Gallo Nero

Went here while I was visiting Portland and had a great experience. The tomato bruschetta was excellent! I got the steak dish and it was cooked to a perfect medium rare. I also don’t eat dairy, which is usually difficult for Italian restaurants to understand, but the waitress was very accommodating and made sure that my meal was dairy-​free.

Did I end up at a different restaurant then everyone else or was I cursed? I have been told by friends this place is amazing and the reviews were amazing so I was quite excited to eat here. We arrived to some of the most friendly waitstaff which is always exciting. The restaurant is gorgeous and all tables were reserved (good sign!). A live guitarist started up and was heaven — perfect tone… even the lighting was wonderful! We both got tasty glasses of wine from a nice selection and the menu… 4 course meal for $ 35? WOW… and I was salivating reading it.
My first course… potato and leek soup, a bit heavy on pepper but pretty good. I was very excited by the second course which was a scallop on a bed of arugula with pink peppercorns, garlic and cognac. This was alright but honestly I would have preferred more of the roasted garlic and less of the peppercorns. The scallop was just barely cooked and could have done well with a few more seconds cook.
The third course was spaghetti sauteed with garlic, cherry tomatoes, mussels, clams, shrimp, squid and white wine. I have A LOT to say about this course. The pasta was under cooked — I appreciate al dente, however, this was not cooked and the sauce had zero flavor until I was PUNCHED in the throat with pepper. I drank half a glass of wine to cleanse my palette and began trying the proteins. Mistake… Mussel número uno, overcooked… clam, overcooked… squid chewy and tasted very strongly fishy… and then the large shrimp which was unpeeled. Dissecting my dinner is unfortunate but when you overcook the shrimp so badly the shell won’t release, well, now I am getting angry trying to pry the shrimp from its casing and getting covered in sauce. And, why is all the garlic unpeeled? No wonder the sauce has no flavor — but who eats unpeeled garlic? Better question, who serves unpeeled garlic. The answer is this restaurant since 3 of my 4 courses contained it.
At this point I was praying my swordfish was good. It looked good and smelled amazing! On a gorgeous bed of herbed roasted vegetables. I try a piece of cauliflower. Amazing… oh thank heavens. And then a bite of swordfish which tasted great until BAM BAM PEPPER! SERIOUSLY… STOP WITH THE PEPPER! And then I noticed my fish was rare to the point where it was nearly raw and I just stop eating.
My husband had a three pasta sampler. I tried each… the tortellini was not bad. The other two was a severely overcooked pasta with a decent sauce and the other was perfect and amazing pasta with a tomato sauce that had a tart odd flavor. My husband said he could not taste my food or his due to the heavy garlic flavor he got attacked with upon his first bite.
My desert was pretty good thankfully but my husband got a lemon tart that had zero lemon flavor leaving us very confused… how do you eliminate the taste of lemon? I don’t know whether to be afraid or impressed honestly.

Excellent service and even better pasta If that’s possible. The fish stew is so fresh and plentiful. Loved finding some very tender calamari in the mix. If you like kale try the Kale salad. Excellent Chianti selection.
Highly recommend

Great little Italian restaurant in the heart of Portland. The fares are simple but very tasty and the prices are very reasonable. Give it a try!

We were really looking forward to enjoying Gallo Nero, but the waitstaff was disorganized, the attitude was pretentious and the wife’s pork was tough enough to be used for the bottom of her shoes. Actually it was only enough for one shoe. Tiny portion. I fared much better with my chicken, which was quite good.
If not for the attitude, we would go back and give it a second try, but we are moving on and hope they get their act together.

Kale and pear salad.
Following with 09 Gattinara,
Pasta pear stuffed w/​peppercorn ravioli.
A must.

