La Fontana Del Mare — Restaurant in Upper Township

My family and I dined here in the beginning of summer and it was awful so I wanted to wait and see if maybe it was an off night. We returned recently now that it’s off season and while it was a better meal, it still just wasn’t very good. The food is under seasoned and pretty bland. I had a bruschetta that was more onion than tomato, fried breaded tomatoes that had no flavor/weren’t seasoned, and a veal dish that left a lot to be desired. Their pastas are probably the safest and best things on the menu to order, but still your average Italian pastas, nothing unique or note worthy. The staff also just don’t seem to handle the volume well. We received the apps pretty quickly (the waiter made recommendations for our party size and we just went with it) but we weren’t given the actual menus to order our mains until we had finished our apps. After that things just kept getting forgotten (we’d asked for silverware that took way too long to receive, we waited about 30 minutes for coffees and desert.) My husband also received a salmon dish that was so oily along with all of the sides that it was inedible, he told the staff this, and their response was just an “we’re sorry” leaving this item on our bill at the end. If you’re looking for a place to just sit outside and eat subpar food, you’ll be fine here but if you’re looking for a good meal that’s memorable for the right reasons, I would...

The service was excellent. The waitstaff were pleasant, attentive and hard working. The food was disappointing. I ordered the steamed clams in white wine auce for a starter, as well as the octopus special. Both came within 5 min of ordering. The clams had absolutely no flavor. None. I never had clams that were void of that fishy, briny taste. They were just bland and flavorless. The octopus was slightly better, but the sauteed onions that came with it gave it a little more if a taste. My wife ordered a Caesar salad which was pretty average. For a main I ordered the linguine fra diavolo, which was to be spicy with Calabrian chilis and shrimp. The dish I received was a heavy tomato, not spicy, with 4 shrimp. While not al dente, the pasta was not overcooked. I was hoping for more spice andmore of a seafood flavored sauce rather than a heavy, rather bland tomato taste. No garlic or seasoning taste. Just tomato from the can flavor. My wife ordered the penne alla vodka. The sauce was basically a cheese sauce. She said it tasted like macaroni and cheese. Disappointing. Also, bring your own wine. They do not offer glasses of wine, and all the wines they do have are in un-sampleable bottles that are all from the same California vinyard. The whites were basically chardonnay, pinot gris,and blanc de blanc. First time I did not order wine with an Italian meal. We opted not...

Place is nice and similar in vibe to their Sea Isle location, but not worth the price. It's an old school NJ style Italian Restaurant, not like a finer dining location in the city. Some of the stuff is homemade, but most is not. They used canned crab meat for example, which they'll only disclose if you play 100 questions. Seriously, "we get it every day" = we get not new cans of crab meat pretty frequently. We got the clam appetizers, and they were chewy as rubber bands. My seafood risotto was watery, so the consistency of the risotto was way off. Defeats the point of spending a bunch at an Italian restaurant. The arugula special salad could have been amazing, but it they didn't actually cut the ingredients and turn it into a salad (it was arugula. a few watermelon wedges with rinds on, cantaloupe wedges, a massive chunk of burrata and slices of prosciutto. It would have been amazing had it been incorporated into a proper salad; it wasn't.) Of our 8 dishes, the best ones were the 2 chicken dishes even though this place advertised itself as an Italian seafood restaurant. The service wasn't amazing, but they tried their best so it was fine. For example, they kept asking us to pass dirty plates down the full length of the table, rather than moving to each end to collect them. We were glad to help, but not do...