Robiolina Italian Cuisine — Restaurant in Virginia

Robiolina, how is your food so delicious yet service be so underwhelming? I want to give you all such a higher rating. However, your service has really made a negative impression.

As a former server, it is crucial to at least check in and greet the customers within the first 2-5 minutes of being seated. It took over 10 minutes for our server to greet us. The runners that are also working diligently however seemed to miss that my table has still not been served water at the very least. After 10-15 minutes our sever finally greeted us. Another 5-10 minutes went by for us to finally place our orders and get the menus we’ve been staring at for quite some time off our table. We placed our order and was then served the complimentary bread/olive oil. The food is their ONLY saving grace. The bread was amazing, warm and pillowy while also being a perfect sponge for the oil to carry its tasteful notes. Then came our fried calamari and jalapeños which was the absolute highlight of our food order. Each bite was flavorful, it had such a perfectly salty crisp while being juicy and delicious inside. Each piece of calamari and jalapeño was fried perfectly. Understandably, being a Saturday evening the restaurant will be quite busy. Our main dishes came out and I would have to say. Flavor wise was a 10/10. However I was underwhelmed by the portion size. The piece of ribeye I was given looked to be about a 2cm thin sliver. The mashed potatoes that were also plated looked to be about severed with the corner of a tablespoon. I understand if the goal of this dish was to be about quality over quantity. However, for around $30+ other restaurants have at least ribeye dishes with 1/2in - 1in thickness of steak minimum. And at least a spoonful if not more of mash. Again flavor was 10/10. But the quantity/portion size and quality of service was...

We went there tonight for our anniversary and had an absolutely terrible experience! We made a reservation a few days ago and had wait for a table. We are reasonable people and know that not everything will not be 100% all of the time, but when I complained about the lobster (or tiny half lobster) being rubbery and completely overcooked and lots of stones in the dish probably from the tiny muscles, the "manager", who was really just another server, told us he neither had the time or mood to deal with this. What did we want him to do? He literally said that! My husbands pork chop was also very fatty and overdone. This was at the end of a 2 hour meal, for 2 courses, that just deteriorated from the moment we walked in. The restaurant is in a strip mall next to a salon and ABC store and a far cry from fine dining they portray on their website. We don't recommend this place at all for a special occasion or at all for that matter! We will not be back!

Regarding the response from the owner below: The waitress, Paula, knew my complaint as soon as she came to the table. So no, we did not wait unit after we were done. We didn't want to wait another hour for the kitchen to remake the dish since it took so long to get our meal. She also lied about having talked to the manager as we found out later there was no real manager available. Tipping her as much as we did was a regrettable move on our part. Then the fake manager was rude to us and I/we did not change our story. Maybe you should have made the effort to come and talk to us, especially since the restaurant was almost empty at that point, if you were actually around. Although we were told no manager was on site. So the stories don't add up. Don't apologize when you clearly don't mean it and are accusing...

Really was looking forward to our meal here. Unfortunately, my experience was disappointing on multiple fronts.

First, or service seems to be a common theme for this restaurant and unfortunately it service was not good. Our server was friendly and passionate about the menu but was either extremely slow or just missing. From the time our entrees we're delivered to 15 minutes after we were done eating, or waiter never checked on us or walked past us even once. No refills, no fresh pepper or whatever else we needed. This restaurant needs to work on staffing rather than overloading they're servers.

Second, the food was mediocre. We had the calamari, beet salad, rigatoni and duck. The calamari was the one thing I think was very good. I really enjoyed the fried jalepenos. The beet salad was bland and under-seasoned. I had to track down our waitor for salt. As for the rigatoni, it was just lacking depth of flavor and complexity. Personally, I prefer Rao's over spaghetti with fresh parmesan. The duck was not bad and we enjoyed the blueberry sauce. Unfortunately, the mashed potatoes and steamed veggies that came with it were bland and flavorless.

Wine was ok, though they were not allowing any tastes before ordering. Everything was reasonably priced.

Not sure I understand the rave reviews unless it's just because it's Stafford. Food has to be quite good to overcome the failure of service. Together...