Ristorante Pulcinella

I have been coming here for 2 years. I try and stop in every couple months. You can’t go wrong with the pizza and meatballs. I have had a couple Lukewarm dishes but all in all this is my favourite stop in Calgary for Italian food. I suggest the meatballs, calamari, Diavola pizza and tiramisu and a fresh Peroni beer on tap. These are my favs and I will keep coming back for for years to come.

My Rustica pizza was superb — not super cheesy, sloppy American style, but light on the cheese, heavy on the flavor and covered with Arugula. Loved it! For dessert we had something made with Nutella, strawberries & mascarpone between thin-​slice pizza dough, a homemade Nutella Gelato, and even a couple of Nutella lattes.
The service was great, the atmosphere fun. My choice for authentic Italian food in downtown Calgary!

Excellent service! Food was amazing! Always a pleasure coming here. Thank you for the wonderful evening.

Another stop on my brief weekend in Calgary. We were brought here for dinner by our amazing conference leaders… LOVED the neighborhood!
All of our meal was chosen for us which was completely fine by me… luckily we were able to sample what I can only imagine is EVERY single pizza that they make! Because it was prearranged, I am not familiar with the names of each pizza. But each one was delicious! One of my favorites had what I believe was a bacon/​ham of sorts and was absolute perfection! The crust is thin and crispy and the toppings and sauces are fresh and flavorful!

I think our mistake was coming here for something other then Pizza. I ordered the Gnocci and Emily ordered the Lasagna and we both left feeling rather underwhelmed. It was nice but not excellent which you would expect from the prices. I may come back again and have a pizza however as they did look good and the service was very friendly!

Atmosphere was great and very friendly. Great appies and salad. The meatball is a must with a pasta order.

Yikes! This has got to be my worst review yet for any restaurant in the city. I had high expectations based on previous reviews. We came for a girls’ night out, so at least the company was lovely.
Our server had a mediocre understanding of the menu, and had an overly casual (bordering on creepy) attitude with our group. And… it was… so slow… At least the food was great, right? At nearly $ 50 per girl (one entrée and a glass of wine each, plus shared calamari), we really ought to have stayed in instead. The gnocchi was bland and overcooked, the calamari slimy. Not fun.

Favourite place for authentic thin crust pizza, good Italian wine selection and coffee, great desserts, have to try the affegotto and saltinbocca. Pasta dishes are great as well.

The toppings were fresh and tasty, but the crust tasted like we were eating the cardboard box. The toppings were clumped off to one side, like they had been dumped on, rather than distributed around the pizza. Undercooked, damp, limp crust. They were not cut, so slicing through the damp, limp crust just ripped them rather than cut them. $ 45 for 2 GF pizzas that were like wet cardboard.

Pulcinella introduced Calgary to Neopolitan pizza over 10 years ago. The pizza here is excellent and the wine list is very deep. I usually opt for the cheap Chianti which is the perfect pizza wine. The pizzas are big for one person but small for 2 people so we usually end up ordering 2 pizzas. Highly recommend.

5 star. The service can be hit it miss sometimes, but the food quality has been fantastic everytime. Been 3x. Only had suspect service once, and the other 2 were professional, friendly and entertaining. As for the menu, if it looks good, it is. Simple as that.

My cousins and I came here for a post wedding ceremony snack. There was 4 four of us and we ordered the calamari friti, arancini and rigatoni. Well it was all very delicious cause my out of town guests were all quite happy. They also have quite high standards when it comes to food as they live in YYZ a city of fine food haven.

I was in Kensington and it was lunch time, I looked around and saw a couple signs for pubs. I looked on Unilocal to see which pub was rated higher, so I went into the pub, and found… not a pub at all. There is a sign for a pub outside, and Ristorante Pulcinella is not well marked out at all. So, I came across this Italian joint completely by mistake.
I was greeted by a lovely young woman who showed me a menu and then to my seat at the bar once I decided that this was a suitable alternative to the pub I was seeking. My server came over, answered a few questions for me, and poured a pint of Carlsberg. I saw the prominent wood fired oven in the back, and was told that pizza was there speciality, so it was a no brainer to get the Diavola pizza. Tomato sauce, mozza, parm, spicy salami and basil.
My pizza arrived quickly. A very good size, probably 12″ or so, thin crust, wood fired pizza. It looked and smelled incredible! Now, if you come here, don’t expect what North Americans have come to think pizza should be. There was a good coverage of toppings, but nothing over the top. This is how pizza is actually done, the Italian way.
First bite and I was sold, tomato! Tomato sauce that actually tastes like a tomato! Who would have thought. Fresh, bright and a little bit acidic, perfect! I got into the pizza and the crust was very tasty, crispy on the edges, but it got pretty soggy in the middle as I ate. The cheese was delicious, and the spicy salami was indeed spicy. Not blow your face off hot, but the more you ate the warmer your mouth stayed. The Carlsberg helped though. I did find the pizza a bit oily. I am not sure if it was olive oil drizzled on, or if it was the rendered fat from the salami, not complaining, but I did mention the soggy crust.
Service was good, I was not there at a busy time though. Food was very nice. I will be back.

