Original Venice

Don't be fooled folks. This place is actually "The UNORIGINAL Venice Restaurant". LOL. Everyone in the neighborhood knows the original owners who immigrated from Italy recently sold the restaurant to these new owners. I decided to go back to see if the quality of the food was the same. They even have the same menu items as the true Original Venice restaurant. However, I soon found out this was only an imposter posing as the neighborhood favorite which is now sadly gone forever. Boy was I ever disappointed. I ordered a baked ziti with meat sauce and a meatball parmesan hero. I haven't even eaten yet the baked ziti with meat sauce yet and I'm afraid to eat it now after eating the meatball hero. All of the meatball heros I've had since I was a kid growing up in this boro (yes I have been spoiled eating great Italian food at cheap prices most of my life) have always made them with parmesan cheese and had meatballs which were well seasoned. I mean seriously, who makes a meatball hero which you specify to be a parmesan meatball hero and serves you what looks like beef (looked way overdone and tasted more like what I can only imagine to be bush meat than actual beef and which was tasteless as well as something that resembles a tomato/spaghetti sauce and peppers. It literally taste like almost raw poorly prepared ground meat which was barely cooked and not even seasoned. I was told by the phone order taker ( I called my order in) that it was the same price to have the peppers on the hero as opposed to not having them included so I agreed. I literally just finished eating the hero just before writing this review and it was so horribly bad it inspired me to get on my laptop and write this review. The hero literally had almost no flavor. I had no choice but to take a deep breath and gulp it down slowly since I was starving and had nothing at home to eat tonight. LOL. I have the baked ziti waiting on the table and I am considering feeding it to the cats that live on my street since if it is anything like the hero they likely will enjoy it more. And to top it all off I was over charged $1 for the baked ziti which was listed on the menu to be $9.70 and I was charged $10.70 because as the order taker explained was due to an "increase in all prices on the menu." I thought this was outrageous and clearly dishonest but I was reassured by the order guy at the pick up window that he "would inform them". LOL. I guess he is referring to the new owners of the "Original Venice Restaurant". Like the menu with incorrect prices that name is also misleading. Not sure where these people with all the positive reviews got the pictures from or how they had such a different experience than I did but I can tell you for sure my review is 100% legit. I suspect those leaving positive reviews were compensated in some way. Either that or they are old reviews copied over from when the old owners ran the place. I am going to grab the bottle of pepto now and see if I can make it through the night without having to go to the ER.

Follow up review. I later ate the baked ziti and it was pretty good although like the meatball hero had little to no cheese in it. Overall my experience was not what I had hoped for.