I started off our dinner by making a reservation effortlessly online the day before. having looked through their Unilocal pics before making the reservation, needless to say I was excited.
I arrived early, alone, waiting for my party of 4 to join me. I walked in and just let them know I was there, and was greeted with a «I’ll deal with you later» look. Which fine, I get you have a busy restaurant. So busy that there really isn’t an area for people to wait, I felt bad I was standing either in their way, feeling like I was going to get run over by how fast they were walking, or standing in a couple’s table intruding on their dinner. :/​After waiting about 7 minutes, I was greeted with a warm welcome by the host (same lady that gave me the look) and she came with a much better attitude :) She said they were clearing the table and I told them to take their time because I still had to wait for my party.
They sat me and let me wait for my party at the table with no pressure or rude looks at all. Our waitress helped me pick out a wonderful glass of wine from a very very long list! Once my party arrived, we have a wonderful time. Food came relatively quickly and we got checked on a good amount of times.
The food? SO GOOD. I got the special salmon pasta and it was amazing. I heard great things about the ravioli and halibut as well. So great we had zero left overs. Their Tiramisu? So light, fluffy, and melts in your mouth! MM I would love a piece right now. I have their gelato and that was delicious too! Warning: «Sweet cream» is very sweet!
The only downside is that it is a little pricey for the amount of food you get. For how much we paid, we were very happy with the quality, but not very happy with the quantity. We ended up going out for food about an hour later.

Dined for the first time and enjoyed our overall experience. It’s a relaxing, refined restaurant that provided very nice service, flavorful food and all for a fair price. They are priced in a sweet spot, between nice but just an occasional treat, to I’d like to go several times a month.
Food was above average Italian for Portland and worth the visit. Thanks!

What a cute little place! We tried Gallo Nero on a recent Saturday and it was delightful. Our server was spot on with everything, no small feat as he was juggling a lot of tables including a party of 10. The food was excellent — I started with the insalata di cavolo (kale, walnuts and pears — light and simple) then had a duo of pastas (the pici and pasta e fagioli). I loved that you could sample any two pastas, from a diverse list of eight choices, for just $ 15. My husband had their soup special, minestrone — one of his favorites — then followed with the strascicata. Everything was fresh and had that homemade taste and texture. If I had been a bit more hungry, their $ 35 tasting menu sounded awesome — the minestrone, a scallops appetizer, a pasta with salmon, and seared halibut (or a Painted Hills steak entrée, but the halibut would have been my choice).
The menu is large with lots of choices beginning with appetizers and ending with desserts, and the wine list is exclusively Italian with many by-​the-​glass choices. Prices are reasonable considering the quality, and the portion sizes were perfect for me (I am not a huge eater so others may find them a tad small). The space is cozy and the tables a little close together, but I didn’t feel «space-​invaded» by my neighbors. I would definitely return!

I rated «Meh. I’ve experienced better», because we have, that’s why we always came back. We’ve been to Gallo Nero a number of times, and each time fantastic. This was our Go To Italian restaurant. Tonight the food was off and dull and the waiter lost interest in serving our table as he mingled in the front as the evening went on. The parties next to us were well taken care of. The waiter next to us helped us; however, when we reached out to even the bus staff they blew us off. We thought wow, ok… We still left a good tip; because, that’s how we roll. In the end we are rolling on. Farewell Gallo Nero!

This place it’s awesome first, my first time here and my wife and love it, really good food and our waitress Britney was really nice definitely coming back!

The first thing you hear walking into Gallo Nero is Italian. For somebody who goes to Italy often, it was almost surreal to find a place like this in Portland, OR.
The food was authentic — fresh, rich, flavorful and well-​presented. First time I’ve seen Pici (a homemade pasta, served with pecorino and pancetta) in the U.S. An excellent meal. Incredible value for the money — I have often paid over twice as much for Italian half this good. I ordered a fish special (Branzino — seabass) which was perfectly cooked and spiced but not to the extent where it overpowered the fish.
Highly, highly recommend. Best Italian ever.

I’ll start by saying the service was great and the atmosphere as well. I was so excited to try this place but was pretty disappointed. Despite a delicious, yet very small, salad 4 out of 5 people at our table had very undercooked pasta, crunchy almost. For the price the portions should have been bigger AND what Italian restaurant does not serve bread? I left hungry and out quite a bit of $$ but our server was great, friendly, and entertaining.

Used to be very good — one table in house, ten minutes for two glasses of wine, loud 80’s rock music and employees four of them goofing off behind the bar. The staff having fun was loud enough that we could not hear each other talk. I asked the waitress if they had bread and she said «we only serve it when you ask it is our new policy and we run out of it a lot». During our dinner two friends of the staff arrived and sat outside and bantered with the waitress in a very crud manner.
We won’t go back the last two experiences have been similar, too bad they quit being a great little
Italian restaurant.

