Babbo’s Original Mediterranean Bistro

We’ve been eating at Babbo’s for years. The food is consistently great, and the staff is wonderful.
The Tuscan soup is vegetarian and the dollop of Pesto brings all the flavors together. A bowl of this soup and splitting a pizza is our favorite meal when shopping at Stanford.
We do sometimes go off script and try other things. I’ve never been anything less than delighted. I’ll often order a lamb panini or other lamb dish.
At to finish your experience, go for the lightest, tastiest bread pudding you’ve raved had.

Browsing through the reviews, it looks like there’s a common critique: they’re pricey (esp for lunch). I admit that was the first thing I thought when I sat down and opened their menu. It’s very smart of them not to display their menu outside since I can see people being steered away by their prices. I’m giving them 4 stars because I don’t mind paying a little more for a good meal and considering they’re located in Stanford mall in Palo Alto, I’m sure the rent isn’t cheap either, so the costs has to come from somewhere right?
Pizza Babbo ($ 14.95): 3 stars. This is their mediterranean special. It has feta cheese, oven roasted tomatoes, mozzarella, pesto, black olives. I thought the black olives were a little over powering and a bit on the bitter side. The bread tasted very fresh though. Nothing majorly special about this dish.
Pasta Bolognese (I forget the price, but I believe it was around $ 16): 5 stars. I absolutely loved this dish. My husband liked the pizza better. Obviously we have different tastes. I like ordering pasta bolognese from restaurants because its a safe dish to order and many places don’t mess it up. It usually tastes good everywhere. My expectation was that it’d be really meaty with a hearty red tomato taste to it. To my surprise, they made it differently. It still had a tomato taste to it, but it was sweeter and had a tangy taste to it. The coloring was also not completely red, but a flamed red. I couldn’t really figure out what else they added to it, but it almost tasted and looked like they added a little alfredo sauce to it or something. All I know was that it tasted really good. It was over penne pasta, different than the usual spaghetti. It also had flavorful chunks of beef and diced tomatoes. This dish came with (what tasted like) in house made focaccia bread. We couldn’t finish this dish and I heated it up the next day for lunch and it still tasted amazing. I’d totally come back for this dish and have it all to myself :)
Pretty good service. The waiter packed me an extra three pieces of focaccia bread with my left over pasta :)

My mom and I were finishing up a big late nigth Stanford shopping trip and pretty darn hungry! Twas a cold, rainy, and late night, and I was in the mood for a warm bowl of soup. We headed to Max’s which had no vegetarian soups. We saw Babbo’s was open, and I looked at the menu and immediately saw a vegetarian soup.
Story: (If you would like to skip the story then skip this part). Well this seemed to be an Italian restaurant with pizza and foccacia sandwiches, and I clearly remember it being Italian. But, I saw the word Mediterranean on the menu and was thoroughly confused. In no way is this a Mediterranean restaurant. So we were sitting there ready to order and by now I was very ambivalent to be eating clearly Italian food at a Mediterranean restaurant…
Food: I ordered the vegetarian soup with pesto and foccaccia. The soup was in a tasty tomato broth chocked full with fresh vegetables. It was very satiating. My mom ordered the eggplant, red pepper and goat cheese sandwich (minus the goat cheese). The bread was freshly toasted and the eggplant and red pepper had a wonderful charry grilled flavor. There was also a small salad in the middle. The food was extremely high quality and my mom said the sandwich reminded her of being in Italy. The food quality was definitely a high four stars and maybe even five.
Reason for docking two stars:
Price: HOLY MACKERAL. 17 bucks for a sandwich. That’s a joke. 9 bucks for soup. That is also a joke.
Service: I actually read the reviews on Unilocal post dinner, and it seems others noticed the lack of service. Unlike others, we were never offered bread until we were 70% finished with our meal. Also, I asked about the eggplant-​zuchine provencal, under the vegetarian section of the menu, and the waiter said it was simmered in… chicken broth? Okay, then why is it under the VEGETARIAN section of the menu? Either they don’t make this dish correctly or the waiter has no clue what he is talking about. There were about four parties in the small restaurant at pretty late at night, but I saw a man at another table raise his hand to get the distracted waiter’s attention. Our waiter did visit the table a couple times to ask how the meal was and take away our plates, but he was just seemingly forgetful. Not the type of service you would expect when purchasing a seventeen dollar sandwich.
But, it was a relaxing dinner and the food was good. So, it’s really your choice about what you are willing to pay. We were pretty high on the hunger scale and not that many restaurants were open that had any veggie soup so as economics states, the economic benefits outweighed the costs.

I needed a break from the hospital food at Stanford Hospital. So I walked over here and I ordered the sole special, but they were out of sole so they substituted with snapper. The snapper had a nice bit of crunch from being expertly broiled. On the menu, the fish is described as being served on a bed of spinach with potato. It was more of a sprinkling of spinach, but otherwise the dish itself was fine.
Service was a little bit slow, but the food was good.

I ate here once with my mom about a year ago, and we decided to return with my family and boyfriend for Sunday lunch. Most AWKWARD experience
Everything is very overpriced (around $ 20 for a pasta dish and $ 15 for two tiny crab cakes, etc.), although some dishes are pretty tasty. The crab cakes and the creamy orange sauce are delicious. The fish entrees are also very good (the sauces are very flavorful). The pasta… is alright. I like how it’s cooked nicely al dente, but the broths could use a LOT more flavor.
One of the things I remembered from last time was the complimentary focaccia bread being quite good — and it still is — although today it was STALE which was disappointing.
The owner… is extremely bizarre and I’m not quite sure what his intentions are, but he just comes off as excessively disrespectful.
First, while we were waiting for our food, my dad got a call from my aunt on his cell and had a short conversation on the phone. The owner walked by during the call and said «he’s just like a teenager!» — uh ok.
When our food arrived, my boyfriend started to put some black pepper on his pasta from the pepper shaker on the table. The owner walked over, TOOK the pepper out of his hand, and said «we don’t do that here, these [the salt and pepper shakers] are for decoration only.» Later when my boyfriend asked for a box to take the rest of his pasta home, the owner was like «you want a BOX…» starts laughing mockingly…“was that your second pasta?“
Everything that came out of his mouth was beyond rude and it was borderline funny because it was just so unbelievable! He succeeded in making us just want to get the eff out of there as soon as possible away from his cray cray ass.
And why does he come over to the table and just STAND there staring at everyone for stretches of time without saying anything and then walking away…

My friend and I decided to stop into Babbo’s before hitting the road back home. A pricey establishment hiding behind a little café veneer. There wasn’t a menu posted (which is very strategic of them), so we figured we’d go in and grab a few slices of pizza and a salad. When I opened the menu, I was rather surprised by the high prices for such a no-​frills place. Sandwiches were around $ 16 and entrees were upwards of $ 20. I’m aware that it is located at the Stanford Shopping Center but I receive a better overall experience at Pizza My Heart, which is a cheap in-​and-​out pizza joint.
My Margherita Pizza was pretty good. Served nice and hot from their wood-​fired oven with a host of flavors. My friend had the Eggplant & Goat Cheese Sandwich. The eggplant was a little bitter but brightened up with hunks of creamy goat cheese. Portions are decent — she had enough to take half of her sandwich home. While all the food was pretty good, $ 50 for a pizza and a sandwich (with water) wasn’t quite what we had in mind.
Our server was a nice older man but he couldn’t keep pace with the volume of restaurant patrons (which was three tables btw). Suffice it to say, his presense was very scarce.
I’m not saying I’ll never go back in but I’m not really jumping to return.