Acqua e Farina — Restaurant in Chula Vista

Acqua E Farina is located in the same building as Farmer's Table in Chula Vista. Farmer's table will continue to serve breakfast and brunch through the morning hours, and Acqua e Farina will serve dinner at 4 pm daily.

Let me start by expressing that Acqua e Farina is an outstanding place to have dinner. The food and service were quite exceptional, not to mention they newly renovated space very inviting.

For dinner, I had the acqua e farina house salad with wild arugula, the Pappardelle with beef cheek ragu, and the acqua e farina pizza with salame picante and mushrooms, not mention a nice glass of Italian dry red wine.

The salad was light, simple, and refreshing. The wild arugula was great and paired well with roasted peppers, pickled onions, and truffle croutons. The pecorino added nice saltiness. The balsamic olive oil was mild and not to be overbearing.

The pappardelle was definitely the highlight of dinner. The pasta was prepared to perfection and had a terrific chew. The slowly rendered down beef cheeks developed a great rich flavor. I thought the sauce was absolutely delicious. I highly recommend this item.

The acqua e farina pizza was great, too. The new take on the neapolitan dough is very successful. It was super soft and chewy with a very light crisp exterior. The spicy salame was tasty, and the San Marzano tomato sauce was very delicious. The pizza also came with red onions, mushrooms, mozzarella & stracciatella cheese, not to mention fresh oregano, which took the pizza over the top.

Oh yes, the canaloni are wonderful. I had the pistachio and chocolate chip, and they both were bliss. Both came generously filled, and the plate was beautifully presented.

The meal was excellent and so was the service. Claudio, an old-school Italian, offered mannerisms of an old word Italian gent in a good way. Barbara, the manager, took the time to provide details regarding the menu and some of the new interior design. Great new...

I honestly really wanted to like this place. Locally owned Italian place that makes their own pasta? And they will serve it to you table side in the beautiful, delicious parmigiano wheel? In Chula Vista? Yes please!

Unfortunately, I was very disappointed to realize that the service here is no better than the restaurant it shares space with. Farmer's Table by day, Acqua e Farina by night and both restaurants are seriously lacking in service basics.

Such as, if you are going to be serving a limited menu for a specific day then you should be sure that your website reflects that information. Or at the very least make sure that your patrons are aware when they make a reservation. Or even when they call back to modify their reservation. So many failed opportunities to make sure that your customers have a positive experience.

Even upon finding out that many of the items we were eager to try were unavailable, including the cheese wheel, we were still willing to try the limited items that were available. Unfortunately, I have a child with a dairy sensitivity and there apparently was not ANY option on the menu that does not contain milk or cream. I do find it odd that an "authentic" Italian restaurant does not have a classic pomodoro sauce of some sort. Especially in 2025 when more than half of the American population has some form of dairy sensitivity.

But honestly our server didn't sound like he fully understood what was or was not available either and the manager he kept going over to ask questions didn't seem particularly concerned with whether we ate or not so there is that.

Maybe the food is amazing. Who knows? We unfortunately never got that far and there is no way I will be returning to this location. I'm pretty sure both restaurants are being run by the same management and neither of them are...

It was our first time at this restaurant. We dined here for Thanksgiving dinner. The food was delicious. Although, the timing of the meals was off. We ordered our drinks and they came after our first course. The plated food seems like it was just thrown on the plate (Presentation is key).We hadn’t finished our first course and they had our second course at our table. At times, we seemed to be forgotten by our waiter. We ordered a “to go”meal. We asked for our check and on one of the checks we were being charged for an espresso, which we didn’t order. When I commented to the waiter that I hope he was not charging us for something we didn’t order, he had an attitude with me and “dropped” the receipts on the table along with the charging machine. That my friends is not good service. When we got home to place our to go items in the refrigerator, the waiter neglected to put our dessert in the bag. Needless to say, we drove back to the restaurant to pick up the dessert. It was a major inconvenience and not the best experience for being first time guests at this restaurant. I spoke with the manager, Barbara, who was lovely and was apologetic and she invited us back for dessert/appetizer on the house. Will we go back? We will give them a second chance. Like I said, the...