Porto-Fino Restaurant — Restaurant in Daytona Beach Shores

I’m not even sure how to begin this review, I just left this place incredibly disappointed and sad. I wanted to walk out, however I didn’t want to make an even worse situation given we took our family visiting from another country there for dinner a night before they left. We came in happy after spending a fun day together hoping to share a good meal and have a pleasant evening together. We were greeted at the door and accommodated, no issues there. Once seated our actual waitress was pleasant in the beginning, she is an older blonde lady. All was going well until another waitress dropped off our bread she is an older brunette lady, she rudely placed the baskets of bread on the table without so much as a smile or a hello, but even worse the only words that came out of her scowled mouth were “you all SHARE this!” I was taken aback and could only stare. I cannot stress enough what this small interaction actually did. She made us feel belittled, as if we were a burden without even having a bite of the bread. Of course we know we have to share! Her scowl, her disregard and disrespect was so demeaning, I wanted to get everyone up and leave, but at that point I felt bad for our waitress that was at the time pleasant. Our waitress got our drinks, placed on the table beside and left to do other things. My son who was thirsty grabbed one of our drinks from the table and the same brunette waitress started to yell at him in front of the whole dining room saying “HOW DONYOU DO THIS ONE IS YOURS?” Again I was so embarrassed and upset and honestly stunned at her to do anything other than sit there quietly. I hate confrontation, I hate big scenes and I really just wanted our family to have a fun last night. I remained silent, she finally left. Our waitress got our drinks that WERE sat at the table right beside ours. At this point I saw them (brunette rude waitress and our waitress) at the corner talking and looking at us and from then on our waitress continue to be bare minimum polite but made us feel like a burden, the brunette waitress also kept talking to a few guests she was serving and looking at us as if they were taking about us. We spent $200 and something plus tip on dinner. The food was okay, nothing to write home about but the atmosphere and service was the worst I have ever have. I have never been made feel so unwanted at a restaurant before. How sad and disappointing. And so unnecessary. All this to say that these words above don’t do justice to what a horrible person this lady was, and if you want to have a nice dinner do not go there. Horrible...

What a very pleasant surprise this restaurant was.

Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of the food but let me tell you, it was two thumbs up.

The fried zucchini, calamari and rice and vegetable soup were very good. They were flavorful and well prepared. The fresh bread that they make was also out of this world. Fresh out of the oven, warm and delicious.

The dinner entrees for the table consisted of ravioli with meat sauce, fettuccine alfredo, pizza, combination pasta ( which consists of ravioli, manicotti, stuffed shell) and shrimp scampi.

I had the ravioli. The actual ravioli were stuffed with ricotta and were above average. The meat sauce that came in was very good. The plate was not flooded in the sauce but at the same time there was just enough to pair every bite with the meat sauce.

Being Italian, I appreciate good food. I realize this is not authentic Italian food however it was excellent food. Even their sign says Italian-American cuisine. Not trying to pass it off as you being in Italy. But even with that said, everything was very flavorful and hit the mark perfectly.

The waitstaff was superb, even though there was a small incident in which they dropped a plate of salad on my brother-in-law, but it was an honest mistake and they were very quick to clean up the mess.

The location is the small little building right off of A1A. The inside of the building is a little bit crowded with tables placed close to each other (during COVID, you know) but I think that is a testament to the fact that it is good food and they get a lot of customers and they need to fit...

I wish I could leave a better review. We had heard amazing things about the food here. What little bit of food we were willing to try seemed to have very good flavor. First impression was wonderful we were seated by a very friendly blonde with a pony tail. We had Linda as our waitress. She wasn’t very friendly or personable and I wish I could say that was the worst we experienced. I have never been to a restaurant that it is acceptable to wear your hair down while serving food. When she delivered our tray of food her hair was RESTING in the food! It would have been disgusting enough to have found a single hair in our food BUT we watched her come to the table with a whole chunk of her hair sitting in the sauce on one of our plates. That’s extremely disgusting. We pointed it out and she shrugged her shoulders with attitude and walked away!!!! After, that we didn’t see her again except to drop off the check. Our drinks wouldn’t have been refilled if it wasn’t for the nice gentleman clearing tables. He was so incredibly friendly and concerned on why we didn’t eat our food and didn’t want to take it with us. I wish we had been able to catch the blonde and busboys name because we would be willing to come back and try again but only due to them and they deserve credit for that. Our waitress also had her hair that had fallen out stuck all over her clothes which says it’s probably falling into a lot of food. Management needs to be aware and fix this...