PizzaVino NoCo Italiano — Restaurant in Windsor

visiting from out of town and decided to stop in for dinner. after reading the reviews, i was pretty excited to grab some good food! unfortunately that wasn’t the case with my experience. i put my name on the wait list which said 14 mins to wait. okay no problem, i was about 17 minutes away. i arrive at the restaurant, where parking is absolutely not ideal, and i check online for my wait time which said 0 minutes. walked inside where the hostess and another employee were chatting and gave my name, and they informed me there was a wait? okay….cool.

we asked if we could sit on the patio, which has an absolutely divine view, and the hostess agreed and was able to sit us quickly. after waiting a little while, a server finally came over to ask about appetizers which we ordered. i asked her for a soda, but she walked off. okay, no big deal. perhaps i wasn’t speaking loudly enough. she came back a little while later with the drink and app. my drink had 3 ice cubes in it which was confusing since we were outside and the sun was out and the temperature was warm and i’m not sure i know anyone who likes drinking warm soda. but again, fine no big deal, i’ll drink it and say nothing. the brussels sprouts were a BIG size, so if you’re ordering just be aware!

food came out and again portions were HUGE which was awesome. if we weren’t leaving so soon, i definitely would have taken it to go. the food itself was good, super garlic heavy and a bit too much sauce for my liking. but again, fine no big deal. unfortunately our server wasn’t super attentive, and while i understand she may have been busy it was still a bit frustrating to have to wait on her to come back to the table to ask for something.

at the end of the meal, i asked her for another soda and the moment she walked away i immediately realized i didn’t ask for it to go 🤦‍♀️ so when she came back, i apologized and said i meant to ask for it to go. i said that if she could just bring me a cup with ice i could just pour it myself. she then proceeded to point to another cup of ice on the table that wasn’t mine and asked if i could just use that one. um….? it’s not my cup? what an absolutely crazy thing to say to a customer. 😐 when we told her that cup was someone else’s she said that she was busy with drink orders and she’d bring back a cup when she had a free minute. again, WILD thing to say to someone but okay.

overall, very disappointing experience with the service. the food was okay but it is certainly not worth the price point they have it set at. if i’m ever back in town, i would...

Everything about this place looked absolutely awesome and I am very bummed that we didn’t experience it. Menu looks stellar - when I saw they had hand made pasta and offered a proper carbonara, I fought my wife on who would order it.

For the good - place is very nice, clean, and the service was perfectly adequate. Menu has seemingly nice options, good selection of cocktails, decent happy hour.

For the meh - fried stuffed gnocchi are just plain weird. I would not call them gnocchi- they are like little pillows made out of potato dough and stuffed with cheese, served with a pretty meh marinara dipping sauce. Not horrible, but not amazing, 5/10.

For the bad - our main courses arrived soon after. We both wanted carbonara as it has hand made pasta and the menu indicated it was made with egg yolks and no cream. I should have paid attention to the rest of the ingredients… We decided to split an order and have a pizza as well.

Carbonara was probably the grossest plate of pasta I’ve had in my life. It’s a shame, because the pasta itself was fine but the sauce… I’m not sure what they were doing with wine and shallots and garlic in the carbonara, and why they use parmigiano instead of pecorino. Sauce tasted like cheap white wine where they didn’t let the alcohol evaporate from the pan before they added the other ingredients. I tasted no egg yolks, I tasted no cheese, I tasted no salt, and the whole plate was a bowl of acid-y pasta with chunks of less than tasty pancetta. Carbonara should be simple - pasta, egg yolks, guanciale, pecorino, pepper - and it is so good because it uses simple quality ingredients. Whatever we were served was decidedly not it. We never send food back, but this was close. I feel cheated out of $24.

Pizza with wild mushrooms and spec was better. Not great. Slightly too done so the crust was too hard and too dry. Toppings were fine. Nothing could save the day after that pasta though.

We were not ready to even try a dessert after the pasta experience so we paid and left.

Bummer, because this place is close to home and looks good. I really hope this was just an off day - most other reviews indicate this - but I won’t be testing this. This was a $70 lunch without alcohol and a shared appetizer, and it just...

The family and I came for pizza. After 18 months in NYC, most pizzas simply aren’t good. The family hails from Connecticut and they brought New Haven style pizza to NOCO! We started with the HERBED BURRATA; unfortunately, by the time I grabbed my phone 3/4 of it was already gone and I chose to get my portion before I was left with just the remnants on the plate! Picture 4 slices of toasted focaccia served alongside a plate with a large burrata ball sitting on top of a sauce comprised of Basil pesto, apricot mostarda, pistachio, and twelve-year aged balsamic. This was a fantastic start to the meal! Then came the 2 pies: spicy mushroom and Margherita. The basil leaves on the Margherita were some of the largest I’ve ever seen and had so much flavor. The sauce has a nice depth of flavor and the perfectly melted mozzarella rounded it out perfectly. There was zero “flop” to this super thin crust and there were no burnt spots either, just baked to perfection! The spicy mushroom’s red base sauce was loaded down with Calabrian pepper, cup & char pepperoni, crimini mushroom, a mozzarella blend, and oregano. This was the same dough, but will all the ingredients the first 1/4 of the crust couldn’t support the weight of the goodness. This didn’t bother any of us because a quick fold and it was ready to be eaten. The combination of mushrooms, peppers, and pepperonis resulted in a unique and interesting taste with a definite spicy finish.

PizzaVino has a great selection of wines and fun cocktails. My wife and I both had a glass of red wine, which was excellent for the $9 price.

While the food was amazing, the service—from the hostess to the servers—was unlike anything I’ve experienced in years! They were all attentive, personable, and friendly.

You’ll want to go to their website to add your party to the waitlist before just showing up like we did. We waited 45 minutes to be seated, which seemed to be the norm.

Thank you, PizzaVino for an incredible night out with...