Angela's Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Virginia

Chef, what's going on in the back of the house? You okay back there or nah?

Front of the house staff is always amazing!!! Seriously some of the best wait staff in the area. Very attentive. Professional and personable. You will never have to ask for anything because they are right there already anticipating your needs. The best! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ for the staff!!!

The atmosphere is your standard Italian food/pizzeria joint. Basic Italian memorabilia scattered about. Vinyl booths with matching duct tape over the worn areas. Silverware wrapped in strong, full sized napkins. Giant plastic soda cups. Shakers with grated cheese or red pepper flakes are brought over for the asking. But you don't have to ask because the staff is ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

They always HAD great food and the community supported them with repeated business. We usually HAD to wait for a table. Especially on a Sunday after church? Good luck getting seated right away. We never cared about the lines as the wait WAS ALWAYS worth it.

Now? Not so much. Was/Had are the operative words.

Today we walked in and had our choice of tables in an empty dining room at the 12:00 lunch hour on a Sunday (without inclement weather). Which also gives the employees a very easy guess as to who is writing this review, but I have to be honest. Again, staff members y'all are amazing. You'll be successful anywhere you decide to continue your food service gig. Y'all rock! I digress.

Waiting in line is the price to pay for really good Italian food when you're south of the Mason Dixon. That was then. This is now. Now? Whomever they have as their head chef, or whomever is in charge of ordering/stocking the food, should be utterly embarrassed.

Going from one of our top local restaurants to serving elementary cafeteria food should be embarrassing. You had an incredible and delicious menu. We loved going to Angela's or getting takeout from there, and we would travel the extra distance past seven different Italian restaurants to eat at Angela's because you would have thought the food was from the very hands of my Nonna. Would have.

Husband ordered the chicken alla vodka (or some nomenclature for chicken and pasta with vodka sauce). The chicken wasn't chicken. It was mechanically separated pink slime fried chicken patties. 🤢🤮🤮. Pink slime chicken patties? WTAF chef!?! That's seriously gross and you know it. The sauce was decent. But c'mon now, you sacrificed your name and your reputation for what? You served what amounts to two large mechanically separated pink slime chicken nuggets with some decent sauce and a splat of mozzarella with pasta? Not real chicken. Not whole chicken breasts. Two 3 inch wide fried pink slime chicken nuggets. 🤮 Not decent food and you know it. You could have served just one actual chicken breast and he would have been happy.

I ordered the daily special gnocchi named after someone. It was gnocchi with a garlic wine sauce, cherry tomatoes, onion and mozzarella. But that's just a guess. The only flavor it had was salt. The gnocchi were cooked perfectly. So there's that.

It's terribly unfortunate as this was one of the last Italian restaurants in the area that was decent and cooked true to Nonna and Nonni recipes. Now, to anyone reading this I'm suggesting you'd be better off going ordering some chicken McNuggets and dip them in Ragu. Same difference really and at least you made the conscious decision to eat whatever that 'meat' is.

The staff is really good though. The restaurant was clean.

Seriously though? Giant fried pink slime chicken nuggets? Still shaking my head that the decline of real food has now hit a local Nonnis' kitchen.

Sorry if this comes off as pretty scathing but we're rather pissed y'all decided this was the quality of food you've decided would be the best for your customer base. You used to care about what you served. There used to be pride in your food. Y'all okay over there? I mean, WTF happened y'all? Let us know when you go back to how things used to be. We'll come running back and gladly throw our money down, but we won't...

UNDER NEW DAY TO DAY OPERATION MANAGEMENT

I’ve been ordering from Angela’s since January of 2020. They were my favorite restaurant. I’d order every week and the one order would give me days of food!! I spent on average $50 a week there.

However, since new management has taken over day to day operations in the past 4-5 months, EVERY takeout or delivery order has had something wrong, or something missing. One order they forgot to include a large calzone, I took responsibility too, as it was a huge order, and i should have checked all the boxes before leaving restaurant. When I called Renee (supervisor) offered to give me a free calzone on my next order (as I had already paid for it on the that order). Other orders have just had items that were wrong, and this NEVER happened before new management took over of the day-to-day operations. Today I did a Grubhub delivery order for over $70 and requested a cheesesteak sub that would not have lettuce, onion s or green peppers, but it came with lettuce & peppers anyway. When I called Angela’s, I got the new owner or new runner of the day-to-day operations, and he argued with me that I placed the order wrong. Argued with me in a raised voice. I offered pictures of the cheesesteak and sent them. Then he accused me of talking over him, and not giving him a chance to talk. He was berating me. He offered a free cheesesteak the next time, but how does that work, you get paid and have the money, but I currently cannot eat the product? You hold the money?

I was a loyal customer that referred many coworkers to the restaurant. It is with sadness I write this review and take my business elsewhere. Somewhere that will hopefully appreciate my patronage. The food, when prepared the way you ask, is great - it is recently the service (delivery/carryout) that should get 2 stars ⭐️ not 3. The food is only reason I’m giving 3 stars instead of 2 - the food is 4-5 stars.

In addition to accuracy issues and bad customer service, they use to have a loyalty program on their online website that gave you a $5 credit after so much money was spent - that was discontinued without reason.

One of my credit cards stopped working on their website. When I reported this, and was able to charge the card in person, they didn’t care.

I reported the ANGELAS5 promo no longer worked, which was $5 off any 2 entries wasn’t working, and nothing was ever done to fix it. When I picked up my orders the person giving me my carryout...

Stopped in for lunch after reading all the great reviews.

We were in for a surprise and not in a good way.

We tried the fried zucchini appetizer and were underwhelmed with the bland taste and too much breading. We asked for tomato sauce instead of ranch dressing and didn't get either one.

It took a long time to get our lunches and we noted a nearby table that was seated after us got all of their food before us.

When the entrees finally arrived, they looked quite nice. Sadly, the taste just didn't match the looks. My husband's pork chop cacciatore lacked flavor and the sauce was overrun by garlic (and he is a garlic lover).

My plate of pappadelle pasta with shrimp and vodka sauce was incredibly fishy smelling, the pasta was like cardboard, the shrimp were overcooked, and the vodka sauce was thin and fishy, neither of which is what vodka sauce supposed to be. Not mentioned in the menu description were green and black olives, and mushrooms. I can't eat mushrooms and I imagine that most folks would like a heads up about olives. Since we had already spent way more time than we had planned here, I picked the mushrooms out of my food so I could eat.

We can't tell you about the garlic knots that seem to come with a lot of entrees but apparently not the specials.

Our waitress was nice and, we assume, fairly new. We had to flag her down to get an update on our food, etc.

When we got the check, we were a little shocked to be charged $10 for Pellegrino when we had asked for and been served soda water from the soda fountain. The waitress told us 'that's just how they do things' and it was only when we said that we did not wish to be charged for something we did not receive a few times that she finally said that she would talk to 'them'. She did get the charge removed and we thanked her.

We had planned to share a dessert but there didn't seem to much point after the lackluster entrees.

Overall, a very expensive and...