Il Castello Italian Restaurant & Pizza — Restaurant in Virginia

Had to drop my review to three stars. My wife and I decided to have lunch here and while affordable, it was mediocre. The sandwich, side and drink IS really a good deal on its face. You wouldn't know there was, as I recall, $8.99 lunch packages by their web site, which not only doesn't show their lunch specials, it also has no prices. Someone from out of town having not picked up a menu here would have to ask for prices if they cared. The place also doesn't look like the picture on the web site. They got rid of the nice looking stuff you see there for basic booths/tables and chairs.

The seating still ticks me off. I guess out of convenience for them, they want to seat you in the main thoroughfare where all the traffic from the kitchen to the front for take out is happening. We didn't object at the time, but last time they seated us right outside the kitchen entrance, the most traffic in the place. The table was still dirty from the last customers.

We were there for lunch and had the specials. My wife had the meatball sub. She said it was just "OK" regarding the flavor, but she got 2 meatballs on one side of the sub and 1 on the other. She had to cut one in half in order to get a balanced sandwich.

I had the steak sandwich. It was light on meat, needed salt and pepper and the bread seemed not very fresh. They STILL haven't replaced the pepper shakers. If you want pepper, you have to remove the cap to get at it. Clearly these people dont use the pepper shakers themselves.

We like to order a lasagna takeout at Italian places because that is the most reheatable thing for dinner. What a disappointment. Maybe its "authentic" but if it is, I'd rather have the American version. Stouffer's is better than this and what we make at home is light years better. We order it for "easy button" meals, but wont any more...from here or the place (unaffiliated) over by Lake Monticello which has also gone downhill. There really IS no really good Italian food in this area. Mexican is the only decent ethnic food available at Zion's or Lake Monticello. That includes Asian, except for the little Japanese place at the Lake, which will cost you a fortune.

Original review, I gave them 4 stars because of 4 people at dinner one time, at least 3 liked their meal. I was also more generous on the review because it was during the COVID plandemic which was hard for restaurants.

My wife and I have always found the food here to be just "OK"...hit or miss. It's always been about a 3.5...

There is a Juliet balcony as part of the decor for this restaurant and tonight we certainly felt like we were in a Shakespearean tragedy! We ordered antipasto and pasta dishes with a side salad. When offered a choice of dressing, one option was Greek. I asked what is in that dressing and was told 'I don't know - it has lumps in'. They brought me some to try and it was fine, but I would suggest staff learn what ingredients are in common foods, or at least offer to find the answer if they don't know. The salads came out immediately, then nothing. Saw other tables getting their appetizers and then their entrees but nothing came our way. We asked a server to ensure we didn't get our antipasto at the same time as our entrees - she told us 'of course that won't happen' as if we were fools to ask the question. You can guess what happened next ... yup, everything came at once. There was talk of them keeping our entrees warm - we figured that would not be a great option so decided to go ahead and have everything at once. Server offered us bread so we accepted. What seemed like a long time later, still no bread, so we asked again - it looked like she had forgotten or the kitchen had trouble heating it. One of our party ordered a meatball with his entree - it never appeared. When we asked for the check we were just told an amount - so we asked for a bill. Sure enough the meatball was on the bill. So we pointed out we never received the meatball. Server just said "Oh God!" - no attempt at an apology, no offer to comp any part of our meal - after so many issues, offering to comp a drink would have been the decent thing to do. They seem very busy with take out orders and seem to forget the customers in the restaurant. More training for the serving staff would be helpful. Food was OK but the service lets this restaurant down big time - would...

I picked up lunch for my Grandmother, Grandfather, Aunt, and myself today. All four of us got the Steak and Cheese sub. We also got a order of Garlic knots, Three cannoli's, and a Tiramisu.

The Steak and Cheese sub were extremely small. They did not look like a normal sub. It looked like the “sub” was put into a dinner roll. My Aunt had requested no mushrooms be placed on hers. There was no way to tell which “sub” was hers as there was no distinguishing markings on any of the boxes saying no mushrooms to let us know. Now every one us agreed that the “sub” had no flavor whatsoever. My Grandmother barely had any cheese on her “sub”, and to top its off the jalapeños were not cooked whatsoever they were served raw on top of the “sub”.

The Garlic knots tasted fine, but the Marinara did not. The Marinara did not have the same consistency of normal Marinara. It seemed like they just took some watered down Tomato Sauce and put it in the sauce container and called it a day.

The Cannolis were not terrible but they were great either. Unlike the “subs” they had some flavor but barely any.

The Tiramisu was completely frozen over. It seemed like they just wanted to get rid of some old dessert and call it a day. After a few hours of waiting to dig into this Tiramisu I was simply not impressed. The flavor was very bitter so I firmly believe this dessert was made a while ago and just stuffed into a freezer for a rainy day.

I would give this place a no star review if I could because I severely do not recommend going here until they make the food have flavor and make it enjoyable. I will try this place again in a year so hopefully they fix these issues with the food and common courtesy of labeling a container that doesn’t have a specific...