Bravo! Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

Rarely do I have nothing good to say about a restaurant that we visit and to be quite honest we very much had high hopes for our visit, but we were completely let down the instant we arrived. Literally the second group in the restaurant. Took maybe 5 minutes just to be seated. Asked if we had a reservation? Which was crazy becauseeeee nobody was there. Luckily we did assuming it would be busy, but I have no idea where that conversation would have gone if we didn’t. Got seated outside regardless. First off someone needs to reach out to the hostess and make sure she’s okay, because she seemed so down in the dumps and did not look at all like she wanted to be there. It is none of my business, but still she’s the first person you talk to entering the establishment might want to put someone more… vibrant as a front person. Anyways. The waitress was the same. Looked completely inconvenienced being there. Completely void of any personality whatsoever. By the end we had to assume they felt this way because breakfast service must be the pits to work knowing it’s going to be terrible. Ordered the food as quickly as possible because we were hungry and it took damn near 45 minutes to get food!!! WE WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE THERE ASIDE 2 OTHER PEOPLE. Can you guess what happened next? You guessed it. The food was a joke. $18 gets you 2 eggs still runny. 2 pieces of barely cooked floppy bacon. And some toast with a child sized handful of overly seasoned overdone potatoes. Next up our nasty waffles that there’s were no way were fresh that were tough to eat, quite literally. Next up my mother in laws calamari. I’m no calamari expert, but this is the only literal thing this woman eats when we go out, don’t ask me why, but she refused to eat it because she said it was incredibly tough and just didn’t look or taste right. Add in what we thought our experience was going to be. How hungry we were. The fact that we had no inclination a place could botch breakfast this bad and not only that but the service. We literally had a brainstorm as to whether or not complain to a manager, but seeing how everything else went we opted not to do that and to be quite frank how much to tip the waitress who barely came out and seemed like we were a nuisance to her. The only reason the tip happened was because of the empathy we had towards her down demeanor. It’s insane how much a depressed vibe in a restaurant staff can throw off your Sunday morning. Especially feeling like they don’t even want you there. And to round it off the bathroom ceiling was riddled with mold everywhere. All on the ceiling tiles. All coming out the ventilation. So take what you want out of this review, but at the very least stay away from brunch at this place, because when you have to go to another restaurant right after you leave one because nobody ate, there’s a problem. Serious let down. And a seriously large...

I’ll start by saying this as clearly and plainly as possible, THIS IS NOT ITALIAN FOOD! After living in Italy for 13 years, marrying an Italian woman, and traveling to a large number of countries Europe. I’m realizing that a lot of Americans(not all), have no idea what good food is supposed to look and taste like. Especially something that isn’t burgers and fries. Bravos felt like I was in a nicer looking Carrabba’s. If you want authentic Italian in the Hampton Roads, go to Luce on Granby, or Luce Secondo in Chesapeake. That’s about as real as it gets. Or if you go to Varia at the Hilton, it’s not authentic, but it’s good! Or even Andiamo and Signorelli for real pizza. Outside of those places, nothing else is Italian. It’s just sauce with no love put into it and dishes named things that don’t exist in Italy, like “Alfredo”. Moving forward. We ordered a kid’s lasagna and fries for our son. My wife had the Pasta Bravo. I ordered the Chicken Fra Diavolo. When my son’s lasagna came out, I almost laughed. No where in Italy will you find lasagna made with tomato sauce, and béchamel, on a singular dish. That’s almost blasphemous! But Americans don’t know any better, they’re at Bravos enjoying the scenery and nice music. Our pastas were bland and underwhelming. You can tell that both dishes were made with the same sauce, one is just spicy. Overall just tasteless. Sauce is supposed to stick to the pasta, be bold and visible. Not hide from the patrons fork at the bottom of the plate. After we “ate”, we asked for two espressos which took an unusually long time to come out. These were not two espressos that arrived at our table. It was just dark roast coffee in espresso cups…filled to the brim with no room to add any sugar. We also had to ask for sugar and a spoon, I guess we were supposed to stir it with our fingers 🤷🏾‍♂️. All in all, this place is a joke! And I’m sorry(but not really), if you think this stuff is good, you know nothing about the true food experience. To the woman who posted a review of this place raving about it, and her 4 star New York chef father who was very impressed….🤫 Just...

It was me and my boyfriends first time out since Covid hit. The host was very nice and accommodating. He was doing togo and running around doing other tings as well. He had high spirits and let us sit where we wanted. He didn’t get frustrated when I changed my mind about the table. That made me feel less embarrassed. When we got to our table, the scene changed. It took 5 minutes for our waitress to greet us. I understand that there was a 7 top that just got sat but wow. The waitress rushed us to irder and barely checked on us when the food arrived. I ordered a strawberry basil alcoholic beverage. It was very sweet and didn’t have any basil in it. It didn’t bother me too much. I was just trying to have a good time. We had the pepperoni flatbread as an appetizer. That was really good. The bread came out after the appetizer. The bread was also very hard and dry like it had been sitting under a heat lamp for too long. My boyfriend ordered the eggplant parm. The egg plant was very chewy and rubbery. The pasta served with it was good. We sent back the eggplant and got a chicken breast instead. The mood of the restaurant was very hectic. We we’re sat by the kitchen and heard everything that was going on. The manager in the window was yelling the whole time. He was frustrated, we could tell. The servers kept complaining about tables as well. They would bunch right behind us and just vent. It was very unprofessional how we could hear everything. After we got our food and the check, we just wanted to get out of there. We tipped the host on the way out because he seemed to be the only one working and doing his job correctly. We will not be returning here after this terrible experience. We just wanted to have a good time but we sold short. Not only didn’t they not comp the meal but they also didn’t check back to see if we had an enjoyable experience. The table across from ilia got better service than we did and it was maybe a 5 top. Just because were a young couple doesn’t not mean it’s ok to be treated this way. We would have left a hearty tip if things went the way they were...