Il Castello

Absolutely the worst service my family and I have ever encountered! After a long day of water rafting my family and I were looking for the closest place to get some pizza and unfortunately Barryville doesn’t have many options this was it. The last time I checked, this restaurant was located in New York, in the year 2015 so I just cannot fathom the level of racism and unprofessionalism that my family and I experienced here. It left an absolutely bitter taste in all of our mouths. If we did not have young kids with us that were starving, we would have just walked out and left. As soon as we walked into the restaurant, we were barely greeted and just stared at by the other patrons. The restaurant was divided into two sections, with one being the dining room and another separate room for people waiting for take out orders. Despite the dining room having plenty of space, we were ushered over to the smaller, waiting room. We brushed that off but then our waiter didn’t come back to even check on us for at least 30 minutes. When the waiter finally came to take our order he rushed us. Food took forever to finally come out and when it finally did, it was nothing but mediocre. Lucky for them, they seem to be the only pizza place in the area which is why they have patrons. Absolutely horrendous place!

As a local I consider myself VERY lucky to have Pizza Pete so close to home. Always an excellent pie! And very friendly service. Thanks for doing what you do so well

Barryville is not a hot bed of culinary options, to say the least. We came into town to go camping and were soon amazed by the fact that the local grocery store closed at 7pm and we had brought no food for dinner. We followed the smell of delicious pizza and found this place. There were several carry out specials and we chose one with wings/​pizza to take back to our campsite. There seemed to be a steady stream of people who were also ordering pizza that night, so it seems to be a local favorite. After waiting about 15 minutes, our pizzas were finally ready. We got one large cheese, one large pepperoni, 20 wings, and a soda for just under $ 40, not too bad. I only tasted the pepperoni pizza, which was quite large and very heavy with toppings. It was pretty much your average pizza. However, it was good and hit the spot after a day of traveling to get to this location.

Mother Nature couldn’t have picked a better place for our car to break down late on a stormy eve. We quickly forgot about our dilemma — stuck in a cell reception void in the darkened woods — after entering the aromatic surroundings.
Hailing from Philly, and having a pretty good sense of the local culinary highlights, I was shocked that a place like this had been kept from my radar for so long. I blame the in-​laws for keeping me from this dough, this sauce, this four-​cheese masterpiece of pizza.
And the staff couldn’t have been friendlier for these broken spirits.

For a group of 9 guys hungry after a full day of camping and tubing at nearby Kitattiny campgrounds, we decided to stop by this place for dinner on a Sunday around 5 o’clock. It started to get busy only halfway through our meal, but the atmosphere was very calm and the décor was rustic Italian.
We ordered appetizers (four orders of garlic knots, fried jalapeño cheese ravioli, calamari, and a large salad) and three large pizzas (pesto, grandma, and buffalo chicken), and everything was delicious. The garlic knots were decent and I didn’t try the salad. The calamari seemed a little tough, and the fried jalapeño ravioli, as good as it sounded, was a little underwhelming (more like breaded and fried cheese ravioli with some jalapeño bits in them).
However, the pizzas were delicious. The buffalo chicken pizza came out first, and we each devoured a slice (for those of you counting at home, one person was a vegetarian so it was exactly 8 slices for 8 people). There were little pools of buffalo chicken oil that weren’t overly greasy at all, it just enhanced the flavors. The pesto pizza could have had more veggies but the bread tasted of the perfect amount of butter. Lastly, the grandma pizza (contains anchovies) had just enough toppings not to be too salty (as anchovies can do).
This place was as good as it gets! (or as good as I expected to get in a town that seemingly had a population of 1000)

After camping for the weekend and realizing we had ran out of food, we decided to drive around a bit and try to find some food. When we found a pizza place we were not expecting anything special, given the area we were in, but this place does make some pretty good food. One of my friends ordered the chicken ceasar pizza, which I never thought I would eat, but it was quite delicious. I have already started searching back home to find another place that can hopefully make something similar. We ordered a margherita pizza too and I was more disappointed in that. They used shredded cheese and it had pretty small pieces of basil. Still, if anybody is in the area looking for food I would definitely recommend this place.

This place is actually quite nice inside, not the typical booth style pizzeria. Think casual rustic Italian. Excellent, hefty pizza and an amazing Stromboli loaded with Italian meats and peppers and onions. Other entrees are pretty good as well but have ordered pizza 9 times out of 10. There is a decent salad bar too.

Il Castello delivers high quality food in hearty portions. I had the chicken Francese and Shrimp Parmigiana which were both outstanding. This is a family restaurant with modest and casual décor.

For people not familiar with the westernmost end of Sullivan county, Barryville is halfway between Port Jervis and Callicoon. There are numerous small towns along the Upper Delaware river. Barryville is an odd one. Located at an important intersection of Route 97 and Route 55, and at a bridge connecting PA and NY, Barryville flanks both sides of Route 97, lacking the traditional downtown or town square so prevalent in Catskill communities. Because of that, it’s hard to get a bead on the town’s spirit, which is there, but you have to know where to go. It is small by even Sullivan county standards, but has become a hotbed of activity for second homeowners, artists and patrons of the arts from northern NJ and NYC.
Il Castello is not going to set the world on fire for its cuisine, but it provides a sorely needed dining option in an area where not only are places few and far between, they are also usually pretty mediocre. Traditional red-​sauce Italian specialties are offered alongside pretty darn good pizza, which they churn out like speed demons on weekends. Whatever you do, don’t come on Friday night when you get up here for the weekend. It’s one of the few affordable, tasty and casual restaurants in the area, and people line up three deep at the counter to place takeout orders or to pick up the ones they phoned in. There are bears up here… no, they don’t deliver.
The calzones are particularly good, with most eggplant dishes up there as well. Pizza is hot, fresh and very well done. They are great at accomodating kids, and have a huge beer selection with some nice surprises. Steamed broccoli comes with a ton of garlic. Yum.
I want to emphasize the remoteness of this location. This is the country. Not the suburbs. The country. The fact that a pizzeria of this caliber exists here at all, much less is this good, is a real blessing.