Solunto Restaurant & Bakery — Restaurant in San Diego

Chose this from Google search for dinner near our hotel. In the Little Italy section of town. Really large quantity of Italian choices, as expected. Good reviews and photos of cases of baked goods and gelato cemented the choice. Lots of traditional menu choices including veal parmesan, cioppino, numerous pastas. Picked the bruschetta as appetizer as is always our first choice. The tomatoes weren't very flavorful and the bread was over crisped for our taste so not our favorite. They also brought a basket of bread which was close to a baguette but a bit softer crust. This was served with a small ramekin of what looked like marinara but was actually closer to a puttanesca with a little snap to it. Quite tasty. The bruschetta was served with a small pile of mixed greens plus thinly sliced sweet onion & dressed with the house dressing. This tasted like an Italian dressing but lighter than most with what tasted like possibly a bit of citrus. Outstanding. So good we decided to order a house salad split between two plates. After perusing the many delectable sounding menu items, including a selection of specials, my wife chose her tried and true go to, fettuccine with Bolognese. I selected from the special sheet, the Spaghetti Carbonara, something I tend to try when we see it available. We had ordered the salad after placing our entrée orders so it turned out that everything came out as once. OMG! The portions were gigantic! The salad looked like two large dinner salads but I was assured it was one split in half. The app and the salads alone would have made a very worthy dinner. But we also had bountiful bowls of pasta alongside. Wife enjoyed her entrée very much but couldn’t possibly finish it. My Carbonara was perfectly cooked, with a good portion bacon. And plenty of parmesan. It seemed a little low on olive oil but a good stir brought more from the bottom of the bowl. For me, it was lacking quantity of freshly cracked black pepper but our waiter offered it upon request. I loved it. Highly recommended. The flavors of gelato didn't inspire us and after perusing the pastry case we decided to pass. Some looked a bit dry and being kept in a refrigerated case-which we have had bad experiences with before-caused us to pass. If you want some well-made pasta dishes and a wonderful salad in significant quantity, look no further...

As Italian visiting little Italy I have some kind of expectations when I stop for lunch to an Italian restaurant and this location, a part few exceptions, was disappointing. The service wasn't bad but the food on the other side was a "meh". We order a bruschetta, the easiest thing in the world, and wasn't that good and instead of a regular toasted bread they used a different kind of bread that felt more like old stiff bread than a fresh baked and toasted bread. On the other side the bread they bring to the table before appetizer was good. We ordered a pizza margherita (good just too burnt), cannelloni ripening that taste the same of the frozen ones you can buy at Walmart, a sub with meatball that were chewy and sure are not fresh made. The last was a minestrone and for God sake was horrible that even my baby was disgusted. After that we go to try a sfogliatella and what they claim to be an artisan Gelato..tasted more like a bad ice cream we ended toss the ice cream, the sfogliatella was good expecially when we warned it up at the hotel. A very disappointg situation was the restroom!!! Someone probably clogged it so they unclog it but there was toilet water all around and the water drainage at center was removed so I can litterally see bugs coming out, spiders and all the escrements. It was disgusting and the damn toilet do not even flush, I have to lift the lid of the water reservoir and manually pull the cap to flush. I'm sure the owner was aware of it but he prefer spend time chatting and wasting time with his employees than fix his place. Honestly there are better Italian places in San diego, so just go somewhere else and spend...

We went to this restaurant on 31th July at 9.15pm. we asked them that we would like to sit outside and if that’s not an option, we would dine somewhere else. The lady on the main entrance said “oh you guys can sit inside, place your order and then once the tables are vacant outside, then you guys can sit outside. Hence we sat inside and placed our order. After sometime we saw a couple of tables vacant outside and pointed that out to a lady in black clothes.But she was kept saying that there’s no space outside. Once we showed her the tables, then she said oh we are almost close. You guys cannot sit outside. we reminded her that we told you guys in the beginning that we would like to sit outside and if that’s not the option we don’t want to dine in here . Her response to this wasn’t pleasant and she took it personal. She was rather rude. We eventually talked to another waiter and sat outside. We sat there, they served us food without any spoons, forks and napkins.The food was served and we kept waiting for forks and spoons for at least 3-5 minutes. We called them at least four times to place the order for the drinks and she literally didn’t come back to our table to take the order and then we ended up going to the manager of the restaurant. I told him the entire situation and to Which He apologized and then started serving us personally. He brought all four drinks and he was the one who brought us the bill. The lady in the black clothes was staring at us all the time like we did something wrong to her by just saying that we wanted to sit outside. I’m leaving this review so the owner of this place should know how she’s treating...