Molinaro's Ristorante — Restaurant in City of Lockport

Anyone rating this above 2 stars has extremely low standards. First off this place needs a good scrubbing. The menus, the tables, the trim around the windows - all gummy with sticky nastiness. Flies swarming around as you try to eat. I inquired about their meatballs - Do they make them themselves? Oh you do? Great! Do you make them each day? No - they make a ton in advance and freeze them. Making meatballs is about the easiest and quickest thing a true Italian restaurant can do. You mix usually 2-3 types of ground meat, about 6 different seasonings, some bread crumbs, some milk or buttermilk, salt, pepper, parsley. You toss it into a big mixer stand and combine it. Roll into balls. There's ZERO reason to make these in advance. Just pure laziness. But you know why they do? Because their menu is too damn large. When you have that many items on the menu there's no practical way you can actually make from scratch quality meals. There are too many items to do that with. I got the Bolognese pasta - the meat was mealy (clearly made in advance as well) and the sauce was just not fresh tasting. I don't expect them to make their own pasta from dough (though that would be unique and fantastic!). But this place, like many other establishments, pre-boils noodles earlier in the day and just has them sitting around where they slop them on your plate just after you order. It takes 8-12 minutes to get most pasta from hard to perfect al dente. The ravioli is likely bought frozen and just quickly heated for you or they make in advance and freeze it themselves. This food is really not good and there's no way I'll return. You couldn't pay me to come in and have another meal here. Start with 3 things: Clean EVERYTHING - no, actually CLEAN, scrub. It's gross Get rid of everything on your menu and start over with just 4-6 simple things that you can make from scratch every single day. Rotate 2 of them every 2 weeks to something new. Then you can buy the correct amount of food without waste (which is why you premake meatballs and freeze them, you're trying to not waste, but the flavor is garbage when you do this. So stop making things and freezing them for use later. This isn't a home kitchen in the depression era. Fresh ingredients and meals only. Stop pre-boiling noodles. Stop serving crap from a bag that's frozen. If I wanted that I'd stay home - I can buy frozen food from the grocery store too.

I seriously doubt whoever owns this place is going to take any suggestions I've made under consideration. Likely they think they're doing everything right. I'd love to see their balance book. They've got to be losing money between operating costs, food costs, and what little they do bring in. They're riding the coattails of whoever opened this place long long ago. Likely will close within the...

Hitting the road and kicking off vacation last night with a quick dinner at Molinaro's, in Lockport. It was our first visit, but won't be our last. There is a stuffed hot pepper roll, which was a delicious blend of sausage and cheeses, stuffed in a pepper, rolled in pizza dough, and deep fried. My only regret here was that I had to share. Cajun chicken sub, served on a garlic toasted roll. Lots of juicy big chunks of chicken, plenty of cheese, mushrooms, onions, and added by request, spinach. This sandwich was seriously huge, full of stuff, and outrageously tasty, and a 12" sub was plenty to share. I seriously will never order a grilled chicken sub of any kind, because I find it's often a bland dry little piece of breast that I don't want, but not the case here. Lots of subs I want to try, and for what it's worth, the signature subs are offered with steak, sausage, or chicken. I'm thinking maybe sausage in the grass next. Violet had onion rings and spaghetti and meatballs. Not much to say about the o rings. Frozen ready to fry onion rings, but cooked right and a huge portion, again, plenty to pass around. She likes her pasta plain, as you can see, but the sauce was tasty, and the meatball looked good and homemade, although I was too stuffed for a taste. Although we were stuffed, huge dessert cases were too hard to resist, so we got takeout for the hotel. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and a filling like chocolate mousse was perfect, and the tiramisu was sublime. The tiramisu was velvety, and light, the lady fingers had just enough texture left, and the chocolate on top was just a bit of bitter. And the filling, not too sweet, but perfect blend of espresso and sugar. Speaking of too sweet, the Napoleon was the only thing that we didn't absolutely love. These are usually a favorite, but this one was too sweet for me. I love a good custard or pastry cream, but this one was more reminiscent of a white cream donut filling to me. I do know a lot of folks that would love this dessert, and the pastry was crunchy, and the icing done right, but overall, it wasn't for me. It's ok though, because there is plenty more that I want to try. Service was fun and friendly. Our servers gave us great recommendations and were super welcoming when we told them it was our first visit. Pastas came highly recommended too, so they're on the list to try soon also, and slices of NY style pizza in the case looked pretty good too. If you need a quick and reasonable stop for lunch or dinner in Lockport, be sure to check out Molinaro's , and then...

Lovin Spoonful: Molinaro’s I visit a lot of dining establishments due to the fact it is just my wife and I living at home. She is an excellent cook and I can only remember one meal in the last 48 years that wasn’t delicious. I think I do this to repay her for all the excellent meals she has cooked for me, to make life easier for her and because I love her. I seldom revisit a place where I’ve had a bad experience because there are many places out there vying for my money. We have found several gems recently and have revisited some of them. That being said, a couple of decades ago we got a pizza from Molinaro’s. It smelled delicious and I ate two slices for dinner. I stopped at two not because I was full, I usually have 3-4 slices but because my mouth was getting tired eating their extremely chewy crust. I went and made a sandwich and threw the rest out. Strike #1. Recently my wife was given an extremely generous gift card from them and not wanting to waste it, we decided to get some Fish Frys for dinner. They came with French fries and a small serving of Cole slaw, a standard WNY Fish Fry. The whole dinner started to go south when my wife tried to use the $50 gift card and was told there was no balance on it. At no time was this card used but according to their system it had been used twice, once before we even received the card from our daughter. Strike #2. We got the dinners home, plated them and sat down for dinner. The fries were soggy, not crisp but had that grainy texture that undercooked frozen French fries have. The fries are better at Burger King. Ok, the fries aren’t very good but what I was craving was fried fish. My first forkful was utter disappointment. The fish was also soggy, so much so that the beer batter coating fell off in large slabs. It also lacked that great fried fish flavor that even copious amounts of tartar sauce couldn’t save. Seeing as we had paid for it, I ate it all but it had to rank among the worst 10 Fish Frys I have ever had. Strike #3. Sorry Molinaro’s but you are...