Osteria Romantica — Restaurant in San Diego

My friend took me to this darling, apparently popular restaurant. Her being a regular there, they allowed us to sit in the back corner. The food was fantastic. The authentic Italian food was super rich in flavor with blends that cause your taste buds to get robustly excited.

Can u tell I fell in love with the food? I love Pesto. Pesto loves ❤️ me. Their pesto is to die for. Not overwhelming salty, but perfectly blended with considerable Pesto taste.

We shared their artichoke Appetizer. And wow wow wow. So good. I could have eaten 10 more. You can eat every bit of them. No scraping the leaves with your teeth. Just cut and savor the flavor.

Then their amazing beet salad again had such a wonderful blend of ingredients. Fresh arugula, goat cheese, walnuts, maybe another nut...whatever they put in this 😋 salad was so delicious.

Then I had the Pesto Linguini. Oh wow. The dish was perfect. Craving for more already.

My friend had a halibut dish and shared me some halibut. I love fish and this dish was PERFECTLY prepared. The fish was light and moist.

The dessert was a lemon creme cake that was beautifully displayed. It was truly perfect. Light, enough lemon flavor, and so good. Then we topped it with a cup of cappuccino that gave me the zing I needed after a barrel load of food.

Fabio the owner was kind, the servers were quickly serving people going back and forth like mighty ant warriors. They all spoke italian, and I loved the dishes they spoke about which rolled off their tongue. Osteria Romantica. It's a complete experience. They checked on us at least a half dozen times even though it was super busy. Yes we had to wait a little for water refill and extra pesto. But...

The food is just O.K. I got the lobster risotto and my boyfriend got the penne vittorio. My risotto was not creamy and my lobster was over cooked along with the shrimp. My boyfriend said the sauce in his pasta was so runny it was like eating a soup. On top of we got the tiramisu which had very little coffee cake in it and was mostly whipped cream which was unappetizing. On top of all of that they had an extremely pretentious vibe, we arrived and they gave us about two minutes to look over the menu and asked if we were ready to order, no greetings no specials, i had to turn my neck to read the specials posted at the front of the restaurant to order. Then when we werent even done with our meal they came and asked if we were ready to pay. We hadnt even finished ordering and they were asking us to pay already, the restaurant was pretty empty so there was no rush. Then while ordering dessert a whiter older couple came and sat near us outside too, they greeted them and read off the specials, they took the heater that was keeping me warm that i had asked for because i had a dress and they moved it to heat the couple next to us instead. Honestly whenever i eat in la jolla i expect a pretentious vibe, ive lived here all my life i know the la jolla crowd but if youre going to be snobby at least have good food. Dont serve me trash and treat me like trash or ill take my business elsewhere. Will never be...

Pre-Covid we always enjoyed our meals at Romantica. Recently, it's been a lot of hit or miss and more misses than hits. I waited for three visits in a row to post this review.

Friday night about 6PM and the restaurant had a nice crowd. The bartender/Hostess seated us quickly and we sat. After 15 minutes my father got up to ask for a waiter. Please understand, we were by the entrance so every server, food runner, hostess and bartender had a chance to see that no one helped us for 15 minutes.

After we asked, a waiter never explained the specials and quickly took our order. The drinks arrived quickly along with the salads. We had to ask for bread, cheese and oil.

The bus boy/food runner was nice enough to promptly clear our empty salad plates and dinner did arrive promptly. We had veal Madeira which was lacking flavor and not the most tender. The sauce needed some seasoning. The gnocchi was very tender and always a great dish. Once again it seemed under seasoned as the sauce had very little flavor.

Of course, the waiter never checked to see how our meals were and never refilled our drinks. Thankfully the busser promptly cleared our plates but then crickets.

No one asked about dessert or coffee. We had to ask again for a check. The wait staff all has great personalities and it seemed they shined for the younger clients.

Fabio usually runs a tight ship but it's had some...