Server had to shout the specials, it was so loud in here, despite being only ¹⁄₃ full on a Monday night. Made it really hard to catch up with buddies. Pizza is good but not the best-​in-​class for Calgary, despite the top-​in-​class price. Frankly, and I normally don’t mind a bit of char, I found my pizza crust to taste more of burnt dough than anything. There are other fancy pizza joints I enjoy more, for same price or less, where I can also hear my friends talk.

2 out of 3 ain’t bad. I ordered the gluten free base with my pizza (celiac not a choice) I was a huge disappointment. The base was extremely bland and possibly undercooked the pizza was only moderately warm. That said the toppings were delicious. Such amazing flavours. My two friends were really impressed and happy with their pizzas (normal — not gluten free)
I scooped off the toppings and ate them leaving almost ½ my base behind. The waiter noticed and asked me about my pizza. He was profusely apologetic which was lovely because it wasn’t a big deal to me.
When he came with the bill he didn’t charge for my pizza which was such a pleasant surprise. I would recommend this to everyone — maybe the base was personal taste. Service and flavour of the toppings was amazing.

I’m writing this while sitting in Pulcinella because even though I’m done my meal, my friend isn’t. My pizza was fine, but hers was pretty burnt on the underside. She complained and instead of a refund, or discount, or even an APOLOGY, she was told she could send it back to the kitchen ‘but it might take some time.’ The waiter wasn’t wrong. I was done eating about 2 minutes after her pizza came (mine was fine, good even, and I didn’t want to let it get cold while we waited for a new pizza to be sent out to her.) The waiter saw this, still no apology.
I’m really not a picky person, food wise. Denny’s is like my favourite restaurant. But Denny’s would still apologize if they burnt the shit out of your food!
UPDATE: waiter just came over and apologized and took the pizza off the bill and gave us shots that, while terrible, were a sweet gesture. Think someone read my review but still nice. Changing my star rating.
UPDATE UPDATE: changed the star rating back to 2. The waiter came over so we could pay our bill. First he asks how the free booze was. We responded, ‘Erm…what was it?’ Turns out it was some obscure moonshine thing that he described as being similar to ‘bad tequila.’ On the one hand I was offended he’d give us bad tequila as an apology drink, but on the other hand it makes sense if he read in my Unilocal review that my fav restaurant is Denny’s. Also, it gave me a pretty solid buzz. But then we paid out bills, and that’s when things really went downhill again. I tipped a normal amount but my friend, a nicer human than I, was impressed he took her pizza off her bill and put down a 20 $ for her 12 $ bill.
Now maybe I’m just cheap, but a 50% tip is pretty damn nice. Was I the waiter, I would’ve said ‘do you want some change?’ Or at the very least, ‘THANK YOU!’ (Although that would be presumptuous unto itself.) instead, buddy just runs away with her 20 $. No further comment. Like, pretty sure you only apologized in the first place because of my Unilocal review, so let’s not get all high and mighty.
Anyways, good on you if you’ve read this whole post. If you didn’t, the moral of the story is the customer service at pulcinella wasn’t phenomenal.

Delicious pizza! Good wine and great service… I have been here a couple times and in both cases I had a great experience! The service was very friendly and the food was great! From the appetizers to the desserts! They definitely deserve to have 4 stars !

