Filippo's

Filippo's is one of my go-to date spots for a few reasons.

1) If you get the house wine (white or red), it's $7 for the bottle and they are good house bottles. You can't go wrong.

2) The bread and olive oil is delicious as well, and they will continue to refill it throughout your service (which is really nice, especially if you're like me and you love your bread).

3) The lemon chicken with gnocchi is very delicious. The sauces that they use are very flavorful, and the chicken pairs very well with the pesto gnocchi. The gnocchi is some of the best I've ever had. I definitely recommend it.

4) The bruschetta is wonderful! All of the ingredients taste very fresh and they shape the bread into hearts. The presentation is very nice and you can individually taste each ingredient in the bruschetta (each of which is very good).

5) For college students, this restaurant is a tad pricey but the food is worth it. Usually on a Friday and Saturday night they aren't too busy, and it gives for me a more intimate feeling.

Overall, it's a nice atmosphere and the service is pretty good. The food is very fresh and absolutely delicious.

Here I am at Filippo's with the helpful waitstaff...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQF87JUeC80
...OK, I didn't have breakfast......"SUCK IT IN, ED...C'MON, INHALE!!!"

I can barely remember going to the original Filippo's further up College in Rockridge, but I think I had a decent panini there years ago when I lived in the East Bay. That's all I was expecting when I passed by this location, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a full-fledged pastaria here in the Elmwood shopping corridor.

I managed to miss the lunch rush because the place was barely populated at a quarter to two. The menu still has the paninis but also a lot of pasta dishes and the regulation soups, salads and anitpasti plates. I went for a house specialty, the $9.95 Ravioli di Zucca, which is ten tasty butternut squash ravioli rolling in brown butter and topped with fresh sage (see photos).

Also pretty good was the half-order of Pesto Caprese for $5.25 (a full order is $7.75) - six nice, thick tomato slices covered with three big wedges of fresh mozzarella. Pesto, fresh basil and olives were scooped on top, and it was all doused with a red wine vinaigrette (see photo). The place is warm and spacious with plenty of tables and a counter. No complaints on the service either...they were very attentive.

FOOD - 4 stars...I really liked the warm butternut squash ravioli on a rainy day
AMBIANCE - 3.5 stars...nice-sized space with patio seating in the walkway to the parking lot in the back
SERVICE - 4 stars...very responsive though I was one of four people in the place
TOTAL - 4 stars...so am I flipping over Filippo's?...not really, but I think it's a reasonably good option for a nice pasta meal

Impromptu dinner with the brother and the sis.in.law -- we were initially aiming for House of Curries but since arriving at Elmwood... it was "poppin'' that Friday night!? There were lines at every restaurant and it was nice to see...

Bro showed me Filippo's sign of bottomless wine for $7. He said we can go there next time... thus we continued on walking. We got to House of Curries and there was a huge line... I asked my bro if we could check out Filippo's instead? He was annoyed at the late decision (he was hungry) but he was down so was sis.in.law. We walked backed up.

We got there and fortunately, there was a table for us... not clean but available. They didn't have a bus boy so it took awhile for one of the servers to clean the table and sit us.

We sat... water and bread came promptly and I opened the menu... geeez there were a lot of choices! We couldn't decide and kept on hesitating back and forth with what entree to get.

Finally we narrowed it down...
Me:
- cream of mushroom soup (tons of mushrooms, not too creamy, just right. loved it. though it made me full...opps)
- chicken parmigiana (it was huge! our server even said after that it was by far the biggest parmigiana she's ever served. It was delicious though. The breaded chicken was just right plus the cheese and the spinach was good. I wasn't a fan of the pasta that came with it... but nonetheless good)
- house red wine (can't go wrong with bottomless! Trust me when I say they fill it up when it's 1/4 - it was awesome! I only managed to get 2 glasses... next time... I'll try to do more damage!)

Sis.in.law got the mushroom soup and the gnocchi. She liked the soup as well but now so much the gnocchi. She said it was redundant. It's pasta but I tasted it but it was ok, it does get stuck in your gums... just saying.

Bro got the beet salad and the salmon pasta (forgot which one) but he ate all the beet and the pasta.

Overall... I'm a fan. The prices were reasonable and the servers are good. Though they do try to avoid eye contact...so my bro did that job for us.

My bro did tell me to add this note... they tell people that comes into the restaurant at 9:30ish that they're closed. My bro was a server and he said that normally, restaurants doesn't do that ... as long as the patrons are in the restaurants before closing, they serve them because it's business. Thus, to all of you reading this... get there an hour before closing...

