Vero Cucino — Restaurant in Middletown

If I could give this restaurant 0 stars, I would! My family and I had a terrible experience here.

I will start by saying that we ate here about a year ago. We had booked their event room for a funeral lunch. We had called ahead because my wife and I were vegan. The chef made us an amazing vegan eggplant parm. He told us that if we ever wanted it again to just call a few days ahead and let them know.

Fast-forward to last week. I call and make reservations for 4. This was Tuesday, calling for Saturday. I mentioned to the girl on the phone about the vegan eggplant parm. We want to order 2. She goes and checks, comes back on the phone and says it will be no problem. Great.

Saturday comes. Our table was ready, menu's stacked on the end. We sit down and before we even get a chance to pass out the menu's, the waitress is asking what we'd like for appetizers. Ok, weird. At least let us look at the menu first. She takes our drink order. My mother orders tea. No milk or cream or spoon so my mom has to ask for it. She finally gets it, but the tea is cold. The waitress asks again about apps and my father wants to order arancini but the waitress seems pretty insistent about telling us about the garlic knots. I finally have to tell her, "he told you he wants arancini." We get around to ordering our entrees and I mention that I called ahead about the vegan eggplant parm. She tells me very rudely that she knows nothing about that and stomps off to go check. She comes back a few minutes later and says that I didn't call ahead and it's going to take a very long time to make it. So I insist that I did call ahead and tell her the whole above story. There's another waitress who rudely interjects and basically calls me a liar saying that it's impossible that I did that because they don't take special orders over the phone. My wife and I and my parents are upset now so we decide to pack it up and leave. As we're leaving the other waitress tries to ring us up for our drinks that we didn't even get a chance to take more than a couple of sips of. Are you serious? You screw up our order, call me a liar in not so many words - all in front of other patrons who are trying to eat their meals - and you're going to try and charge us for a cup of coffee, a cold cup of tea, a beer minus two sips and barealy touched glass of wine? Nope. I'll never set foot in this establishment again and I'm telling my story to everyone I know.

Sadly, I remember the food here being pretty great.

To the management - this whole situation could've been avoided if the waitress had politely apologized and acknowledged the mistake. My wife and I would've gladly ordered pasta marinara instead and been...

Two stars because the pizza was good.

My wife and I order from here regularly, and while the food is usually great, the consistency lately hasn’t been so great.

Tonight my wife and I ordered the 12 wings and large cheese pizza special as well as an order of garlic knots on slice. We never received the knots, which is an understandable mistake. The driver said she asked about the knots, because she didn’t see them, but was assured they were in the bag. The woman I spoke to on the phone said this never happened. Then she proceeded to tell me that the instructions were tiny, so she didn’t see that we had ordered the knots so they weren’t included. Does this mean that nobody got knots because of tiny print today? Whatever. My wife also requested the pizza be double sliced, as our children are little, and the smaller slices are easier to eat. This wasn’t done either, but I understand that when it gets busy, steps like this get skipped. Not the end of the world. When we opened the bag, the knots weren’t there. We were told we’d get a credit from slice, so we moved on with our dinner. Then I opened the wings and could not believe what they were trying to pass off as edible chicken wings. We received about 20 wings, which showed that they knew it was sub standard product and tried to make up for the lack of quality with quantity. I’ll post pictures so you can judge for yourselves. I’ve been in food service since 1992, and a food service manager since 1994. My biggest issue here is the lack of accountability for obvious carelessness on the part of employees. When someone calls and has a legitimate complaint, you don’t give excuses. My wife is allergic to blue cheese, and they’ve repeatedly given it to us anyway when asked not to. One time it covered the entire order and we couldn’t eat it. They blamed this on the driver, but it shouldn’t have been in the order in the first place. If you know your wings suck, 86 them until you get the right product in. If you forgot to add the knots, Don’t make it somebody else’s fault (or the fault of ‘tiny print’) if you just didn’t put the order in the bag. So now I’ve got 20 or so overcooked wings with no meat on them, that I get to eat for dinner because my whole family has covid, and we’re too under the weather to cook. Soup it is! Plenty of other pizza places in Middletown. We won’t...

We were recently married in a private ceremony and wanted to have a local gathering for friends and family. We had heard great things about Vero Cucino Rustico so we stopped in a few months prior to inquire about having an event there. The staff immediately put us at ease with their welcoming approach and genuine interest in our celebration. After going over the details and seeing the private room we would be able to use, including a full bar and plenty of space, our choice was easily made and we had great confidence knowing our party was in great hands. Before we left after enjoying a wonderful meal with very attentive service, the owner, Taso, took time to speak with us regarding our event and put our minds at ease with his caring, empathetic, and very professional approach. And to top it all off, the owner handed us a delicious loaf of freshly baked bread as we were leaving! On the day of our event, we arrived a few hours early to set up and were given free reign to decorate and re-arrange anything to our liking. The staff and owner immediately welcomed us and assisted us with any questions we had while also providing a very positive atmosphere. The owner even went out of his way to provide an external speaker so we could play a special playlist we created for the day. As guests began to arrive, the staff was fully prepared with an array of delicious food, ranging from appealing appetizers to various types of pizza. In addition, the bartenders/waitresses Sue and Amaya could not have been more attentive or pleasant when serving drinks, or helping our guests with any requests that arose. Knowing everything handled by the staff was working like clockwork (with a personal touch) allowed our guests and us to immerse ourselves in celebrating our love and devotion to one another, which was our biggest hope for the day and we can truly say was fully achieved. All of our friends and family raved about the food and service, with many taking leftovers home to enjoy. We could not have been happier with our experience at Vero Cucino Rustico and wholeheartedly recommend this restaurant to anyone looking to host a private event where they will receive phenomenal cuisine topped with highly accommodating service, or to anyone looking for a...