Nonna's Kitchen — Restaurant in Spearfish

Not mad, just disappointed. Have been eagerly anticipating the opening of Nonna’s, and tried to get in last week. They were fully booked for the night! Which was great, I’m always genuinely happy to see small local businesses succeed. So I made a reservation for tonight (the following week) and invited some friends to join me. Got to the restaurant tonight, and immediately loved it. Quaint, cozy, great overall atmosphere. Sat on the balcony which was great. Then, the...hiccups, started. Didn’t have a problem with the food or price, I’m fine paying good money for a good meal. But the service left a lot to be desired. And I really don’t mean for this to get anyone in trouble, but as constructive criticism for a new business. To make things easier, we made sure to explain how checks were going to be split at the beginning of our meal. Then when drink orders were taken, one of my guests ordered an iced tea. Three of us ordered wine, and the other just water. When the drinks came, we were missing one glass of wine, and my friend asked for some sugar for his iced tea. Was told no problem. Evening continues. After repeated trips to our table and still no sugar, I eventually went down to get some from the bartender. Three of the five of us have our food come out, and wait for the other two to get their food before we begin our meal. At least 15 minutes pass before the last two plate are brought out (one of them being a salad that couldn’t have taken longer to cook). We gave up on the third glass of wine, until it eventually made its way out about three quarters of the way through our meal. All of us ran out of water shortly after the meal started, and never got a refill. Finished a decently tasting meal, and were asked If we’d like a dessert menu, and asked again how checks were to be split. We decided to take a look at dessert, and one of the couples joining me decided on some yellow cake. Waited for about 10 minutes again, and our waiter came back only to tell us they were out of yellow cake. We said no problem and we would just take the checks. Our waiter then had to go around the table to confirm with each of us ordered. And then the checks were still divided wrong. This was corrected, and the meal itself overall was decent. I really hope Nonna’s gets these kinks worked out, and I wish them the best in the future and going forward. Would recommend waiting for a while before spending...

Once I got passed the VERY weird fact that this restaurant didn't have chicken or veal parm on the menu, it was all amazing from that point forward! I'm sorry I didn't take photos. We had a harrowing journey to get there after going through a hail storm in Spearfish Canyon and I just didn't have my thinking cap on.. lol. For starters we had Nonna's Meatball appetizer, which was $13 and was unfortunately only 3 small meatballs served without ricotta. While the portion was small, it certainly made up for it in taste and texture! These were some of the tastiest meatballs I've ever had and the texture was perfectly fork tender. The artichoke dip was very creamy and came with toated bread points for spreading. Next up was a sausage and dumpling soup. The dumplings were gnocchi and the sausage was ground up in a rich and thick broth (think thick potatoe soup) that was simple amazing. For dinner, my wife had a dish called crazy green spaghetti, which was a rich pesto cover pasta. The traditional garlic filled pesto was blended with cream and butter and made for the richest color and an extremely creamy sauce. I ordered the "award winning" 24oz Lasagna. Let me start by saying that I normally don't ever order lasagna or ravioli when I go out to eat, simply because the portion is just not big enough for this fat guy. That being said the 24oz label on this one had me thinking I wanted lasagne and big am I glad I did. If you don't like a meaty lasagna, then this dish is not for you! But if you're like me and love a meaty lasagna, this was awesome! More like meat pie! I highly recommend this dish until they put CHICKEN OR VEAL parm back on the menu! My wife and I finished our meal splitting a piece of lemon cream cake which was flavorful, moist and creamy...all in all this was a surprise find for Italian food in the Black Hills! My prior experiences with Italian food in this region always left me afraid to even bother eating Italian food when traveling in this area... now I know where my new goto place in the...

We went to Nonna's Restaurant last night for a new dining experience.

The owner greeted us at the door and was very warm and friendly. He explained the origins of the ideas behind their endeavor and explained some of the architectural designs and ideas. Very nice looking place with a warm atmosphere. The waitress was very attentive and took our wine order. Then it was as though she became overwhelmed and well she should have been. She had 8 tables of varying sizes assigned to her. Far too many tables for one waitress that had to take orders, bus tables and deliver food, dessert and coffee. Also each cup of coffee was a new setup. Our party of four ordered different items including Chicken Marsala, Spaghetti & Meat Balls, Chicken Parm and Shrimp Scampi. The flavor of the dishes was alright but non of the food came to us truly hot. In particular I sent the Shrimp Scampi back to be heated..It came back with a plate too hot to touch but the food was still just barely warm. The thing that really surprised me was that the shrimp were obviously frozen and it was in fact freezer burned. Dry edges with freezer burn along the entire back of the shrimp and it was very tough. We ordered dessert and had what was called Birthday Cake which was extremely dry. We also ordered a cream puff that was not memorable.

I'm sure they are trying but probably needed to have a week of soft openings to work out the kinks and to test their food. In all fairness we will try Nonna's again to give them a...