Vittoria Trattoria — Restaurant in Ottawa

Came here on my second visit to celebrate a special occasion with family and my partner. We all ordered the salmon as it is one of the best dishes. As an overview, service was terrible (racist) and food wasn’t that great.

In context, the salmon arrived with very little portions of veggies but the kicker was the rice. The rice was unbelievably salty to the point of being inedible. We asked the server if there had been a mistake and he said the kitchen says it’s fine. We were surprised and requested a new batch of rice perhaps to which the server responded it’s all the same batch. We were understanding and decided to opt for extra veggies and no rice instead. We were absolutely shocked when they came with a plate of 4 slices, yes slices, of carrots and 2 broccolis for 4 people! It was insulting to say the least and so we requested the manager as the server just placed the plate and left in a hurry.

When we explained to the manager that the food was extremely salty and the veggie portion was shocking, he responded to my parents in a very condescending tone that interrupted my mom, who was asking for perhaps less salt, saying “We can make another dish with no zero salt, maybe you’d prefer that”. While my parents were complaining, the manager paid no attention to them and only acknowledged my partner (who is white) and was apologetic to her. He ensured her that the salty food would be fixed and refused to acknowledge my mother. My partner even eyed me and was shocked at the racist treatment we were receiving as opposed to her.

I was okay with paying and did not want a new dish. But, when the manager overheard me telling my parents that I will just take it to go and fix it myself at home, he insisted repeatedly to bring me another dish while stating “we don’t like to hear that, we can give you something you could like”. The issue was never about whether we like the dish or not. It was the fact that a) the food was inedible as it was very salty b) the veggie portions for 4 people was extremely insulting c) the treatment was racist and unhelpful (only my partner received actual eye contact and accommodation)

Overall, the experience was very poor and we felt looked down upon. I’m aware the food is normally good, hence why I brought my parents there. But the unwillingness to admit the food was inedible, only until my white partner said so, was unjustified. It’s a shame because I was planning to make it a regular spot for me and my partner but I will definitely be avoiding this restaurant moving forward. I paid the $200 bill and tipped because we were never looking for compensation nor for anything else. We simply were hoping for a good meal and a sincere and...

Booked a reservation for 7 (4 adults + 3 kids) to celebrate our friends wedding. Was difficult to find a time to accommodate a group our size, but we were flexible and had no issue settling on a 5 pm timing as we had young ones in our group. Restaurant atmosphere is average. Food portions were good, food was served hot, but again nothing more than average. Service during the meal was poor. We had to flag the server down numerous times, he had issues hearing us (not sure if restaurant noise or hearing issues), no effort to aid us in recommending options for the kids, no effort to come back for second drink orders until we flagged them down. One of our group was still eating her appetizer when the mains arrived and she was prompted to lift her appetizer plate to make space for her main...so there she was sitting, appetizer plate in hand with no offer to remove it or clear space so she could finish it. To make things worse, you can imagine our shock that as our friend is mid-dessert with a full glass of wine left that we were informed our time was up. We had to leave to make room for the next seating. Now I admit we had been there for just over 2 hours, but how do we go from no sense of urgency, celebrating our friends, spending almost $600! to getting rushed out the door?! I asked to speak to the manager and she came over only to confirm that it was time to leave to make room for the next people! The manager said that we should have been informed when we booked of the time limit or that we should have volunteered we would be celebrating and wanted a longer time. I informed her that at no time was a time restriction mentioned. Completely ruined everything. Despite the owner being on site it wasn't until I stopped at the front on my way out to ask the manager how to contact the owner that she went straight away to get him. He was quite apologetic and said that is not how they treat guests, however, all staff behaviour was to the contrary. Credit to him he did ask how he could fix things, but frankly the damage was done, you can't undo ruining a celebration. So, some advice - train your staff - if you have a seating time limit - state it - ask your guests if the reservation is for a special occassion. Train your servers if you are seeking to offer a service that clearly your prices reflect. Else, as other reviewers have noted there are many options for a nice meal in town and that is where our business will go to...

My wife and I have been going several times a year to Vittoria downtown and now to this location for over a decade. We’ve brought family and friends. On this occasion at a 5 pm dinner on Dec 2 when it wasn’t busy, the service was awful. Even though he was not busy, our server seemed to be out of site most of the time and checked in on us once for about 5 seconds before disappearing again. We ordered drinks that we didn’t get until almost midway through our dinner. My wife’s Sangria was strong wine, watered down with a sliver of lemon. No fruit, nothing else. It was basically a glass of wine. 15 minutes later when we found our server he said he would fix it. The exact same drink came back with nothing changed but they had watered it down. Terrible. Must be a new bartender. My Big Chill drink was very good though. My minestrone soup was quite good and my wife’s garden salad was acceptable. She had salmon with fettuccine Alfredo and asked for no spices or garlic. It came as asked. The salmon was very good, the fettuccine Alfredo was Luke warm pasta with warmed up cream without parmesan or butter. It was not fettuccine Alfredo. I ordered veal Marsala. The veal was somewhat tender, the Marsala sauce was just right if a bit runny but the portion of Mediterranean vegetables was small with half being over cooked to the point of being mushy and the other half being almost raw. This in a restaurant that was about half full and not very busy! Our past experiences were for the most part very good. This time the service was terrible and the food wasn’t tasty or well prepared. We decided to skip dessert and just leave. We waited 10 minutes for our sever who once again had disappeared and decided to pay at the cash. The bill was about $130. We left a $20 tip which based on the time our server spent with us works out to about $240 per hour. What an extreme disappointment; a waste of time on an overpriced poor quality meal with basically no service. We likely won’t be back here again for quite a while. There’s lots of other restaurants where the service is better and so is the food for a $150...