Venezia Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Kirksville

TLDR: Venezia is my current vote for best pizza place in town. (But make sure to pass on the "Canadian bacon.")

MENU: Good pizza, great seafood, hot sandwiches, wide variety of pasta dishes, Italian-American classics like stuffed mushrooms. The so-called main menu is essentially your choice of pasta + sauce + meat; it seems to me that they could have made this a lot easier for customers to understand and quickly make a choice by organizing the available options in three columns, rather than listing every conceivable combo.

FOOD QUALITY: This place was definitely meant to be a pizza shop, first and foremost, with a constellation of other things organized around that, because many of the menu items are clearly just different ways of utilizing standard pizza toppings. There is a WIDE spectrum between superb dishes and garbage dishes. On the superb side you have their seafood selection, for example, and on the garbage side, you have monstrosities like the carbonara. (Don't worry, I'm gonna get to the carbonara.)

MENU FAVORITES: Venezia has, arguably, the best fried calamari in Kirksville. (Toss-up with Mizu.) Here you get large, meaty rings lightly dredged with flour - crispy, perfectly cooked, large portion - served with marinara. My preference is to have the calamari plain with a squeeze of lemon. I would say they have the best pizza in town, overall. I have tried several of the seafood dishes and they were all excellent - the seafood combo is my go-to. Lasagna is decent. I recommend cream sauces over marinara.

MENU FAILS: Let's talk about the carbonara... Typos included, the menu describes it as "Inguini pasta with sauteed fresh mushrooms, olives, and canadian bacon in white wine creay sauce." I don't know who told these folks how to make carbonara, but this ain't it. I don't expect a mom-and-pop in a small Midwestern town to import the most expensive pecorino cheese and guanciale, but they could at least make a passable effort with bacon and parmesan. Simply leaving out the weird ingredients that don't belong (mushrooms, olives, wine) would be an improvement on its own. The worst feature of this insult to the rich traditions of Italian cuisine is the so-called Canadian bacon; it's more like that cheap processed ham you would find in a pack of lunchables made for kids. Team Venezia, if you need someone to show you how to make REAL carbonara, respond to my review; and if you think you're "being creative" that's fine, just call the dish something else.

FRONT OF HOUSE SERVICE: Venezia truly has some of the best FOH staff in town. Very polite, cordial, and attentive to detail. For example, on one occasion a server asked me a clarifying question to help ensure that all of my food would come out at the same time. On another occasion, I ate here with a group of friends, including a woman with a toddler. The baby couldn't resist running off and playing in the staff staging area, and he was there for a few seconds before his mom could catch up. One of the servers treated him very kindly - even though she was obviously busy and a little stressed - and later brought something to help keep him occupied at the table. The same lady also made a helpful menu recommendation for the baby that wasn't obvious to us, and it worked out great. I've had some form of interaction with probably eight different servers here, and I've always been impressed.

KITCHEN SERVICE: It's clear that the kitchen staff do their best to have food ready at the same time, which I place a high value on, because I often get my stuff to go. So far, everything I have had here has been well made, from a cooking point-of-view; the pasta is al dente, the sauces are not watery, the fried items are crispy, etc... the only problem is with some of the recipes the cooks have to work with, but that's on the management, not the kitchen staff.

ATMOSPHERE: Austere. Dim. Industrial. No effort to hide practical things in the staff staging area, like stacks of styrofoam takeout containers. Looks like a set from Buffy the...

This was our first visit to Venezia Italian Restauraunt, and our experience was the BEST! We were greeted by Sarah, who is an AMAZING server! She got us seated, and took our drink orders, so we had time to look at the menu while she was getting our drinks ready. I ordered a lime margarita ( only $3! ) and my wife ordered a Cosmopolitan, and they were both very good. I ordered the Tour of Venezia, and Rebecca ordered thee Cheese Ravioli. Sarah brought us some rolls, and some real butter to put on them. The rolls were fresh and delicious. Next Sarah brought out our salads. The salads had lettuce, fresh tomato, sliced red onion, and grated cheese on the top. We both ordered the ranch dressing for our salads. The salads were fresh, and were delicious. The ranch dressing tasted like it was made in house, and was a great accompaniment to the salads. While we were finishing our salads, Sarah brought our entrees out. They were hot and smelled so good! The Tour of Venezia includes Lasagna, Fettuccini Alfredo, and Chicken Parmigiana, and they were all fresh and very delicious. The Cheese Ravioli was Ravioli pasta filled with Ricotta cheese, and baked with marinara, and shredded mozzerella cheese. Everything that we ordered came out perfect, and the portions were very generous! Neither of us could finish our meals, so we got the rest to take home. While we were finishing our meals, the manager, Melanie, stopped by our table to thank us for coming in, and to make sure that our dining experience was good. She was leaving to take a short break so she would be ready to come back later to close. She was very kind and polite to us. If you have never been to Venezia Italian Restaurant, you owe it to yourself to stop and try it.........you won't be disappointed! The ambience of this restaurant was very warm, inviting, and made you feel welcome and happy to be there. The waiter, Sarah, and the manager, Melanie, were both very professional, kind, and came by our table to interact with us, making sure that we were having a good experience, and to let us know that they were grateful for us coming there for our lunch. There are quite a few dining choices available in Kirksville, and we have tried a lot of them in the past, but the Venezia Italian Restauraunt was our favorite one, and we will definitely...

We are here visiting my husband's hometown, and during this trip we decided to try every restaurant in town( or as many as possible), the kids wanted to go to this one. The atmosphere is nice, restaurant was clean, bathrooms also clean-- which is great. The manager, blond lady was kind and friendly, came to introduce herself and check up on us WODERFUL. The server we had was a young highschool boy who had no clue, even manager had to tell him 'customers walked in, when you talk to them you need to face them and greet them', WHICH IS ALSO FINE, you got to start somewhere and learn. The reason for the low review is ultimately the reason you go to a restaurant, the food. IT JUST WAS NOT GOOD, Meatballs were storebought frozen Meatballs, popped in some type of oven/toaster oven for too long, whomever warmed these up didn't even bother turning them while reheating them so the bottom half was burned and the bottom half cold. The sauce was out of a jar, microwaved and shloped on the overcooked spaghetti. So I paid $16 and chamge for poorly reheated store bought frozen balls of meat and prego like sauce. My daughter got spaghetti with meatsauce, the meat was old and spoiled. Husband got calzone, the crust was ok, he said the cheese and sausage inside had a funny taste to them and asked me to try it, when I did the cheese was spoiled, same for my son's pizza. I don't know if this is a family restaurant and wife works front of house and husband does the cooking, I just know I kept on seeing a short guy wearing shorts, with heary legs and slippers go in and out of the kitchen, but whomever is the cook please look for a new career path because this is not it. Also menu not extensive but repetitive. They have Pasta on one page and what is listed as Main Menu is also pasta. When I asked what the difference was between the Pasta with meat sauce under PASTA and the pasta with meat sauce under MAIN MENU the answer I got was...