Pio Pio

After promising my brother that I would take him, I finally took him this weekend (10 months after I made that promise ;)

When you go to this location, you gotta be careful to find the right one. There are actually two Pio Pio restaurants there. One is on the corner but it's more of a take out restaurant. There are about 5 or so tables? The main one (pic above) is the main restaurant.

The inside is pretty dark. I'm not sure if they renovated recently (past few years) but the place is pretty nice. Lots of tables. There is also an outside patio.

 Cute chicken ;)

Ahh...the green sauce...This has got to be the best reason to come here. I mean, the chicken is good but the green sauce makes the place stand out.

Sangria (White Wine)

Ordered a pitcher of Sangria. Waiter recommended white wine so we went with that. This wasn't bad. I liked it a lot actually. I've recently ordered quite a few glasses of sangria lately and they all sucked. I was starting to think it wasn't my thing. I guess I've just been ordering it from the wrong places.

I was the driver so I only got to enjoy half a glass of it :(

Papa a la Huancaina

Underneath all that yellow sauce is sliced potato (that was baked/steamed?). I can't describe (or remembered) what the yellow sauce was like. Overall though, this was alright. I wouldn't ordered it again though. Too boring for me.

Calamar Frito

Calamari was pretty good. The sauce however, was lacking. It's not your typical marinara sauce. I think it had a hint of some sort of yogurt base. It needed was some spice. I didn't bother asking for tabasco sauce because I figured they didn't have it. It would have been so much better if there was though.

Maduros

 Ah...sweet plantains. So yummy ;)

Avocado Salad

This was given to us by mistake. They gave us this instead of the rice and beans we ordered. Took a pic before they switched it out.

Rice and Beans

You know what I hate? I hate it when restaurants give you too much rice and not enough beans. I hate it when it's not proportional. That was the case here. I had tons of rice leftover. Luckily, it was full so I didn't need to eat anymore.

This was your typical rice and beans. Nothing special. (Pic is deceiving. It looks like there was a lot of beans but it was mainly liquid). 

One Whole Chicken

The main event...We were so hungry, we digged in right away. After a few pieces went missing, I remembered to take the pic ;)

Chicken was good. It was moist and flavorful. The skin was awesome! I drenched it with the green sauce and it was yummy...

So overall, it was a good meal. I wanna go back soon. One thing I gotta say is...wow $30 for the pitcher? I wonder how much the red wine version cost. Maybe it's cheaper and that's why he was pushing for the white version? Almost everyone got the red version. But either way, no biggie. It was good so that's all that matters in the end.

One thing I gotta mention is that the service was kinda slow. It might have been our waiter but we had to wait a long time for water and our check. I was getting kinda annoyed although, I might have been easily annoyed that night...

Anywayz, I recommend this place!

Pio Pio
8402 Northern Blvd
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
Neighborhood: Jackson Heights
(718) 426-4900
www.piopionyc.com