Salvatore's Steakhouse — Local services in Hamden

What an awesome addition to Hamden restaurants. My wife and I were out for a very rare date night / early celebration of our upcoming anniversary. We rarely get out together, especially without our kids, so this was a sepcial occasion for us. I manage a nice restaurant in the New Haven area and Salvatore's has been reccomended to me by both guests and my own staff. We were really excited to check it out, and needless to say, It lived up to the reccomendations and then some.

As we walked up, there is a beautiful outdoor bar that catches your eye as soon as you see the restaurant. I definitely plan on getting a cocktail there while the weather still permits. Once inside, we were greeted by a very friendly hostess and welcomed to the restaurant. Though we had a reservation for a table, we decided to start at the bar for a glass of wine and appetizer. The restuarant has beautiful decor and really caters to the romantic evening my wife and I were looking for. Our bartender, David, was very friendly and gave us great reccomendations After a glass of wine (Caymus) and some really good Arancini, my wife and I headed to a table. They generously gave us a large booth and our dinner began.

Our server Mike came up immediately and introduced himself. My wife and I had already studied the menu throroughly at the bar and dove right in to our dinner order. All the food looked great, and I wish we could have ordered it all, but we ended up getting the roasted bone marrow, Veal T-Bone, and the Delmonico steak. All the entrees include 2 sides which is a rare thing for steakhouses these days. We went with the carrots, potatoes, olive tapenade, and mushrooms--each one was amazing. Both proteins were generously portioned and cooked and seasoned perfectly. They also have a great wine list, and I can say as a resturant person that the prices are exceptionally reasonable both for wine and food. We had a bottle of Groth Cabernet which would cost double at most other establishments.For desset, we had their white chocolate oreo mousse which was the perfect finish to our indulgent and outstanding meal. I wish I had taken pictures, but the food was just too good to wait.

As far as service, Mike was awesome, and the manager, Manny, made sure to come by and make sure we were having a great evening--which we were. Shout out to our server Mike. He is the nicest guy on the planet and took great care of us. Manny and David were both excellent as well.

All in all, service 10/10, wine 10/10, food 11/10 . You'd be hard-pressed to find such great food at such reasonable prices anywhere else in the greater New Haven area. Highly reccomend to anyone.

Thank you to the team at Salvatore's for a wonderful evening. We will certainly be back.

P.S. All the other reviews that mention the lack of parking are misleading. Anyone who's dined in a big city is used to restuarants without parking lots. There's tons of street parking in the immediate area and my wife and I had no trouble parking right in front. I would gladly walk a mile to eat here again. With a wine list like that, you probably want to...

DO NOT BOTHER GOING HERE. Let me start off by saying you want a new place in your area to do well, especially when there is a lot of hype around it. However, our experience was one of the worst we have ever had it when it comes to dining out. We made reservations for 7:30 and got there on time. We sat down and it was very busy for a Friday night and that's normal for restaurants. The first thing we noticed was how loud it was inside, there is no sound deadening at all for such a small place. Secondly there was a lot of people at the bar, however there was one woman standing around the bar area with no shoes on. She left her shoes by her chair and then proceeded to walk around bare foot, not only is this a health code violation but something I do NOT want 10 feet from where I'm about to eat. It took a while for our drinks to come and then finally by 8 we were able to order our appetizers and entrees. One appetizer was a salad and took 20 mins to come out, the salad was 6-7 pieces of lettuce and some cheese mixed in with maybe 4 small tomato slices. The other person in my party did not receive their appetizer AT ALL. 45 mins went by and we said something to the waitress to please go and check on the appetizer. 5 mins later she comes back with our DINNERS! the appetizer was completely forgotten about, I never received the pasta starter that was supposed to come before my meal as well. The entrees were supposed to come with two sides and neither of them did of course. I had two pieces of chicken in a sauce, the other person I was with took 3 bites of their fish and said it was overcooked. All in all in the end we were charged for two cocktails, a soda, one salad and two meals that did not even have the sides. A Total of $109 for that experience. We ordered uber eats from the table so it was there by the time we got home. Will never...

We were excited to see a new restaurant open up in our neighborhood! Four of us dined there on a Friday night for our Mom’s Night Out.

We made a reservation and were seated promptly in a booth in the bar area. It was loud! We had to almost scream to each other and the waitress.

I’ll start by saying our waitress was great. Personable and knowledgeable. 3/4 of us liked our drinks. We ordered a bunch of things to share: two apps, two pastas, two entrees.

Service: Overall we felt very rushed to eat. We needed to put the full order in and our waitress said she’d course it out but we found ourselves trying to eat the last bites of appetizers while runners stood there with our pasta plates waiting to put them down and clear our app dishes (we only had so much room on the table!) Same thing with entree delivery. Food was dropped off to us and we sat there with no plates or silverware to eat it (the runner dropped and, well, ran).

Food: it was fine. Nothing I’d rush back for unfortunately. The octopus appetizer was good, and the shrimp and scallop app was decent. The pastas were ok (pacchieri was a little too Al dente) but they are really small (which we figured from the price). For entrees we ordered the veal tenderloin and a rib eye. Each entree came with 2 sides and I have to say: the sides were incredibly small. One small scoop of mashed potatoes, six small pieces of asparagus.

I think they need to work out the kinks with staffing and training, and the timing in...