Ristorante Pieno is an award winning Italian restaurant loved by Glasgow World readers

We visited Ristorante Pieno, a favourite among Glasgow World readers.

Transcript

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.