Bella Piatti

Stay away from this place. Extremely poor service. Even worse… the management and owners condones customers being treated poorly. Never seen anything like it and never been treated worse in any restaurant.

Good food, great service. The waitstaff was knowledgeable and professional. Arrived around 5:30 for dinner and the experience was good, though by 7:30 it was starting to feel a little more crowded and loud.

Went here with a regular for a business dinner. It was really busy for a Tuesday night but we were greeted and seated right away. We started off with the cuddle fish entrée and split it for an appetizer. I ordered the quail and risotto entrée for myself and finished off with the affogato dessert. This was easily one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. The service was on point from the initial greeting to the check. Manager/​Owner of the restaurant and the chef even stopped by to speak with us during the course of the meal.
If I ever find myself within an hours drive of Birmingham, Mi again I would go out of my way to make a reservation and stop in for dinner.

Super cute place, perfect location, great patio in the summer. The food is hit or miss. depending on what you order and how busy they are, it might be a great meal or not so great. Prices are what they are as it’s Birmingham and it’s to be expected. I have had great service and I have had bad service, again, it depends on the night you go. They are always busy and booked for reservations on the weekend, never been on a week day. Worth the try if you fancy something different.

Bella Piatti is a wonderful intimate restaurant in my home town of Birmingham Mi. Everything from the personal service and staff to the food is exceptional. Nino the owner does everything possible to make you feel at home as though it is his home kitchen. The quality of the food and wine selection is excellent. For shortness of words, it is a very real restaurant with personal attention to everything (vs. the tourist restaurants in downtown Detroit that are tourist marketing business restaurants only, to vehicle drive up and valet park and go in and eat and get back into your car and go home.) Birmingham is truly wonderful to walk around also and have such wonderful restaurants and I am so thankful…
Richard C. Rollins

This place is just really smooth and comfortable. Nicely greeted at the door, seated efficiently. Very prompt busperson with water options. Then the waiter with bread, roasted garlic and tapanade. All very good. Mojito with fresh mint was great and good wine by the glass.
Calamari appetizer in a very original sauce was good and great salad too. Then rosotto was great and gnocchetti with shrimp even better. Not sure it was the same Tiger Shrimp i am familiar with but still great.
Yeah it’s birmingham prices but i have paid more and gotten far less. Definitely go!!!

Last Friday was my 3^rd time here, and it keeps getting better. The ability to accommodate us last minute was a nice surprise — sat at a high too in the bar, which was perfect.
The wine list is really good, and ordered a favorite Super Tuscan.
Between the calamari, burrata, then the veal chop, I was stuffed. The service was excellent as always, and then we split a desert — the bread pudding was amazing and double espresso gave me enough energy to drive home!

We were staying next door and walked across for dinner. The inside had a great atmosphere, nice bar area, great staff.
Food fanominal! We asked the waiter for his favorites and we’re not led astray. Calamari, eggplant appetizer, linguine and clams, piccata then cheesecake and tiramisu.
I hope we can visit this spot again soon’

A new favorite place to visit. I have heard about this place many times but never think to go there due to its location. It’s on the south side of the Townsend directly across from their valet.
The place was small but I think that was one of the reasons I enjoyed it. The ambiance was appealing. They put a lot of people in one room yet it didn’t feel like you were sitting on top of each other.
They do have a patio, but it’s first come first serve. The indoor seating is reservation. The wine list was nice, but not too many choices below $ 75 a bottle.
I had the Burata salad and lamb chops. Both were great! I would visit this restaurant again.

Went to check this place out for Restaurant Week and was very pleasantly surprised. It’s in a convenient location with parking nearby. They bring out bread and a red pepper butter to start, which I don’t know why all butter isn’t mixed with red peppers. The caprese salad was fresh and flavourful, some of the best pesto I’ve had in a long time. The pesto pasta and tiramisu were equally on par. Can’t wait to come back!

Went there last night with the wife and some good friends and had a great meal. Had the seafood cerviche as an appetizer which was very good. But the cuddlefish was my entrée and it was awesome! My wife had a fish which was cooked whole and she loved it. The atmosphere was relaxed and the service was excellent. I like this place. By the way, my wife is Italian and she is not into Italian restaurants. she loved it.

Dropped into this place during Birmingham Restaurant week-​what a delicious treat. I had a three course meal for only fifteen dollars! First course was a caprese salad that was fresh, delicious and perfect. The second course was a pesto pasta that was rich, creamy, and very tasty. The last course was dessert and I had a tiramisu which was to die for. I was absolutely stuffed!

Very good experience all around. The décor is awesome. The service from hostess to waiter was superb, and the food is to die for. Easily the freshest fish I have ever had in Michigan. This place is pricey and would definitely be considered fine dining, that being said, this is one of the best Italian Restaurants in the Metro Detroit area that is have been to.

Loved our waiter and the décor is fun. It’s just not great italian food for the price you pay. There were four of us and all of thought it was mediocre. we had the lamb pasta special, pork, fennel salad and the whole white fish dish. The flavors just weren’t there.
In nutshell:
This place is NOT WORTH THE PRICE YOU PAY. The FOOD is MEDIOCRE.

Small restaurant, good ambience, good but not great food. Our party tried a number of appetizers, entrees and deserts. Most we’re good but portions were quite small given the prices. The fish dishes were good, but the scallops dish was too small as were the salads. Pastas OK. Deserts not as good as the other dishes.

Every detail from the service to the sommelier was on point. The food is old world and amazing. Great steaks and homemade pastas. The bartender John is top notch and got our evening started with a great whiskey sour with fresh lime juice.

