Vingenzo's — Restaurant in Woodstock

I'm a little torn writing this review. On one hand, the food was delicious, but the whole restaurant kind of went against everything Italian.

I ordered a Peroni beer and a bowl of the Gnocci with Spinach. Admittedly, I went off menu and asked for the Pomodoro sauce instead of the Gorgonzola Creme sauce, but the taste was fantastic.

The first part that bothered me was the fact that there was no bread or anything offered as part of the meal. Even the smallest restaurant gives a little bread or some breadsticks to munch on to get you hungry for the dinner.

The second part that bothered me was the fact that the meal came out on this huge plate, but only a portion the size of a coffee saucer came out. OK, I get it, it's nouvelle cuisine so you get a smaller portion but richer flavor. But that's not true Italian though. You get a decent sized portion for your money. Especially since it's a 17.00 plate, a 5.25 portion just doesn't cut it. Also, there was barely enough spinach in the meal to even label it in the ingredients. The waitress remarked on how all their sauces are fresh and everything was fresh. But there was barely enough to taste it.

Going back to the whole lack of bread, when the waitress asked if I wanted the Foccacia bread (before I got the meal) I thought that she was being polite and not assuming that I was that hungry since there was just me in the party. I said yes, because it's just a common thing to have a little bread before your meal. I got charged for the Foccacia which after seeing the portion I got for the Gnocci, I understood why I was charged.

At this point, I decided that since I was going to have a super expensive dinner (even though I hadn't planned on having a super expensive dinner) I treated myself to a little Gelato that was fresh made. I ordered the Straciatelle which is a vanilla with a chocolate or fudgy stripe in it. Yeah, I got a vanilla gelato with about as much chocolate or fudge as would be in a half of a fun sized chocolate bar.

Also, no wine by the glass? Only Bottles? How do you not have like a house red and a house white? I'm all for the bottle for the table, don't get me wrong, but to not even offer a selection for the casual diner who may not want an entire bottle is somewhat baffling.

Chef Bologona, While everything was delicious, there are other restaurants around that give you more value for your dollar (Tuscany, Lucia's, La Casa Italian Grill, Mirko, etc.). It is with sad regret that I will probably not dine with you again due to this.

Sono entrato nel tuo ristorante per la prima volta in attesa di un assaggio di casa, tuttavia ho lasciato con nient'altro che un buon gusto e delusione. Il cibo italiano dovrebbe purificare l'anima e renderti felice, non te ne pentirai. Le tre stelle erano per il gusto, non per la porzione. I...

Vingenzo's was a favorite of ours. The food, while expensive for what it is (primarily pasta dishes and pizza) was great quality and delicious. The service was also great; we never felt rushed and the servers were attentive. That's what it used to be like.

Last nights experience was the opposite end of the spectrum. The food, both in quality and taste was marginal. I ordered their homemade gnocchi in Gorgonzola sauce. It was bland and the dumplings were limp and falling apart. When I asked the man I believed as the manager for grated cheese and pepper, he opted to "shame" me for asking for them, and advised me in a close to scolding tone that I don't need any of that because the dish was cooked the way it should be eaten. And walked away. The very same man shamed my friend when he asked if his pizza could be cut into slices. He first told my friend "that's what your knife is for" but felt it necessary to lecture us that in Italy, this is how pizza is served and we should try it. (Side note... we have been to Italy a couple of times and when we ordered pizza, it was served in manageable pieces). The manager begrudgingly did tell us that there is a pizza cutter but only the kitchen staff uses it. Huh?

Now for our server. We didn't see much of her. She disappeared for long stretches of time. She would never come check on us to see if we needed beverage refills. More than once we would have to track her down. She acknowledged we needed more water and would never return until we asked again...and then again. She didn't get our orders right. In it of itself, not a big deal. But there was no sense of ownership or urgency to correct anything. Instead, she just continued to hide from us. It took an inordinately long time for our meals to be served. When they were served, it wasn't by our waitress and they were cold. And she never bothered to check with us if the meals were right.

Her performance is not a surprise when you take into account how the manager behaved. We shared our feedback with him and he gave us a very weak attempt at an apology that included we have been busy with this other table. Obviously the other table was more important.

Vingenzo was in the restaurant but was not checking with guests as he had in the past. That's a big miss for him because I believe he would be disappointed to learn how his customers feel. Or maybe not. I hope that is not the case. By the way, the restaurant was not busy, there were empty tables during Saturday night prime time dining hours. If this is the new normal for vingenzo's they won't survive much longer in downtown woodstock because there are many...

I went to this restaurant for years, being grandaughter of italians and growing up in a italian community made me love and appreciate wooden baked pizza and hand made pasta, so I loved Vingenzo's, the Bianca pizza and Campagnola pasta were my fave, my husband and my parents always went there and celebrated bdays and all we could, we recommend this restaurant to many friends, the manager was really good, chef Michael was always very kind and nice, went on our table to talk to Us, waiters and waitresses were all very competent and fast, the Rucola salad always came on a bread and was always in a perfect amount and a great dressing, the only complain we had was that the pizza sometimes came a bit burnt. My husband even choose there to ask me to marry him, the manager even gave Us a glass of champagne, so they so me pregnant, my son was born and even his first pasta was there, he loved, but I always thought their pasta was hard for children, so the manager open his own restaurant and I started see the workers tired and sad. One day I asked to our waiter what was happening and he said that job was the worst he ever had, I didn't understand why, so I saw many good workers leaving and just staing 2 of the good ones and the food that was imported and really good started to loose quality, so we didn't go so frequently like before, cause the took the italian tea, and some pastas and pizzas wasn't in the menu, and one of them was Campagnola pasta, so I tried another pastas and pizzas, but they didn't have same quality anymore. We decided to give another try, the menu was way smaller, the Rucola salad in soup bowl, not more bread, no more red pepper, no more big italian olives and was for 10 dollars for a poor salad, the pizza was poor too and the really burnt and chef Michael never came to our table or even sais hi, like he was ashamed, cause he knew we would be very disappointed. After months of not going we decided to give Vingenzo's the last try and was a really bad idea, we ordered 2 pizzas to go, one Margerita and one Bianca witj prosciutto on the side and I made the mistake of not checking there the order, when we arrive home came a really burnt Margerita and a cheese pizza, cause didn't come with prosciutto on the side or arugula, we had to drive back to have that fixed. They really don't care about their custumers and I say that specially after try another great restaurants. I don't recommend and I'm really...