Lo Coco's

I cannot believe I have never written a review for Lo Coco's: it's been my favorite restaurant since I discovered it back in 2010? 2011?

Located on Piedmont Avenue, a lovely little street, with small tables out front and no reservation list: this always full, always smiling, always delicious establishment is always worth the wait.

The generous warm focaccia and butter starts you off, and if you feel fancy they have upgraded to different levels of wine and of course they have super fun and cute coca-cola from Italy. My favorite dish, and I STAND BY THIS, is the penne pasta with sugo and peas- IT HAS NOT DISAPPOINTED ME ONCE IN OVER A DECADE.

Go try it out for yourself and tell me what you think.

My friend and I stumbled on this place on Saturday night as we were trying to find a place to eat. The restaurant was packed so we waited outside for a few minutes while a table opened up. During that time, we were offered some drinks while we waited, and Joseph came out to walk us through the menu.

The wait was really quick, and we were sat inside. While we were deciding on what we'd have, Joseph literally walked by with different dishes and told us what each of them was so we could see them before ordering.

We over ordered. Like, a lot! But we wanted to try all the things and figured left overs were not the worst thing.
*Burrata - delicious!
*Half smoked salmon, half artichoke pizza - these were so good! Would absolutely recommend, and my favorite out of the two was the smoked salmon.
*Eggplant parmesan - my friend loved this (I thought it was fine personally)
*Linguine with clams - delicious
*Tiramisu - really loved this
*Cannoli - I preferred the tiramisu, though my friend loved this.

Overall, absolutely loved the meal and would come back! The service was absolutely lovely on every level! Joseph was great, as were the other servers. Can't wait to come back and try more things!

The food was amazing and even though the space is small they try to get everyone in as soon as a table becomes available. The staff was very nice and it's not too hard finding parking around there. I will definitely be back to try their pizza. We waited about 20 mins to get seated on a busy Saturday night around 7:15.

Lo Coco and I go back a ways. I mean way, way back as I used to live two minutes away and would get their delicious pizzas quite often when calories didn't mean a thing to me. I had not been back in ages, but Jamie W. and I found ourselves strolling on Piedmont Avenue from the Mountain View Cemetery. I saw this spot and immediately flashed back to my pizza-saturated youth.

I convinced Jamie we should dine here. Although their pizza menu was as robust as ever, we redirected our attention to the alluring pasta dishes they offer. Jamie went for the $20 Penne alla Puttanesca, one of his home kitchen favorites thanks to our friend, Italiano master Linda. It was quite tasty and chock full of black olives though the sauce was a tad watery (photo: https://bit.ly/3Dk8Sdj).

I ordered a house special, the $26 Pappardelle Bolognese, which was rich and meaty over the flat noodles I really like (photo: https://bit.ly/3HwmN2v). There was a lot of grated parmesan cheese to go around, but the scene stealer was likely the complimentary Foccacia which was soft and chewy (photo: https://bit.ly/3HARC6j). It reminded me of all those pizzas from the days of yore.

FOOD - 4 stars...the pasta plates are as delish as the pizzas
AMBIANCE - 3.5 stars...a bit packed in
SERVICE - 4.5 stars...still as friendly as ever
TOTAL - 4 stars...nice to see you again, Lo Coco

RELATED - Exploring Piedmont Avenue? Here's a collection of places I've visited and reviewed: http://bit.ly/2I0RAHj

We've been coming here since Maria opened. Went last evening....I don't know where Maria is....If she sold the place, good for her, she worked her butt off for years with pride and love.
Who ever is making the bread and pizzas, follow the Lo Coco recipe if you're going to keep the name. It was not even close, almost inedible and not a speck of olive oil on anything.
The salad looked amazing but, tasted like it'd been in the plastic container way too long without getting a fresh rinse. Please rinse it at least. Dressing was not flavorful enough to cover it up. I know it comes from a bag but do something to help me pretend it's not.

SO - my partner and i have been coming here for decades. fantastic spot. but a recent interaction sealed the absolute deal of it being an AMAZING place.

i lost my edc here months ago. little KISS folding knife. i was so sad, and called in and talked to kat. took my info. we bonded over our similar names and numbers.

well, i went back with my SO for the silly heart day today, and just happened to stop maria and asked her about the knife. she came out a minute later WITH IT IN HAND.

absolutely made my lunar new year. thanks so much to the entire crew. now it's not just my fav italian joint, but just my fav in general.

THANK YOU LO COCO'S

EDIT: i just assume everyone knows how amazing their food is, so i'm not going to bother with that. but for the record, it's all incredible. always.

Came in for the Sunday dinner service. The wait time was longer than usual and it was pretty full the entire time. The food was amazing as always and it was very cozy.

Lo Coco's has great food, ambiance and service. I liked that they have very affordable wines, both by the bottle and glass. Our server was very knowledgeable about food and wine and was very professional, we were really impressed with her (I can't remember her name unfortunately but she had long brown hair in a ponytail).

The food was absolutely excellent. I ordered the Tortelli con Panna (large tortellini in alfredo) and my fiancé ordered spaghetti and meatballs. Everything was very evidently homemade, using top quality ingredients. This is how Italian food should be made.

The quality makes up for the quantity of food here. If you are super hungry though, as we were, you should definitely order an appetizer. We only ordered the two pasta dishes and were still hungry. TBH I could have easily eaten two orders of the tortelli. NGL that I probably could have eaten 3 orders lol. It came with about 8 tortelli and they brought my plate before my fiancé's, but we were sharing so it worked out, but we finished the tortelli before they even brought the spaghetti lol. It was absolutely delicious and we were sad when it was quickly gone. Unfortunately they were getting ready to close at this point so we couldn't order more, but our really kind server went and got us an order of 2 more meatballs on the house to apologize that the kitchen couldn't make us anything else, which was totally unexpected and unnecessary but super super over the top kind.

10/10 will definitely return and order a lot more food haha.

One of the best East Bay Italian restaurants that's been around forever. Awesome service and pesto pizza. Amazing wine list too. Well worth the wait since they don't take reservations. And for dessert, Fenton's Creamery is just a few footsteps away!

I don't get the bad reviews at all.. the food is absolutely delicious, the staff is incredibly kind and we've never had a long wait. We were actually their first dine in guest when they re-opened dining at the restaurant after Covid. We've come back so much because we absolutely love the food and environment.

Guytano (I might be spelling it wrong) always remembers me and my boyfriend when we come in and makes us feel at home.

I love all their dishes, we've had almost every salad, 7 different pizzas and a handful of their pastas. There's not one thing bad thing I could say about this place.