Ciao Ristorante Italiano — Restaurant in Vista

Terrible place. Kicked out. My mother who has been a caregiver for over 20 years gets tons of different people she has to take care of that have different sickness. Well currently she has a client that has Alzheimers. So the lady calms down an the she will act all jumpy an says words she doesn't mean some times. And can get a little rowdy. Well we sat down barely got our drink Lara is the client. Not her real name just changing it. Anyways started to get a little rowdy. Had a waitress tell us that we needed to leave. My mother has been coming to this restaurant since 2012. An there was a different waitress that was 100% understanding of my mothers situation. And there was never a problem. This new lady had a problem and told us that we had to leave because Lara was being to loud an acting sporadically. This lady must have never seen or dealt with this. Oh might I add no customers where complaining in fact they where laughing. Because Lara will say some funny things. Simply the waitress said I am going to have more customers and Lara will ruin it for them. I assume this waitress cared more about people that might show up to eat then the people that are actually there. The restaurant was basiaclly empty with the exception of maybe 8 to 10 people. An of course the workers. The reason this waitress was so disturbed was because Lara Roared at me like a lion. An bothered NO ONE ELSE literally not even the waiter. This waitress was not our waiter .we had a Gentleman begin to take our order ,he who ever he was had no problem with at all she was a bit rowdy with him but that didn't even bother him. She had most of her attention on me. So if you have a family member that is sick or has Alzheimers or Dementia or that can be a bit rowdy do not go here or you'll be kicked out. You won't be asked to sit in a less populated area you will just be told to leave. I will never go to this restaurant again and I don't believe that my mother will ever go here...

North County and SD have plenty of better places for around the same or even cheaper, BUT I'd come back because I like the deli aspect and ambiance. Definitely, date night for a mid-week date restaurant.

We got the mussels and clams pomodoro, Greek salad, seafood risotto, the pear cheesecake, and the pistachio cheesecake.

I lived in NJ for a year, worked in Napa, and grew up in LA. My dad actually owned an Italian restaurant franchise from Jersey at one point. Italian food is good most places, but some places are just on another level. Ciao is good on that scale. 6 or 7 out of 10.

The mussels and clams are great. White wine with the pomodoro tomatoes! Chef's kiss! This is going to be my go-to here. Something about the white wine, pomodoro big chunks of tomato, and sliced garlic!

The Greek salad is great tasting, but fire the cook for that presentation. It reminds me of when everyone was doing "deconstructed" salads. Do your job and cut up the meat and cheese. Take it out of the sandwich setup it comes in! Great taste, but failure at presentation and execution.

The risotto was too mushy and overcooked. 3/10, and the taste was okay. Should have ordered the salmon or the vongole that I've had before. Both much better for the price!

Desserts were frozen and they weren't great tasting either once we thawed them at home. The presentation was great, though.

Homemade bread was fantastic! They could use better olive oil. This kind of stuff matters!

Overall, I'd definitely come here to grab a sandwich picnic and a side of mussels and clams (serious, that sauce is 10/10 - grab another house bread). The house wine is decent, but you could get a bottle of Justin's cab for that and a Nine Hats cab at Vons. Both are better, IMO. Good idea for a date night dinner, but there are just so many places that have better tasting pasta and Italian dishes. Ambiance is one of the better ones in North...

Ah, what a bummer. I’m a big fan of Italian but I actually do not have the highest standards as it’s pretty easy to get Italian into the “good enough” range. But I hesitated visiting as I’d also seen the photos on Yelp and here: floppy pizza crust, loose sauce with no real seasoning visible, etc. From the photos, I couldn’t imagine it being any good. But after years of seeing how busy Ciao is I thought the problem must be me, so I finally went and tried it out.

Guess what I woke up with the next morning? Food poisoning. I actually wasn’t too surprised. Again, look at the photos. We didn’t even get food with meat in it, so it had to be some contamination issue with cheese or sauce. Worse, the dishes were all just as lackluster I had suspected. Loose sauce, overcooked pasta, seriously undercooked Neapolitan pizza crusts

I heard that the owner has been in Vista for a good while and I understand it’s a place aimed at families with kids. I also get that they aren’t trying to be anything close to “authentic Italian”. That’d all be well and good, except that it’s not even decent American Italian (and I love Americanized Italian dishes just as much as the classics from Italy).

There is SO MUCH potential here with such a nicely designed location. I am such a fan of supporting local business so I take no joy in writing this review, but unfortunately all that potential is currently being wasted in my opinion unless they put in some substantial quality control and rethink a few of the recipes.

And please: don’t space out the ladyfingers in a tiramisu just to save a few cents. It completely undermines the dish to have no real textural distinction between the mascarpone layers. And the tiramisu was probably the best thing we had as far as overall quality (nicely fluffed...