Babbo bar

The food is certainly not bad, but it's a place you'd normally avoid as a local.
Primary reason is that it's quite overpriced for local standards, and you'd have better options for Italian dinner more reasonably priced around the corner.
So, it's a place usually crowded with tourists on dates.
;) Also the guy running the place is a bit weird imo, but probably depends on what you like.
What left a flavour is that you're asked to pay cash and they refuse to issue a bill.
Don't want to know where that cash flow ends up...

Owner response

In short: carefully made fresh pasta with amazing sauce.
Extensive wine list that goes from Puglia to the Trentino.
Seven or eight tables, unpretentious given the high quality of the food.
Amazing Octopus Tagliateli.
Ideal place for a date or for a get together with a small group of friends.
Don’t leave without trying the Tiramisu!

Unfortunately I’m disappointed and don‘t quite get what others who recommend and love this place have experienced here, because sadly I can‘t see why others love this place so much. More on this in the following but if you want a short explanation for my 2 stars: we paid around 180€ for 3 persons, 2 of us (me included) had to eat at home afterwards because our portions were tiny (we all had first course, main course and dessert) and for an authentic italian restaurant it was sadly on of the badder experiences I have encountered in my culinary years. But now for the long version.
I chose this restaurant because my dad was in town, we love italian food so after reading the extraordinary good reviews and seeing the nice website with a nice menu selection, I wanted to give it a try. (I worked years in restaurants and I am a big foodie, especially for my italian food, so I love to try new stuff, because why not, it‘s berlin right?) The place: We get there and it is just a brightly lit room with a big window so you can see the whole restaurant.
Because the first impression was sadly uninviting (compared to other romantic italian places in berlin) I even had to check if that is the right restaurant because the place looked nothing like the photos, but we were right. The atmosphere and ambiance was just… cold.
You walk straight into the dining area with tables scrambled together, bright lights, no candles, no nice tablecloths, just straight up cheap tables and chairs.
The chairs are unfortunately also so uncomfortable, that we wanted to go right after eating.
For every restaurant, but especially italian, I want to be comfortable.
I want to feel at home.
I want the feeling I am in Italy right now and I can sit and sit forever and just have nice hour long conversations over a bottle or two of red wine.
But all I got from there was just a reaction to stand up and go.
I‘m sorry to be so direct but I have no other way to describe it. The most sad part about it: one reason I chose the restaurant was by the way they decorated and printed their menu.
(It sounds dumb but after years of trying new restaurants you know when they put in the work for a nice menu, they will do with everything else as well). So I was flabbergasted when the waiter just lay the menu cards down, which were just flipchart boards with a old laminated printed out sheet of paper. The food: Well the food.
As stated above we ended up paying 180€ for 3 persons, which isn’t THAT much for berlin, but everytime I pay that much I get a really overall nice experience from the places.
So, as you can imagine, this place was nowhere near that. My girlfriend and I had roman artichokes as starters, my dad had porchetta with radicchio.
The artichokes were ok, but they just tasted… bland (i guess?!), my dad described as: „They lack the kick“.
The porchetta was fine. For main we had: octopus, ravioli with cod and tagliolini with calamaretti. And now it got disappointing for that price: my dad had the octopus main and he got 2 half arms.
Like maybe 100g, if even.
It tasted good, a little bit too long cooked on one side, so octopus gets rubbery.
But like the size was just a joke.
I‘m sorry to be so blunt.
This dish was 28€(!).
I had the ravioli and also here taste was ok, but they lacked a bit of everything and for about 26€ it was just to small (had like 7 ravioli) and too little kick to it.
My gf had the tagliolini, which was surprisingly a huge portion, compared to ours.
I just don‘t get their measurements of plating? Well the taste was also good but lacked something and were a bit to bitter.
I mean that‘s a dish for normally around 16-18€ and it was also like 26€. So all in all I want to say that the food was not bad or uneatable.
But we paid 180€ which is just not right for what you get.
A ok-quality food with lack of passion behind the taste and an unromantic atmosphere where you don’t want to stay hours. So my rating is 2 stars for that the food was ok and the chef was nice, but I‘m sorry.
Didn‘t get the vibe and sadly not something to visit again.