Via Veneto Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Hybla Valley

Really, truly mediocre. I would not recommend this place for date night, nor to anyone I cared about.

For $40, my wife and I got Chicken Florentine and Spaghetti Puttanesca.

Served before our meal was home-made bread. The bread is very dense--it needed more time to proof before baking. (And possibly more bake time: its texture was... unsettling.)

Then came our meals. Neither of us finished our meal.

Chicken Florentine Fried chicken cutlet, with a bed of spinach, melted cheese, and served with sauce. The chicken was tenderized appropriately; however, was incredibly bland: the chicken had not been seasoned. I don't think this was prepackaged chicken cutlet. The spinach was disgusting. It was bitter. It was soggy. It was prepared one of two ways: Either it had been soaking in a tub of heated, wet spinach for hours, or Heated from frozen, thanks to Chef Mike. (The microwave. This is more likely, more detail next) The cheese had been melted, but there was no browning. Nothing to suggest the typical preparation: heated and melted under a broiler. No. This was again the mark of Chef Mike. (The microwave) The lemon sauce had no flavor. No lemon: not even a hint of lemon. It was just... bland.

Spaghetti Puttanesca I'll admit: the sauce had good flavor. I like the fishiness of anchovies. The noodles: they were from a box you'd get at a grocery store. Cook according to the package. I'd expect a Northern Italian restaurant to have pride in their pasta: I guess not. The sauce was tasty. But so... wet! So watery! Tomato sauces are usually thick. This is the stuff of staining your favorite shirt: wet tomato water splashing everywhere as you eat.

Both meals were served with a side of parmesan cheese. It was a small bowl of Kraft grated parmesan, with a discarded straw wrapper hidden underneath.

It is an impressive bit of mental gymnastics, for an upscale-looking "italian" restaurant to: Fail to bake bread appropriately Choose to cook dried noodles... poorly Serve the poorest quality cheese... which is 10% not cheese. (For more reading, you can read an article by Forbes magazine titled "Most Parmesan Cheeses in America are fake, here's why")

This restaurant excels in feeding large quantities of hungry mouths (children, who are just happy to eat something resembling food) akin to a grade school cafeteria.

If you want to treat yourself to Italian, I'd recommend the 15 min drive into old town.

The wait staff is... mediocre, but not in such an appaling way. We were not offered a listing of the daily specials, nor did they do a courtesy check after we were served our meals: "How is everything tasting?" I get it's a courtesy. And we weren't interested in any of the specials (a table next to us asked). Had the waitstaff asked, the Florentine would have been sent back to the kitchen. ...that may have been intentional...

Overall: I am not going back. I would encourage anyone I knew to not go. Their location is likely the only contributor to their success: they are a convenient way to feed the hungry kids of the large residential area they are surrounded by. There is value in that.

P.S.: While there, a few people took pizza to-go. Their pizzas may be a redeeming quality. I...

Until Via Veneto, I had never had the dubious pleasure of steamed bread. When a busboy plunks a couple pieces of damp baguette in front of you, and avoids looking you in the eye, that should tell you the story of meal you're about to eat. This is a tale of disappointment from about a week ago:

FOOD If that was a carbonara, I'm a monkeys uncle. Scorching hot buttered spaghetti, unseasoned, with a few bits of undercooked bacon. After piling on a quarter cup of powdered cheese product, along with an obscene amount of salt, I managed to eat a few disappointing mouthfuls before setting it aside. Though not before observing an oily puddle at the bottom of the plate. The rest of our table was equally disappointed: overcooked dry fish, watery lasagne, a total of six dishes that failed us.

DECOR 90's, but without the imagination. Cheap stick-on posters on the walls providing an image of "Italy" that never really existed. A preponderance of senior-aged clientele employed cell phone flashlights to see their menus while management shunted the lights dimmer and dimmer, almost as though they didn't want us to see the food.

STAFF Here is where words fail us: our waitress was overwhelmed but still somehow hugely pleasant. The helpful young woman with the multicolor hair was a charmer who pitched in. Those two ladies were the only good thing about this place. But as quality workers in a restaurant are a rare thing, by the time you read this you probably won't see them...

This was my first visit to Via Veneto, offering 'Authentic North Italian Cuisine,' which was highly recommended. Unfortunately it was a major disappointment. I ordered the Lasagna Bolognese...which could be charitably described as 'Bolognese Light.' Delicate house-made pasta, very good; but the sauce was a light quickly-made tomato sauce with little meat and no aromatic vegetables. There was cheese on top...the Lasagna was not baked but quickly assembled and browned under a broiler to melt the cheese. The result was an almost flavorless dish. This was accompanied by a 'House Salad' which one might expect at a cheap Diner - a few bits of Iceberg lettuce, several little dices of pale winter tomato, one black olive, quartered, and a nondescript 'Italian' dressing. A Bread Basket provided slices of a crumbly Baking Powder bread which seemed to have been made without any salt - again, tasteless. I ordered a glass of the Cabernet Sauvignon which was neither good nor bad. Since my friends wanted dessert and coffee - I ordered the Flan and black American coffee. The Flan had obviously been sitting in a refrigerator at least overnight. It wasn't very light or silky in texture, and there was too much - and quite cold - thin caramel syrup. The coffee, however, was excellent. This was quite disappointing. With so many excellent restaurants to explore in the Washington DC area, I won't return...