I made reservations for my wife and I for Valentine’s Day. The room is fairly small so I made the reservations about a month in advance. The reason we selected this restaurant was because I read that the old chef from Chianti’s (one of my favorite restaurants of all time) had taken over. We were not disappointed by our selection.
The service was very attentive. We started off with an appetizer special of scallops and risotto and a menu appetizer of an old Chianti favorite, sausage and peppers. The only difference between the dish and the Chianti’s dish was that the peppers were patties and the Chianti’s appetizer used links.
I skipped my usual favorite, Linguine with clam sauce, in favor of the Tagliatelle Bolognese. Again, I picked this dish because Chianti would server a Fettucine Bolognese that was one of my all time favorite dishes. When Chianti closed, the only restaurant that served a dish that tasted like Chianti’s was Lepanto in Royal Oak, which also later closed. It had been several years since I had a Bolognese sauce like Chianti’s and I could not tell any difference between their sauce and Bella Piatti’s. It was delicious. My wife had the lamb chops which I sampled and they were cooked to perfection. They were as good as I ever had.
Dinner was accompanied by a bread plate with a chive spread, a caper spread and a roasted garlic spread, all good. Dinner was accompanied by a several glasses of a chianti (appropriate) that I had before which I knew would be good.
Dessert was another favorite, Tiramisu, which we accompanied with strong (possibly a little burnt) coffee. It was very good.
If I were to have one complaint, it was that the noise level was very, very high, especially for a restaurant on Valentine’s Day. But I would not knock off a star for that reason. The owner was very attentive coming over a couple of times to ask how our meal was.
Like a lot of Birmingham dining spots, the meal was moderately expensive. I think the cheapest wine on the menu was $ 12.00 a glass. However, my pasta dish was quite generous so I will be enjoying that as my lunch today.
I will be back soon, probably with a larger party, I noticed the back of the restaurant featured a square bar with a large wall mounted tv showing the Olympics. Summertime dining will probably mean I can still enjoy my Tigers at the same time. They are also open for lunch so I will probably be hitting it at lunch time.

Food: eh. Delicious appetizer, salad and desert, the fish so bland you’d think they were serving it in a nursing home.
Service: eh. Good waitress, but an absolutely terrible hostess. A nearly half-​hour wait with reservations, and she points to the tiniest, most exposed table right in front of the constantly swinging door. When I asked her whether she could find us another table, she looked at me blankly and said: «No.» Needless to say, another host (the owner?) found us a comfortable booth five minutes later.
Ambiance: ugh. Super, super, ear-​splitting loud. Think an intimate Italian bistro, great for romantic dinners? Ha! Not only is the bar crowd screaming at the top of their lungs, the owners decided to put a metal chain-​link curtain in the middle of the room. Looks cute, but man does it ever exacerbate the din of the place.
Definitely a no for a return visit.

Bella Piati is by far, the best food available at a restaurant in this state. Hands down, the best. The gnocchi are ridiculous and unlike any you will ever have. Creamy, rich, sinful. The Mista salad with shaved fennel, greens, carrot and the most divine vinaigrette will make other salads pale in comparison. Add salmon for a really amazing meal. The eggplant rolotini are incredible– thinly sliced strips of fresh eggplant rolled around ricotta and mozzarella cheese, bathed in just the right amount of beautiful red sauce, topped with more cheese and baked… need I say more? The lemon artichoke chicken is so special, it could possibly bring tears to your eyes. I actually had to request a few slices of bread so I could essentially lick my plate clean. The artichokes are unreal, the chicken thin and delicate, the gorgeous pale yellow sauce is tart and sensual. A must if you dine here. There are always specials, and the soup is always mind-​blowing. The fresh bread they serve pre dinner is accompanied by a trio of dippers — roasted garlic in olive oil, a beautiful black olive tapenade, and a bright and sumptuous roasted red pepper butter.
Service is A+++, but not stuffy. A variety of dress codes are acceptable, and the patio is positioned on a quiet street, directly across from the Townsend making for excellent people watching. HIGHLY recommended. This is a perfect choice for a first date, an anniversary or a business lunch, but so good it will be hard to not make it a regular stop. Bella Piati is also the most likely place to spot any celebrities who happen to be in Michigan, if that’s your thing.

Last time I dined at Bella Piatti the food was tasty, small, incredibly expensive and contained some of the best desserts I’ve ever had. Fast forward to today. New owner, new chef, new focus on traditional Italian recipes.
Ate on the patio last week and the remodel (although it certainly didn’t need it) was very nicely done. Began with the sausage/​truffle tart and the raddichio gorgonzola salad. Instantly I had flashbacks to the overpriced tiny plated Bella Piatti of old. The tart, while tasty, had what appeared to be a totally smooth, pureed filling with no discernable sausage whatsoever. Tried one of the GF’s eggplant involtini and they were delicious. Salad was also comically small for a 12 dollars. At least put some more of the greens on the plate to make me feel as if I’m consuming something. Grilled pears were a great match with the gorgonzola.
Entrée I went with the veal saltimbocca. Really tasty cooking all around. GF ordered the lobster pasta. While most places would take spaghetti with a marinara sauce and throw a lobster tail on top I was hugely satisfied with the concentration of lobster flavor in the tomato sauce. Lobster was butter poached and it made for a flawless pasta dish. It was good enough for a star just on its own.
Desserts were very good but didnt match the flawless execution and though behind the previous iterration. Split the tiramisu and the white chocolate raspberry bread pudding. Bread pudding was the winner there.
Overall, the swap from contemporary to more classical Italian cooking went off without a hitch. The concerns with portion size continues but the prices are about 5% lower than the previous version. Also, Mark Wahlberg stopped by for a quick visit on the patio. He’s incredilby short.