Valenza Restaurant — Restaurant in Vernon Township

I have conflicting views of Valenza's Restaurant. My wife and I have eaten here twice. Our first stop was out of the blue as we were traveling back home after a trip to Erie. On our way up to Erie I noticed the inviting look of the exterior of the building. On our way home when I approached the restaurant I asked my wife if she wanted to give it a try and we did. Both of our meals were delicious and our food server was very pleasant and attentive. They were very busy and yet our food was hot and our food server managed to check on us. Worth a rating of 5 stars. The second time we purposely drove to Meadville just to have dinner there. This time they weren't as busy and we got a different food server. We ordered different meals than what we got on our first visit. I don't know if the kitchen staff was short handed but it took longer to get our meals and they weren't piping hot. As my wife was eating her rigatoni she discovered a piece of a label in the tomato sauce. Not that we were looking for a free meal but our food server wasn't even apologetic nor do we think she even warned the kitchen that there could be more pieces of the paper label in the sauce. We both got the idea that either she was very inexperienced or she wasn't very good at multitasking. It seemed she could only handle one task at a time. We asked for a glass of wine and a beer it took over 5 minutes to get it. We asked for a slice of peanut butter pie for dessert and it took about 5 minutes to get it. When watching her wait on other tables she'd only address one table at a time. She wouldn't ask close by tables if they needed anything until she was completely finished with the one table. This visit only...

We tried to call in a take out order and was put on hold for 10 minutes so thinking we may have gotten disconnected we tried calling again several times. Finally we drove there and asked the kid at the register if there has a problem with their phone? He said he put it on hold because they were so busy. We placed our order and was told it would be ready in 30 minutes so we went out to wait in the car . When we went back in the kid tells us he canceled our order because he thought we walked out. I asked to talk to a manager and was told I could talk to a waitress. I explained what had happened and she said they were short staffed and putting the phone on hold was the managers idea. I said people understand the worker shortage and answering the phone and telling them they were unable to take their order at this time might be a better idea than having people waste time driving in then having their ordered canceled. We were long time customers and would have understood but treating customers like this in unacceptable. This worker shortage crisis will pass but people will remember which local business treated them right and which ones didn't. Just be honest...

Changed owners. Prices are slowly rising and portions getting smaller.

We decided to give them another try after about a year. The menu has changed considerably. That being said, we simply went for a basic "Deluxe Pizza. First off it took forever to be recognized by the server. She finally came with menu's and asked what we wanted to drink. It then took a second forever to get the drinks, and we then ordered our pizza. MORE delay while the servers were up front chatting. There were only 3 tables occupied and all who were there showed their irritation with the fact they weren't being attended to. When our pizza finally came it was BURNED. Since we were really hungry by then, we ate what we could stomach. And when our server ask how things were we told her it was burned. Her comment was "oh, you should have told" me. Like she couldn't see it was burned when she brought it!?!? Scratched this...