pre-theatre dining.
00:36To be honest, the whole idea behind our restaurant is just like welcoming people in.
00:41Of course, for a restaurant, good food is a given. You have to have good food,
00:45but for us, I think the service is actually more important than the food,
00:48so everyone that comes in, we just welcome them as if they're kind of coming to our house really.
00:54We make sure that they have a good experience when they're in and obviously we want them to
00:57come back for their birthdays and their graduations. We're people people, so it's just
01:03nice to get to know new people and see them coming back. We used to have a cafe for five years and
01:09then when we built that up, we got the restaurant, so it ends up just like a way of life. You get to
01:15spend most days with your family, which has pros and cons to it, but yeah, it's just a great way
01:21to meet people. You sort of build your own little community of regulars that come to the restaurant
01:26as well, so yeah, we just really enjoy it. Highlights on the menu, definitely Penny Piano,
01:33because it's named after us, of course. That's like a creamy garlicky sauce with chicken,
01:38mushroom, broccoli and red onion. My husband actually is a pizza chef, so all the pizzas,
01:43of course, are fantastic. We also do steaks. Our seafood is so popular, which I didn't expect,
01:49because I'm not a seafood lover, but Glasgow really is, so like the mixed seafood pastas
01:54and pizzas, the mussels, the risottos, everything, and obviously don't forget a dessert. Leave room
02:00for dessert. I think when you run an Italian restaurant, we have catered for like the Scottish
02:05kind of palette of Italians, so you know, we can't do a proper Italian carbonara, but most Scottish
02:10people like it with the cream, for example, so yeah, but Italians definitely, they do enjoy coming,
02:16but I would say they go a little bit off menu, because we'll be like, we know how you like it,
02:20so we can cater for both sort of palettes. Yeah, so I'm never in when anybody's in. I get the
02:26picture, and I'm zooming it, and I'm like, is that so-and-so? So who came in? James McAvoy,
02:31when he was doing his show. Right now, it's the Only Fools and Horses musical, so we've got Paul
02:36Whitehouse has been in, and actually he's been so good. He's took like some pictures with people if,
02:42you know, if they've been in at the same time, but yeah, I've got to say, everyone that seems
02:47to do a show, they are fueled on pizza and pasta. That's the inside scoop.