Nonna — Restaurant in Thousand Oaks

Overhyped, yet underdelivered. Huge disappointment. I do NOT recommend this place. And yes, it is $100 per person, IF you want to have a nice dinner. Do the math yourself to include an appetizer, a main dish and a side dish.

Here's why:

Nonna's though, is NOT worth the $100/person price.

The Service is a solid 5 stars though. They were all very well dressed, very courteous, very much on top of things, and they do check in on you quite regularly.

What I didn't like though, the number one determining factor for why I gave this place 1 star was that I really don't feel like the money you're spending here is justified.

$53 for risotto with mushrooms: 1 solid cup of rice in a bowl... aka small, tiny portion. Flavor?... nope, not enough salt. I tasted the mushroom, but I think just a touch more salt during the cooking process would have made this flavor stand out. It's too passive. Truffles? Where? I think maybe there was one little sliver of truffle that I noticed or saw. This dish should be $30, and twice the portion size.

$22 ricotta stuffed zucchini Blossom: ...for 3 of them. Seriously?! At least give me 6 of them for that price. Again, they don't salt it when it comes out of the fryer, and there was no flavor in the ricotta. Plain, bland. The marinara sauce that was served on the side was straight out of a jar...Ragu, Progresso, Hunts Tomato Sauce in a can? I'm sorry, too cookie cutter for a place like this.

$23 for the 12" pizza Diavola: considering the limited menu selections of this place, I guess the price was right. Only problem is that it's drowned in a sugary slurry of near raw onion. Way too much sugary syrup. I was thinking this was going to be nice pizza dough topped with Salami. The crust was good, but I couldn't get beyond the sugary syrup of the onion to taste anything else. And again, not enough salt.

$14 balsamic syrawberry cocktail: the only thing on the menu that was priced correctly, and actually was worth it, sorta.

Bread & sundried tomato: terrible. The crust of the bread is nice, I do like the airiness. But no flavor. There's not enough salt in the dough to be able to taste the bread. The sun-dried tomato was horrible. It's not "earthy," it flat-out tastes like dirt. There's no flavor, no depth, nothing. It needs some garlic, some salt, some flavoring, something to bring out the sun-dried tomato. These are probably the kind of sun-dried tomato you get from a restaurant depot type place.

The menu here is too limited, with very few choices. I feel like everything on this menu is an appetizer. You need to order at least four or five things to feel satisfied, and get the feeling that you had dinner.. so, you'll spend $100/per person. Ridiculous!

Ambiance inside? Horrendous. The ceiling is too low, the noise level is way too loud, and there's nothing to dampen the sound level from one corner of the room to the other. You can literally hear in detail what's going on 50 feet away at the table on the other side of the room. The lighting in here is another atrocity. We walked in the door 2 hours before sunset., and I couldn't even see the menu. I had to turn my flashlight on my cell phone. Farmhouse white walls? I feel like I'm going to a country bed and breakfast, get getting charged Four Seasons Hotel prices.

The owner was another joke. I saw him walking around, and flirting with a couple of the younger ladies close to the bar area. But he never bothered to go around to the tables to check in on what people thought of his food in the first couple hours of opening. You probably couldn't get him to hear you anyways with the volume of the room being so loud.

I'm sorry, but for the high prices, the flavorless food, the small portions, the LOUD noise level, the dark room, and the pain in the a$$ long wait, I will probably never come back to this place.

There are other Italian restaurants in the area in a similar price range that have better food, better atmosphere, better menu choices, and certainly better overall experience for the price you're paying compared to what you're...

Ridiculously small portion size

First off, the atmosphere was incredible. Beautiful place and wonderful for date night/ celebrations. Our server was great and very sweet.

Now to the bad part of the experience. The food. Not the taste, the taste was really good. THE PORTION SIZE WAS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. My boyfriend and I paid over $100 to leave this place still hungry. And not just a little hungry. I felt as if I had only eaten a saltine cracker and a spoonful of pasta. Why are the portions so small??? Was there a shortage of food or something? I kid you not, NOT exaggerating, the portion of pasta we each received was PALM SIZED. Literally the size of my palm. I seriously could not believe my eyes at the small parcel of food I was served for over TWENTY DOLLARS. I could have gotten twenty tacos from Del Taco and been full and not starving for that price. The taste was really good, don't get me wrong, but the portion size!? Especially for an Italian restaurant I am used to larger if not NORMAL portion size. Did I accidentally order off the kid's meal?? I don't get it!!! I did not complain at the time because I do not like to complain unless something is absolutely atrocious, I am pretty easy going believe it or not. But, over the course of days and looking at my bank account at the over ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS spent on half a cup of pasta I have become more and more enraged. It is absolutely ridiculous that we were served such a small portion for the price that we paid. We literally just got pasta noodles with a sausage sauce, why is it so expensive for such a small portion!? It's not like I ordered Wagyu steak pieces and gold mixed into my pasta, I truly do not get it. The table next to us ordered salads and steak and their portion sizes seemed to be normal and actually pretty large. Why were we served a DROP of pasta!? I do not know if it was only our table that was being put on some sort of diet or what, but I am not exaggerating at how ridiculously small the portion was. My boyfriend was done eating his whole "plate" of food in under one minute. I feel like crying remembering the true heartbreak and disappointment of being served such a measly meal.

On the bright side, the rose blend of wine I tried was very good and the Nonna's Cake was AMAZING! This dessert was incredible and really the only thing that stopped me from crying over the HUNDRED DOLLAR CHECK. The wine and dessert made it almost worth it. Highly recommend this cake.

I would highly recommend this place for drinks and dessert, otherwise unless you want to be starving after eating what is supposed to be DINNER then do not come here. Great atmosphere and service, great tasting food, TERRIBLE...

I think chef had an off night. I’m definitely going to go back and try again, maybe try different menu items. I’d like to try a pasta dish and a dessert, I ordered filet mignon with potatoes and spinach. The spinach was gross and tasted like a microwave meal. The roasted potatoes tasted like rosemary and not much else. I couldn’t find a waiter to give me a steak knife, so I just started eating my steak and asked for it medium but it was raw in the middle and charred on the outside. I don’t know what cut it was but I’ve never had such a hard time cutting into a steak. I couldn’t get anyone’s attention to get some salt and pepper either. It was super tough and I wound up throwing 3/4 of it away. I didn’t want to send it back because prior to that I ordered the squash blossoms. I don’t know what was served to me, but they were not squash blossoms. I bit into them and the cheese was frozen in the middle so I did send those back. The one great thing about this restaurant was the bartender. He was all about customer service and making sure you were happy & tended to. He was very good at making sure I was happy with my selection and great at customer service. I left the restaurant hungry, I couldn’t wait to get out of there because they had live music and the sound gave me a headache within 10 minutes of getting in there & into the next morning. The sound & base was way off and you couldn’t even hear anything anybody was saying. I think this restaurant could make some tweaks and really improve some things and might be great to try again. But I’m not going back...