Came here for an event the other night. Therefore this review will be based on that experience.
We had a variety of items to choose from already on the tables before we arrived. For an appetizer, we were provided with heaping amounts of calamari, which were already drizzled with lemon. I loved the texture of said calamari, but the coating/​batter got soggy quite quickly. The seasoning was perfect on it though, so all of us at the table finished the heaping pile quite quickly.
Unsure of what the pizzas we got were, as the server did not indicate such to us. The pizzas were brought out throughout our lecture as well. Flavours were okay, but 3 out of the 5 seemed very similar to each other, albeit there was the addition of a different type of green on top. I fell in love with one of the pizzas that had sausage on it; it was the only meat pizza we got that night, and I loved the spice that followed each bite.
Of the pizzas, we found a majority of them to be quite oily, or burned at the bottom. Not pleasant when you’re listening to a lecture and getting the sad after taste of burnt bread. As I’ve stated before, I was listening to a lecture throughout dinner. For some reason the servers decided not to cut our pizzas for us, and to provide us with a pizza cutter. We didn’t touch one of the pizzas as it was uncut, and we did not want to disturb the talk with our loud pizza cutting. Suggestion to the servers catering these events would be to provide precut portions, but also to remember to bring serving utensils (we ended up picking the pizza up with clean forks from clean settings beside us).
Please remember to treat all attendees equal as well. I would have loved to be offered wine throughout the night like other attendees at the lecture, asking for my ID isn’t that difficult to do! I was only given sparkling water sparingly throughout the night.; after having to wave down the server two times, I just gave up and waited patiently for when he walked by.
We were able to end off the night with a sweet touch though. We were provided with a nutella dessert. It resembled a nutella quesadilla cut into strips and sprinkled with powdered sugar. My sweet tooth and I loved it; but it was VERY messy to eat. We got nutella every where but our mouths.
Overall, loved the cosy environment we were seated in upstairs for the lecture. Would not mind going to other events here in the future as well.

We really love Pulicinella! It’s really a treat to have this restaurant in kensi, it’s likely the best pizza in the neighbourhood.
As Rebbeca C. mentioned, it can be loud here, but we’ve been lucky with coming at less busy times and by sitting upstairs, which seems a bit less noisy.
If you are looking for thin crust, artisanal pizza in Kensington, look no further than Pulcinella. They offer both red and white sauce pizza, and you will likely be pleased no matter which you order.
We have had a few pizzas off the menu and the crust is always outstanding. They update their menu regularly and the severs are great for guiding you in what to choose. For appetizers we’ve tried both the calamari and arancini, both were so good!
I’d recommend this place in the summer, for wine and pizza on the second floor patio.

I seen this place on TV and I got to say it is way over rated. Went in and it was dead, service was terribly slow. The pizza was alright, but nothing spectacular. I also added a few things to the pizza I chose so it wasnt even their concoction. Had my pizza not come with my tweeking it would have been terrible. I enjoyed the appetizer though, that’s about the only thing that was delicious. I also noticed a table of people come in after us and we’re served their food before, they were very chatty with the manager and their body language suggested they either frequent there alot or are friends. I don’t like being treated like a 2^nd class customer because I’m not buddy buddy with you. There wasn’t very many people and I wasn’t impressed with being served after your friends who had a larger party of people than the 2 of us.
I won’t be going back.

The worst service I have ever experienced in Canada. We got there pretty late on a Friday night, so they weren’t busy. We got seated immediately and the waitress came over, looking unimpressed, and dropped two menus on our table. No water was offered to us. We had to flag her down 10 minutes later to put our orders in, yet no water to be seen. We ordered a margherita pizza (upgraded to burrata cheese), mussels and caprese to share. Our food came out suspiciously fast — makes you wonder. At that point we finally asked for some water and proceeded to have food.
The mussels: probably the tiniest mussels I have ever seen and a relatively small serving size. Really?!
Caprese: the cheese tasted nothing like burrata. For reference sake, burrata means buttery in Italian. Well theirs tasted rubbery. And boy was it salty!!!
Margherita: the pie was over cooked and overly dry, it tasted like it has been sitting under the lamp for hours. Burrata had the same rubbery taste and the rate sauce tasted cheap.
As we were choking on that dry pizza dough and rubbery burrata, there was only one thing we were hoping would save the day — a damn glass of water !!! Nope, no such luck, we never got our water. Never.

I absolutely LOVE this restaurant. I’m obsessed with their tartufo pizza — it’s the only thing I ever order so I can’t really say much about their other food. But desert is also great, I like the saltinbocca the best. Its a great atmosphere and I love going there for birthdays or even just a normal date night. I recommend it to everyone and have never gotten negative feedback. Prompt service and great food, what more could you want?

I am Italian and I am from Montréal where there is a huge Italian community. When I moved to Calgary, I was disappointed in the Italian restaurants and gave up hope that I would find a good one. Then I tried Pulcinella! AMAZING pizza! They actually use a wood burning oven. The Italian way! The gnoccis are just perfect. If I have out of town guests, I bring them here so that they can realize that Calgary does have some hidden gems.

