Albero Cafe

Best Italian food in town. Everything is home made. Pasta and bread are always fresh and delicious. Hassan is one of the best chefs in town and he’s also very personable and friendly. Best of the best.

Traveling on business. Always on the lookout for great independently owned eateries. Came on a stormy Wednesday night. Service was excellent and friendly on all points, including the owner checking in on us. Food was excellent and very well priced. Try the Italian nachos!

We went there for the second time tonight and had the most amazing meal and service. The waiter suggested a wine that was on special and we ordered it and enjoyed it immensely. My husband tried a new dish with pork and I had pasta Bolognese– both were just amazing. If you haven’t tried this place you need To go!

Dined here again last Friday evening. Busy during rush hours, but not impossible to get a seat.
Their flavors are different and exceptional. The place is a bit noisy, because everyone is having such a great time.
Calamari appetizer (best we’ve ever had), Mixed Grill with a Caesar salad, Flatbread Pizza and the Sausage w/​pene pasta + grilled chicken were all excellent!
Thanks again for helping us enjoy your food as much as our family time after another grueling week! Adam was a great server too.
Try this gem out Unilocalers, you will not be disappointed! Worth every STAR… Please note, I’m not very liberal with my stars!

Was really excited to try this place, the pictures of the food looked really delish. However, when our dishes were brought out, they were very runny (I’m wondering if the pasta wasn’t drained much?). My young son had the Alfredo, and it was so runny, he used a spoon thinking it was soup, there was no consistency to it at all. I had the bolognese, which looked yummy, but once I dug in, it too was watery – and need a LOT of salt. My husband’s spaghetti and meatballs didn’t seem as watery. However, on the positive, if you can overlook the runny, watery sauce and lack of salt, it had an authentic feel to it. The pasta noodles themselves were great, cooked nicely. The house salad was a nice size and yummy as well. Not sure if bread is supposed to be included, but with it being so runny we had to ask for some to be brought out.

OH MY GOSH! I have a new favorite Italian restaurant. The Italian Nachos were wonderful, don’t let the word «nachos» fool you. I hate Mexican nachos. The cheese lasagna has layers of eggplant in it! And so much ricotta cheese, it melts in your mouth. Food prices are reasonable BUT $ 8 for a glass of wine? That’s highway robbery.

This is the best Italian in town. Hassan, the owner, is the sweetest and always stops at our table to chat. The Italian nachos with sausage is my favorite appetizer. I’ve never had anything here that I didn’t like. And the prices are very fair for what you get. This placed is a gem.

Delicious! A perfectly fresh Italian menu with outstanding execution. My wife and I can’t wait to come back to try something new. Hassan and co. are gracious and attentive. The café is bright, clean and inviting. The more I go there, the more I believe this restaurant is a Wichita treasure. Highly recommended!

It’s nice to know there a place to go other then Olive Garden for Italian food. The taste is different delicious. The owner was so kind and generous to help contribute to the good service you can get here. I loved that you could taste the variety of flavors. Anything u order I’m sure you will love it.

Amazing food! We had it for our first time and both ordered chicken parm. and shared the calamari appatizer. We ordered take out, and it was ready fast! Was so delish, and so much I will have at least 2 more meals myself! Husband said the inside was nice and clean. We will definitely be going back often!

We come to Wichita once a year for work. Found this gem last year (2015) and eagerly awaited a dining experience for 2016. Hesitated going on a Friday night after 8 without a reservation. Parking lot was barely occupied, as well as the restaurant. Ordered the pasta with bolognese. The sauce was really bland. Had to add salt several times. Clearly the quality of food has gone down somewhat. But the peel are super nice. It’s worth a try.

This restaurant is owned by Hasan who used to run the Bella Luna on Central. He has a real talent for putting a creative touch to make the food taste great. He has a good vegetarian selection on the menu, the white bean soup was an awesome starter, the eggplant mushroom with arugula flatbread was very tasty– the crust was perfect. Never had a ribeye steak grilled the way way he does it there. Great atmosphere a service — the young man who waited on us was very attentive but not overly so — well trained as a waiter. And the wine bottle special was a very good red blend and under $ 25.