This is a brunch review. Maybe I'll go back and have a great dinner one day. Painfully slow service and it's not like the place was packed. Sure, we actually received menus and water upon being seated, so that counts for something. But after that it was, "Help, help, can a brother get some coffee?! " The menu has great selections to choose from. That is if you're allowed to choose. Seemingly years later the young hipstress waitress apologized for the delay. Too bad the open kitchen betrayed her excuse. As a long-time breakfast cook, it's pretty easy for me to tell when the eggs are really crackin'. Which is all to say, this radically undercut my experience with the decent omelet that eventually arrived. Omelet was warm, but the otherwise tasty potatoes were not. It would be so easy for them to step up to the 3- or 4-star level with a little effort.

Outdoor seating is a plus.

Coffee is OK...if you can get a cup.

Bad mimosa. Those two words should never go together!

Every Wednesday I have dinner with my daughters for dinner in Berkeley (they're 10 and 16) and we take turns picking where to go. Filippo's is in the rota and does us fine. Reading the reviews concernig the service, here's the deal: only accept Jennifer as your waitress. She's tall and lanky with an asymmetrical haircut, she's friendly, smart and fast, and she'll remember you when you come back.

Everyone else is pretty mediocre.

Update (Dec 06): Jen left, so two stars instead of three.

The food's OK, they don't really have a handle on pesto though. But we can all find something we like for a good price, so it stays on our schedule.

(Mar 07) -- getting worse and worse, there's a new hostess who doesn't do much but annoy the help. Two stars still.

It's generally not a good sign when one would prefer the sauce of the entree to the main ingredient. I'm sure there are many different opinions as to what gnocchi is good or not good. This particular dish wasn't to my liking as it was far too mash potato like (yes I know it's made of potato).

I'm also pretty darn sure that we've been here before, yet I haven't a clue what we ate (family amnesia as everyone had the same thought.) this also to me isn't a good sign considering my youngest son can remember that his entree at Elephant Bar had a strawberry garnish. One should never strive to be forgotten below the level of Elephant Bar of all places.

Service is friendly, and the food isn't bad, but I'd hesitate to put this on my favorites or go out of the way to eat here.

I love this restaurant! I was expecting to see a better rating though, sad :(. Well, I'm giving Filippo's 5 stars!!!

Ambiance- I loved it. Super cozy restaurant. It was packed when I went, so apparently people that "don't" yelp supports this restaurant.

Cioppino- OMG. I guess I got the good batch lol. Because, it was so good. I'm a big fan of this seafood soup, and at Filippo's they do it right!

Well, I hope this review helps. I would definitely recommend this place.

The food here tastes like food I could make. Not sure what that tells you, but when I eat out I would like to eat food that does not taste like what I could make.

The pasta here is weird. It's not like any other pasta at any other Italian restaurants. It's like drenched in sauce, watery sauce.

I give this place 3 stars because I like it better than Gypsy's, but I don't know why anyone would come here when Trattoria La Siciliana is down the street, other than maybe the wait time. This is a big restaurant so the wait here isn't bad at all.

Taste: 3
Value: 4
Service: 4

Came here when we were told the wait for Trattoria La Siciliana would be 40 minutes. For italian food, it's okay, although I didn't like my dish that much (think it was a spinach linguini with steak and mushroom?). Steak was flavored weird, and there wasn't that much of it. It was mostly just pasta.

I've always wanted to try this place out, and I finally got to for my friend's birthday dinner. I came here with a group of 16 at 6pm, and we got lucky and got seated almost right away (but we were told that we would only have an hour because another reservation was coming in at 7pm).

After asking the waiter which pastas he likes, he suggested the Penne e Salsiccia, so I ordered that. I was kind of scared ordering it because it had sausages (I don't like them), but it sounded the best out of the ones he suggested (I felt bad ordering something other than what he suggested). I was pretty unhappy with the dish... It was too tomato-y for me because of the tomato paste, and the sausages were decent, but too salty for me to eat all of them (my left over = almost half of my sausages). My friend's shrimp and potato pizza was great though! I would have given this place three stars if I got to try more delicious food, but since only one out of the four dishes that I tried was a hit... two stars... My only other positive experience was the bread and olive oil.

Atmosphere is nice. Service was slow--especially when we were ready to pay... waiter didn't pick up our check until wayyyy later... and we asked for more bread, but we never got it.

TL;DR - get the shrimp and potato pizza if you're eating here