So the pizza was good and the service was decent. We only sat around once waiting for water refills…
But my main complaint: if you’re going to make us cut our own pizza, we need to be given non ceramic surfaces to it on. I know I’m overly sensitive on this one, but I also know I can’t be alone in this! The horrible feeling that a knife that hits directly on a ceramic plate — or whatever your plates are made of… Maybe if we were given rotary cutters it wouldn’t have been so difficult.
Having to cut my own pizza on a scratchy surface ruined my entire dinner experience. I’m glad I had good friends with me to make up for it!

So I decided to try out yet another pizza place. I had my fingers crossed that this place would turn out to have the best pizza in Calgary, but unfortunately I was left disappointed.
Upon entering the restaurant I was surprised to see how busy it was on a Thursday evening and this got me excited that maybe I had found the next best pizza and had maybe been missing out on something big by never having been here before. We waited about 10 mins for a table for 2 and were then seated in the main dining area.
The décor was interesting and had an upscale feel. Maybe a little too upscale for what I prefer but thats a personal opinion. The music was also a little too loud which made it difficult to carry on a conversation.
No complaints with the service. A menu was brought over right away and we were faced with a huge selection of pizzas to choose from. There were some other tasting sounding appies and pasta dishes but we went primarily to try the pizza.
We decided to start with the bruschetta as an appetizer and were pleasantly surprised with this start to our meal. Very tasty!
We finally decided on 2 pizzas to order; the pulcinella and the capricciosa were delivered to our table promptly. However I am sad to say that I did not discover the next best pizza in Calgary. The centre of the crust was soggy, the ingredients seemed somewhat cheap, the toppings were also a little too scarce and was just an overall disappointment. I am such a pizza lover that I will normally keep eating pizza way past the point that my stomach tells me to stop, however this pizza didn’t keep my appetite past a couple slices. We boxed up the rest and I haven’t even been intrigued enough to bother with the leftovers. Also felt this pizza was way over priced for what it was.
Id maybe come back here for appies and wine and possibly to give the pasta a shot but if I’m in the mood for pizza there are many better Neapolitan pizza options in town. I ‘ll have to give this one a pass.

Been here a few times. Pizza and apps are actually very good. Seems the service has gone downhill though.
Our server didn’t even bring us a glass of water! I’m pretty sure it takes about 2 or 3 mins to cook their pizzas. We were there for 2 hours all together! Over an hour before we got an appetizer. We sat with no drinks. We couldn’t get our bill when we wanted to go. Too bad. The food is good but lots of places have good pizza with better service!

Good classic pizza base, with a non-​watery tomato sauce and enough cheese (common Neapolitan pitfalls). But be warned that some topping combos work better than others. In particular I am a sucker for the ones with arugula on top. A bit pricier than some Neapolitan style spots in town, but with more non-​pizza options than most. My tablemates really enjoyed their pastas.
Excellent service (friendly, efficient, non-​intrusive) every time I’ve been. Recently renovated (like, last week), the restaurant is huge now that they have taken over the upstairs ex-​restaurant space as special event and weekend overflow seating. This should relieve some of the wait-​reward star penalty assigned by my fellow esteemed Unilocalers.

Our group of 6 went and had a great time last night. Wouldn’t have mattered where we went, it would have been great regardless. For our reservation we got seated upstairs, which is too bad since the air conditioning was on too high and we were all cold after a few minutes. We were hoping to sit down stairs since it was so much more warmer! After all it is October and cooler at night, so having air conditioning on is un-​necessary for dinner.
We ordered allot of different food and drink so we can all try a bit of everything.
All of our food was great except for two items. We ordered some bruschetta and the bread came out burnt and tough to eat. Ouch! They loaded it up with lots of tomatoes, maybe to make up for it being burnt or so we wouldn’t notice? We just ended up eating all the toppings and leaving the bread. The 2^nd item that wasn’t very good was the Caprese salad. It was so salty which it shouldn’t be since the salad only has three ingredients (tomatoes, mozzarella and balsamic vinegar) we noticed it had rock salt on top and allot of it which didn’t make it edible or taste great, so we just left it. Ew! We didn’t mention anything to our waiter, nor did he ask why we didn’t eat the salad or the bruschetta bread. We just let it be since we knew we had other food coming soon and was hoping for something warm and yummy to eat.
Besides those two items, we did order 3 different pizza’s to sample, some pasta and calamari to share as well. All were very good. We all drank wine and they have a pretty good selection of wine.
It would be great to see some more pizza varieties since all ethier had pork or a couple vegetarian options. Maybe something with chicken or beef for variety?
We had a great time and most of the food was pretty good. The place is decorated very well and is nice and modern. Our waiter was okay, but definitely not friendly. The girls at the front to seat you were so nice and made you feel welcome. Over-​all just a couple minor things with the food, but besides that things were good.