Hyderabad's Italian restaurant Palato is all about delicious pizza and pasta

Smart, casual is not just an outfit type, but a restaurant’s vibe too. Palato, the 90-seater Italian restaurant that serves Mexican and Continental also, gets it right, from the word go. A series of portraits with lines that sound straight from a meme page (my favourite is ‘You are cute and all that, but I am not sharing my pizza with you) greets you as soon as you enter. Corporate pizza parties seem to be a regular affair what with the menu in Gen X’s favourites – pizzas, pasta, lasagnas. We also saw youngsters cheering their favourite team in the little enclosure with a LED screen. The decor of bicycles and wheels add to the tavern vibe in this all-day diner adjacent to The Westin Hyderabad Mindspace. 

However, none of these factors is the draw as much as Executive Chef Naresh Avachetty, who started the restaurant five months ago. Having worked in Ci Gusta and Olive Bistro, two popular Italian restaurants in the city, he had garnered many fans who drop by at the eatery to taste his magic again. The menu is elaborate, running into good eight pages and we prod him about the signature dishes. While the usual Alfredos and Arabiattas were delicious, it was Quattro Formagi, or simply the four-cheese pizza made of Mozarella, smoked scarmoza, cheddar, Parmesan that stole the show. While one was chewy, the other was granular and one was crumbly. The overall experience was worth a ‘say cheese’ moment.

The Chicken Chili Pizza was just what it sounded like, spicier than the rest and with the right taste of well-marinated chicken. Cordon blue with Mexican salsa and cheese melt was truly a cheese burst experience. “The youngsters love to beat the workday blues with continental food and our lunch buffet is popular,” says Naresh. Going by the word around, their brownies are popular in the meal and that could be because Desserts & Co has its outlet attached to Palato. Although they have a variety of coffees, cold and freeze brews, it is their delicacies from the Mediterranean country that Hyderabad loves. “Thanks to the vibrant young crowd, we are barely six months, but popular in Instagram-stories,” says Naresh.

Price for two: Rs.1,200.