Venesian Inn — Restaurant in Tontitown

I can't believe this, but my favorite restaurant for two decades has become a place I will never visit again. I noticed my last visit that the chicken in the chicken parmigiana was no longer lightly breaded but crispy with not much cheese anymore. Same thing happened this time. We were offered no refills. My daughter ordered a large fettucini alfredo, and we asked if it were truly a large, and the server said yes, but we know what plate a large comes in, and that wasn't it. We were offered two cold rolls after dinner was brought. It has always been 3-4. When I asked rolls to take with me, the server brought one. Yes, one. When I said this was very unusual, the server said, "This isn't Olive Garden." Everyone knows the rolls have always been a big part of Venesian Inn service. And so when I asked about the chicken, the server said, well, it's still from the same family. And for the size of the alfredo, she said, she's not the cook. The days of the older woman on a stool when you walk in, getting lots of bread and refills without asking are gone. I give one star not because you couldn't find a good menu item at Venesian but because how, in a flash, what made going there a treat for so long and justified the cost became clearly and finally gone. I will not return. Why would I when even the server basically recommended a different Italian restaurant that is not a local business but a chain? I'm seeing multiple other recent negative reviews on restaurant sites. If Venesian knows this, why is a server doubling down on not trying to keep a loyal...

We were seated fairly quickly but they had to clean off our table which was fine. When we sat down the table felt sticky like jam had been left all over it. The waitress said it was because the table was old and the finish was gone. I was like "OK. I can deal. Can I get a napkin and had to lay it on the table because it felt gross our entire dinner. Our waitress was fairly friendly and we ordered a meal to share with salads. Our salads came and they were just Lettuce and covered too heavily with their Italian dressing. When our food came, it was very underwhelming. The chicken fettuccine was over cooked, the red sauce they used for the eggplant parmesean and lasagna was "just all right" and the bread roll was overly grainy served with a honey substance but not actual honey. I never once got a refill on my water and had asked for small plates to put our food onto since it was a shared dinner and there was only one plate brought. She took so long to bring the small plates we both had to stretch and reach to eat our food and by the time she brought the plate our food would have been cold if we waited to eat. Our waitress asked how things were and I said "so so, none of this food is good enough to take home to eat again and mentioned the water and the plates and she gave a half hearted "I'm sorry" and took our $30 on the card machine and walked off.

There is never a desire for us to go back and I will tell people to stay away from this place moving forward. You'll have a much better dinner giving someone...

What a bad experience.

The tables are very sticky, and the cleaner they use makes it worse.

The food was overpriced for the portion and quality. The fettuccine and chicken were overcooked. The noodles fell apart and the chicken was chewy. The eggplant parmesan was over breaded and burnt on the bottom. The noodles were not overcooked, but were on the edge. The lasagna was meh. The sauce to noodle ratio was poor in that there was more sauce than actual food, and the food that was there was only of an average flavor that was largely indistinguishable from the eggplant parmesan. The salad was a joke. No, seriously. Some iceberg lettuce thrown on a tiny plate with some salad dressing. The dressing was decent. The rolls were grainy and I honestly wanted to spit it out about half way through chewing my first bite. The "honey" was liquidy and not really honey, but a honey-like sauce that was not good. The prepackaged saltines were good.

Then there was the service. We never once received a single refill. We had to call out our waitress to even come back to our table. When she asked how the food was, we told her "most of it was overcooked", and she didn't show any real care. She said, "I'm sorry. Your total is..." Talk about trying to salvage a bad...