This is real Tuscan cooking. I found some negative reviews but dismissed them and I’m glad I did. It was clearly a matter of they don’t get it.
This is a neighborhood spot. By definition not a five star. But in that category you could ask for nothing more.
Great wine selection. Incredible home made pasta. Assorted protein choices. A lemon desert to die for. Friendly service. And very reasonably priced.
I had the tasting menu. Everything was delicious. Go.

I usually don’t write bad reviews
But in this case I have to make an exception
And I’m not the only one
I don’t know if it was the clam or the beef

Having lived in Tuscany, I can verify that this is a very authentic Tuscan Trattoria.
This is hands down my favorite Italian restaurant to go to whether it be just for a glass of wine while learning a lesson about Italian wines or for the delicious food.

When we were in Tuscany earlier this year we ate at a restaurant called Gallo Nero. Which literally means black cock, beeteedubs. But before you think what you’re thinking, it’s the symbol for the region and is on all those legit bottles of Chianti you know and love. As it turns out, the owner is from Greve, and knows the restaurant well, but there’s no formal connection between the two.
Anyway, the restaurant itself is charming, and the service was generally fine. A bit slow, but hey, we’re on Italian time. The bruschetta Americana was fine if unimpressive, my radicchio salad was far too bitter. I ordered the penne with prosciutto and arugula which was rich and flavorful, but the pasta was sadly not what I expected. My mom-​in-​law enjoyed her dish, and the pasta did seem freshly made on that dish. My husband’s pork had fine flavor but they were three small medallions.
This is a tough town to be in the Italian food business. It’s not that it was bad at all, there’s just so much competition. If I were in the area I’d go back for lunch, the pricing is a bit high for dinner.

Enjoyed a late lunch in the Pearl. Excellent and quick service. Enjoyed Bruchetta with toms, sauté sole over fresh spinach. Delicious!

Eek! Methings not.
I cannot believe it. This is my first 1-​star review out of my current 47 reviews. I want to preface this review by saying I truly hope that we went on a bad night. I wanted to like this place but I cannot give this even a «Meh.»
Gallo Nero gets one star for hitting the trifecta: 1. Bad service 2. Bad food 3. Bad value for money. Here’s a summary:
1. Service: Slow and inattentive and underdressed. I get that this is Portland but if the least expensive bottle of wine on your list is $ 35 and your entrees start at $ 15, at least put on some dress shoes. The only time we saw our waiter was when another course was ready. No offering to refill our wine glasses no checking to see if we were okay. It was 30 minutes between each course, we timed it. I would NOT have minded the wait but we were not offered bread and our soup, first course, did not come out for 15 minutes after we ordered it. Weird entry with no official host stand and they only seated 7 tables. The empty tables were not even set up so it just looked like a half busy restaurant. We were pointed to our table, not brought. It was a little loud and the air conditioning kept going on and off and the room would get really stuffy and then would be okay.
2. Food: We both ordered the four course set meal and we left hungry. Three courses had fish, the fourth was soup.
Soup — Minestrone that got all its flavor from the oil that was pooling at the top. Desperately needed pepper and something more substantial. I had one bean. One. Half bowl of soup.
Scallop — Cooked PERFECTLY but the seasoning was off! It fell flat and then got bitter. It was weird. One scallop.
Spaghetti — Undercooked, and yes, I know it was supposed to be Al Dente, but when the pasta is so dry you probably needed to cook it a little longer or add a sauce. It was also weirdly spicy and it overpowered the seafood on it. As for the seafood, the squid was beyond overcooked and tasted like a tire, I did not eat it. The octopus met the same horrible fate. Mussels and clams were okay. Small serving.
Fish: Had bones! I was not warned and was not given an deboning fork! Luckily I saw them as soon as I picked it up. It was also PERFECTLY cooked but the seasoning was off! The olives on the plate had the best and most flavor of anything that night. Small serving.
Wine: Good!
3. Price: The servings were SO small. I understand that the set course is designed to save the restaurant money but It should still feel like I was getting enough food. We had the four course meal and we left starving.
I would not recommend. This place would also not be good for children.