Went for lunch w/​2 others. The Italian Nachos are just weird. Tasted heavy sage in the sauce. Didn’t understand the tomato relish it was supposed to have. We also had Saltimbocca sandwich which was awesome! And a bacon bleu burger didn’t disappoint either.
The Tiramisu was delish. But we were served Italian Crème cake instead of lemon cake. Oh well, no real complaints on dessert.

First off, the atmosphere is quaint and neat! Loved that the food network was on the Big Screen. Service was exceptional and was quite quick. It wasn’t cluttered it was nice spacious seating. The menu is Great and gives lots of options! They also have a specials menu for deals and Catch of the day. The server offered and did not forget to go over specials, he also remembered to suggest salad & bread options. My food was hot and served fresh! Delicious portions and Great flavors!

Stopped in for lunch. Service was excellent, food was great. Company could have been better, but hey I got in the truck voluntarily. Ordered a «Hungry Jeff» and was very satisfied with the amount of meat I received, and the sauce was explosive. Rest of the group had eggplant Parmesan, chicken Alfredo, and Italian sausage panini. The sandwiches came with homemade chips which I highly recommend. But the next time I order something and everyone indulges off my plate, there will be blood and stumps. We will be back!!!

I love this place! Very friendly service and their pasta is sooo tasty! My favorite is the pesto. I really love how all of their food is fresh. The parmesan pieces sprinkled on the pasta are a great touch to the overall elegance of the restaurant.

Quick and effective service.
Had the Bruchetta, light. Tomatoes were a bit big cut.
Wife had the chicken parmesan. She was very pleased, said she would order again. Very rich sauce.
I ordered the spaghetti Bolognese. If the sauce for this would have had the same depth as the parmesan I would have thoroughly enjoyed it. It seemed to be quite watered down as if the pasta was not drained enough before adding to the sauce.
Bread would have been a nice accompaniment.
German chocolate cake was nice and rich.
Will return again to try the pork Cutlet and the ice ball appetizer.

not what I would call economical but overall very good. Only issues I had were of a nit picky nature and would only make me sound like a whiner. Pasta was perfectly cooked, portion reasonable, and the Cesar salad was very good with lots of cheese.
a piece of decent bread to soak up the sauce would have been a welcome addition. my plate was loaded with meat to which I was pleasantly suprising and I will defiantly be returning even if I have to take my own bread !!!

Although I proclaimed a modern Italian revolution for this city several years ago, almost all of those restaurants have withered and died. One of them was in this very building, and while its successor may not have the same passion for Italian cooking as the previous tenant, it makes up for it with the shrewd business acumen of a man who’s been managing Bela Lunas for a decade.
No review of this restaurant can go without speaking to the Italian nachos, so here goes: the fried wanton skins covered with alfredo sauce, tomatoes, banana peppers, and a heaping mound of dressed lettuce serve as an impressive display, and certainly deserves points for creativity, though this suffers from the same technical limitations of the traditional Tex-​Mex dish in its difficulty of getting everything in one bite. It almost worked better as a salad when I left the chips out of it, though I’d be lying if I didn’t say the plate was still mostly consumed by the time it was taken away.
Like at Bela Luna, the menu is chocked full of things that read technically well, but don’t inspire excitement. I spent too long wavering on what should consist of my dinner, and even now looking at the menu I’m filled with ennui. The only standout is the gramigna, if only because I have never heard of it. It proved to be a red herring: in Italian cuisine, gramigna is a type of irregular-​shaped tubular pasta that is often served with a cream sauce. Here, it’s a dish of pork tenderloin served with spaghetti in a white wine, caper, and roasted garlic sauce. Both the pork and the noodles were a little overcooked, though it erred on the right side of good enough.
The ambivalence continued with the spaghetti with meatballs. The traditional Italian-​American dish shared similarly overcooked and over-​sauced noodles, but to Albero’s credit they at least managed to toss the pasta in the sauce before serving it. The red sauce was freshly made, but too acidic, and the meatballs could have done with some browning before they went for a swim in the sauce. I’m not sure if Grandma would approve of using Italian sausage in a meatball recipe, but I’m willing to let it slide.
In what strikes me as a cost-​saving measure, my pasta was topped with both the long pieces and finely grated versions of Parmesan. I assume one of those was a little more expensive than the other. The complementary freeze and bake bread is absolutely terrible.
On paper, there’s a lot to like at Albero Café — prices are good, service is cordial, and there’s clearly an effort to present modern Italian cooking, even if it’s done in such straightforward manner as to inspire ambivalence. The menu is much more focused than Bela Luna, and in many respects the recipes are written with more tact than some other Italian restaurants, but the capabilities of the kitchen leave the execution a little lacking.

