Rosso Vino — Restaurant in Branford

The ambiance and music brings you back to Italy, giving real life family vibes. The staff was just as friendly offering excellent customer service, with a friendly attitude which makes this post difficult for me to make. Atmosphere can only get you so far when paying an exorbitant amount of money on dishes that don't live up to the reputation. The sauce lacked seasoning, salt, etc, and anytime a chef puts pounds of parsley on a dish it's sometimes a way to mask that the chef can't cook, we had a greenfield of it on our plates. The sauce tasted canned and with the speed it came out it was lukewarm, making me believe the dish was one someone sent back and possibly handed off to me. My wife had ordered the scallops that looked as if they were sitting in human snot, and was fishy beyond belief. I know this is beginning to.come off as a rant but a lot of people may say why didn't you complain...it's because I respect the struggles of business owners, cost of materials, and the damage was done. When you get food poisoning do you ask for a gift card to the restaurant. The standards of the food must match the atmosphere, otherwise you come off as fake

Response to owner:

I take back the customer service line, the waitress is nice but you apparently can't take criticism and my palate is distinguished. My wife uses my Google account to write reviews as well, so mentioning burger King was illiterate to the point that your food sucked. I've been cooking since I was 5 years old and trained by a real Italian off the boat. Try and say it with me..salt. very easy addition. While your at it, less tomatoe paste, boil peeled plum tomatoes, some black pepper, a little more olive oil to dilute the acidity of the sauce. I had to rewrite my post in order to respond to your whining because your food sucked, it's as simple as that. Also you may want to talk to your "fish guy" because my wife was sick this morning from the one scallop she ate, and i know thats not coincidence, you could smell slight ammonia. And if you continued to read you would of seen that I didn't want you to pick up the bill, because those products costed YOU money. And we darted out out of respect FOR SQUEEZING US IN, because you had someone coming in at 6pm. So wife got sick from your food, I gave you some tips, corrected your arrogance with your inability to read, and our opinion on your food is not going to close your doors. Everyone has their own opinions, what one person doesn't like,...

Now I'm not saying this restaurant deserves a 1 star overall rating but it SURE AS HELL doesn't deserve the 4.8 its currently sitting at. I'd say somewhere around 3.5 would be fitting. I honestly felt I needed to leave 1 star to do my part to bring their average down. Otherwise, I'd leave 3 stars.

The pasta purses appetizer was pretty good. The squash flowers were fried well but there was nothing to them. My stuffed flounder came out raw in the middle. Fine, mistakes happen. It was handled well by our server. Having said that, when it was brought back out, the rest of my table had finished eating.

My major issue with the meal tonight is that if you are going to charge $42 for a special entree of stuffed flounder (with new england stuffing), I shouldn't have to verify that it does not include imitation krab. The entirety of the dish was brought from what would have been a 4.5 star dish to maybe a 2. To charge $42 for stuffed flounder that was primarily filled with imitation krab is a complete ripoff. Its clear the owner is penny pinching. I felt cheated by this establishment.

When I was eating this I truly thought "its not great but if its $30 - 32 I will tell them to charge an extra $10 and use real crab in the future". To add insult to injury other people in my party were shocked to see it was not only not taken off the tab for being served raw but also that it was $42. The potential is there but please use better ingredients.

Response to owner: Unprofessional 2nd half response there joe. I read the first half and was about to change my review to 3 stars as it started out a really good response. Unfortunately you let your anger get the best of you and put it on display for everyone to see. I actually tried to get someone's attention on my way out but no one would so much as look at me. Regardless, this review would have been left either way.

Tbh I didnt even know followers are a thing with Google reviews. I do not do this for followers but to enlighten future guests of various establishments what to be aware of.

Some advice, I would recommend cutting your responses to some of your reviews short going forward as its not...

I’ve been wanting to try this place for years. Living just down the street, it always caught my eye, so we decided to celebrate our engagement there on Saturday. We saved our appetite all day, excited to try something new.

When we arrived, there was a short wait before we were seated at the bar. About 10 minutes later, the bartender, a very polite young man, took our drink order. As we sipped our drinks, a couple approached the bar and mentioned to who I believe was the manager or head chef, “We should’ve made reservations.” The manager reassured them, saying, “Don’t worry, I got you.”

Moments later, the host came to us and said, “I’m sorry, these two seats at the bar were reserved.” My fiancé politely agreed to move, but I couldn’t help but notice that the same couple who had just mentioned not having a reservation were then seated where we were. The manager even joked, “Go ahead, sit there—you owe me a thousand bucks.”

We were relocated to a corner, and for the next 40 minutes, no one asked for our food order. It seemed like the bartender, who was overwhelmed, was still responsible for our table despite us no longer being at the bar. Feeling ignored and frustrated, we decided to leave. When we asked to pay for our drinks, they offered to cover the tab, which confirmed to me that they knew how poorly we had been treated.

While I can’t comment on the food, as we didn’t get the chance to eat, the experience and the way we were treated were disappointing. It’s unfortunate that what was supposed to be a special celebration left us feeling overlooked...