Daniel C.
Yelp
Drove by several weeks ago, and was pleasantly surprised to see Partenope opening another location outside of downtown Dallas. I hate going downtown because of the parking.
This choice of location is definitely unusual - so it remains to be seen how successful a Neapolitan pizza restaurant with Dallas prices will be surrounded in a neighborhood of primarily boba tea and Asian strip mall cuisine in Richardson.
That being said, I really enjoyed their Dallas location and was excited to try this one. We really need more (good) Neapolitan pizza in DFW.
I enjoy soft openings, because they are hopefully bringing their A-game to the table. I am pretty sure I saw Dino there training the other pizzaiolos. Overall the experience was good, but a little bit disappointing.
First off, the ambiance is nice, despite the strong visual clash if you happen to glance outside the windows (or, are seated facing one). Inside, it feels like an upscale Italian restaurant, and is way less stuffy than the Dallas location thankfully. The host was great and there were a bevy of staff standing around when we came in.
We came primarily for the pizza, and it was good, but not great. The appetizers were pretty good as was the salad and dessert, but the pizza was a little disappointing. It just felt like they were off their game.... maybe breaking in the new oven, or the batch of dough hadn't quite fermented.
You can also barely fit a single pizza on their 2-top table, so it was a bit of a struggle to find space when we ordered two. I wish they would have seated us at a larger table, given that we went early, but we managed without extra plates.
The service was more than a little overbearing, though I hope that will clear up as they work the kinks out. They also brought over a tablet to pay, before we finished eating, which just kind of rushed the whole experience.
Lastly, and this is also nit-picky, but in an era where restaurants (and other places) are trying to covertly demand larger and larger tips with these prefilled buttons and the general population doesn't understand math -- the tip percentages should *not* be inclusive of the tax.