I really really wanted to like this place, and unfortunately did not. I was so excited but let down once I realized how much of the food was frozen or bagged or preservatives.
Italian nachos– good, but wouldn’t go back and order them again. Fried wonton dough covered in bland alfredo sauce, lettuce, banana peppers, and tomatoes. I really liked the bites with tomatoes but there weren’t enough. Wish the chips were more like pita chips and not wonton. Alfredo sauce kind of tastes like pepper gravy with some nacho cheese added.
House salad– tons of bagged lettuce, and incredibly spicy dressing that literally made you sweat and gave you no warning, tomatoes, olives, and banana peppers. It desperately needed something sweet and something crunchy. Preferably candied pecans and maybe some feta cheese. Also, the bowls were so full of lettuce I was getting tired of having to pick up lettuce that was dropping with every bite. Give me a bigger bowl please! Next time I am definitely trying the arugula salad.
Bread– they delivered it with the entrees which made no sense, I definitely could have used it with the salad. You can tell it’s the frozen variety and they brought little packets of butter. Would have preferred some olive oil or at least butter in a ramekin.
Fettuccine formaggio– bland bland bland sauce, boxed noodles. The only thing I enjoyed was the tang from shaved Parmesan on top but even that didn’t taste very fresh. I barely ate any of this. Also they topped it with the powdered Parmesan as well which confused me. I should have tried something with a red sauce.
Chicken lemon orzo soup– first of all, we ordered the white bean soup and they brought us the wrong one but ah well. I swear it tastes exactly like a can of Campbell’s. The orzo was mushy, the pieces of chicken tasted like canned chicken, and the broth and soup itself just tasted like chicken broth that hadn’t really fully gotten it’s flavor yet. Absolutely no lemon tasted in the soup.
One saving grace**** the BURGER
Burger d’Albero– SO GOOD, will definitely be back to just get this at the very least. The bun was toasted and the bread was actually of good quality, the carmelized onions were perfect in a balsamic reduction and the Gorgonzola and mayo concoction balanced out the burger perfectly. The meat was cooked medium rare and it was delicious and juicy. The chefs weren’t so hot at Italian but amazing at this burger which made me think that they must have been line cooks at some point.
Ambience was nice, booths were comfortable and lighting was just right and the oldies they played went well with the mood.
I had a whiskey sour called albero lemonade and it was strong and lacked sour, but with all that alcohol it was probably worth the 7 dollars. They said they had a special were import beers were only 3 dollars but still charged us 4.
All of this cost us about 58 dollars including tip. Not bad for an app, two salads, two entrees, side of soup, and drinks. But was just very disappointed with the majority.
The service was adequate and they did time the delivery of everything nicely. It was also nice that they boxed up leftovers for us and put them in a little bag. (I’m gonna try to spice up that alfredo sauce myself tomorrow.) I will be back to try more things and that burger eventually, but I was extremely let down.