Porta Romana Restaurant — Restaurant in City of Spruce Grove

SHORT VERSION: Our wedding at Porta Romana Spruce Grove was the most magical time we could ever ask for. The decor of porta Romana is made for weddings it is dark coloured woods, fireplaces, and stone facade which gives off a wedding at Jasper Fairmont Park Lodge! Karren, the co-owner with her services allowed us to have a hands free wedding planning and she handled it efficiently, on time and very punctual with replying to us if we had a seating change or any design ideas. I would highly recommend to ask her for her services for your wedding. Such a magical jewel cannot be missed for your next wedding regardless of where you live in Alberta!

FULL VERSION: Ceremony: We had our wedding fully at Porta Romana on the Thanksgiving weekend of 2019. Our ceremony was roughly 30 people, The design of the restaurant allowed for complete removal of all the tables and having a completely open space. An extra 10-15 people could be fit in if your wedding party is bigger. The music we played over the sound system of the restaurant which was great, a dj can hook in as well. The complete switchover from ceremony to reception was done in roughly half hour with table setting and plates etc. You could not tell the difference between the ceremony and reception just how well Karren designed it. Right across the road there is the main city part and so we went to take photos there while they switched over!

Reception: The attention to detail was not missed, each seat had name cards and wedding favour which we asked for from Karren and she sourced it from a local business that got us our cake. Nothing was missed nobody was confused where everyone was seated. It went splendid. Food was fantastic! Every dish had attention to detail, we picked the 50$ menu and I would highly recommend it, every dish was packed with flavour and they kept coming! The starters were shared dishes between 3-4 people. The bride and groom had their own individual plates for each dish. Between each dish was about 20-25 mins so there was time for speeches etc. We wanted to share the cake with everyone so after cutting the servers took it in the back and cut it up for each person to have it with the fruit bowl dish. Actually the fruits need their own mention because they were the sweetest and freshest fruits i’ve had this year!

Organization: The servers and the owners were fantastic keeping everything moving and communicated well with our mc about when speeches would be and when to bring food out. Drinks were none stop and servers did fantastic at keeping everyone hydrated with waters and specialty drinks too! We did not feel rushed at all, by the end of the day we were quite tired so it was nice for the servers clean everything up and us not worry about anything!

Planning: The key part of what made our wedding such a success was Karren, The co-owner of the restaurant. She provided for us a service where we were able to sit down with her and plan EVERYTHING with her and then be pretty much hands off after that. All the cake design and ordering, the floral design and ordering, the table design and ceremony/reception design we discussed and left it all to Karren to handle as part of the service. Please if you would like to save yourself some time as well as your sanity let a professional plan. Since Karren is the owner, she knows what they have and don’t and can be efficient, you can save yourself from hiring an extra person to do wedding planning. She is a local of Spruce Grove and supports local businesses as well which...

2nd time having a meal at Porta Romana - the decor and space is ok - the fireplace clock is still at 5... (it's 5 o'clock somewhere??? i'm not sure i get it) i love the kumquat tree and cleanliness

pros: food is very good - presentation and confidence - gnocchi dish - hard no - calamari yes - cannelloni yes.

Sunshine - one of the servers - she is/was exactly that - she is a hardworking runner & so cute & made us feel so welcome when she served us the first time & even tonight not serving us. big fan of her. give her all the incentives, she is worth it.

Cons: tonight was my birthday - reservation included that in email etc - not one mention at all. i came from fine dining and i was trained well as a server that the details matter.

both my beer & wine were tepid and then a warm glass to pour into... not refreshing

the specials... the features... what? why bother? they're the same on the board as they are in the menus. how are they special or featured? i asked my server - her very basic understanding was that it had to do with freshness - gross

to go box/ doggy bag - i ordered the cannelloni and our server lifted the cannelloni out of the dish into the to go - none of the sauce in the ramekin it came in!!!! i was disheartened with every leftover bite. i paid for that!

Overall: you need to teach your people fine dining mis en place - don't you dare charge those prices...

The food was decent but not great... The quality and plating were put together nicely, but the flavour was pretty uninventive and not particularly flavourful. Also the sizing of the entrees seemed odd, the Mezzaluna had only a few pieces of pasta coated in excessive sauce, where other entrees were so large that people could eat less than half their plate!! The environment of the restaurant was nice although the décor felt a bit dated. Our server was friendly but I believe she unintentionally lacked professionalism. It almost seemed she may have never worked in a decent restaurant? From the awkward way she uncorked wine, to asking us to put our used forks on the table and save them for the 2nd course, to waiting until 2 of our tables' entrees were cold in order to serve everyone's entrees at the same time, etc. She also would brashly interrupt conversation to ask if people wanted more water rather than just refilling the glasses, didn't ask if we needed more wine after the first bottle, etc. Personally, I would not go back here. The price was too expensive for the experience... For a fancy experience, a restaurant like Vivo is far better. For a nice, more moderately priced Italian dinner Picollinos is FAR better than Porta Romana in terms of price, flavour, service, decor, and...