My first visit was pretty good, however my 2nd and likely my last was not. Â There was an issue with our bill and Fernando the manager rudely blamed my entire party for the problem rather than discuss the problem in a civilized way. Â The management in this place is very unprofessional and that includes the ownership as well.
Review Source:My wife and I have eaten there 5+ times in the last couple of months. Â The food is always good. Â There are always specials, which are amazing. Â I fell in love with the Brownie Crumble dessert. Â Amazing. Â There is a variety of things on the menu, and they are more than willing to make something special if you ask.
We will be going there many more times.
The only negative to the place is that it can get noisy. Â With the brick wall, the sound just bounces. Â Otherwise, it is a great local spot for us.
I dined at Taverna Uva Rossa last night with two other people and had a terrible experience. We were seated immediately by the friendly hostess, but waited at least 15 minutes before we were acknowledged by the wait staff. A woman finally stopped by our table to let us know that our server would be with us shortly--but he didn't come until about 5 minutes after that, when we finally asked the hostess, who was walking by, if/when our server would be able to help us.
The server was friendly enough. We told him we were ready to order everything, as we needed to be in and out fairly quickly. We ordered the burrata appetizer, which was tasty. One person in our group ordered the lamb chop special as a main dish, and my sister and I got the Caprino salad and Toscana pizza to share.
The salad and lamb chops came out at the same time. The person who ordered the lamb chops finished his meal, and we ate about three-quarters of our salad because we were waiting for our pizza. Finally the server came over to ask if we wanted anything else (basically asking if we wanted dessert or if we were ready for the check). We told him the pizza never came out and he looked surprised. He came back a few minutes later and told us the tickets must have gotten "mixed up." We told him we didn't have much time (since we had to be somewhere)--but he promised the pizza would be out in 5 minutes. We agreed to wait the 5 minutes. What a mistake... Another 15/20 minutes later, he finally comes out with a pizza, but NOT the one we ordered. It was a margarita pizza; not the Toscana (porcini mushrooms, taleggio, speck and truffle oil).
I could tell right away it didn't look like what we ordered--so when he put it down I asked, "Is this the mushroom and truffle pizza?" He said, "Oh right, you ordered the Toscana. This is a margarita." We were so annoyed at this point that we just said, "We don't have time to wait for them to make the right one so this is fine."
Then, to top it all off, I went to take a bite and the cheese slid right off the pizza and burnt my lip and face horribly. Today I have a nasty blister on my lip. After all that, I couldn't even enjoy the food that I waited about an hour for.
We ask for the check and I was APPALLED to see that he hadn't comped the pizza or at least one of the drinks we ordered. I've NEVER seen a restaurant mess up that badly and not offer to take something off the bill. It was a horrible experience and we will NOT be returning.
My friend posted the following review in May and it was filtered by Yelp. She wrote to Yelp explaining the review was her opinion and that she was a real person. No one has written back to her. So, here is her review again. Let's see if it gets filtered again....
Absolutely, Totally Insulted!
  My husband and I went there the Friday before last. We arrived at 8:45PM and stood at the hostess station in the entryway for a while before a waiter ran by and said someone would be right with us. A couple of minutes later, another wait person went by us repeating the same claim. Finally, a good five minutes after our arrival, her highness, the hostess, arrived. She asked if she could help us. We told her we'd like dinner. She looked everywhere except at us while she asked us how many people were in our group. My husband said, "Two." (In fact, we even saw an empty table for two just sitting there.) She looked around again and asked if anyone would be joining us, and he repeated, "No, just two." She proudly announced that she couldn't seat us. We asked how long the wait would be, and she said she wouldn't have a place for us for the rest of the night.  Their website states the Friday dinner hours as "5:00PM til Close," so how did she know we'd never get seated? She was rude and dismissive and absolutely turned us off from ever returning. We are Malvernites who were excited to try the new place in town. Now, I can assure you, we will never go back there!
My hubby and I came  here for wine and tapas and conversation. The food and service were very good. Our server Cheryl was so nice and attentive, we felt special. The bread and roasted garlic brought first, was Yummy!!!! It was just noisy, since the place was Packed! We had a shrimp dish, a proscuitto dish and a cheese plate, and red Sangiovese wine we had were ALL Excellent!!!  The grilled peaches with goat cheese and procuitto was an excellent ending to a delicious meal!!! We will definitely go back with friends!!! Yummy!!!
Review Source:I really wanted to fall in love with this place, sadly i left grumbling. It was amateur hour when it came to the bruschetta. It was something I would have made myself when I first started to cook at the age of 11. The bread was incredibly difficult to eat because it was almost stale to the point of being able to break your teeth. The toppings seemed as if they were thrown on top without any thought. This is a new place and I hope they get their act together. I want to root for this place and will give it another shot in a couple of months.
The positives: Great communal table, decent wine list, friendly staff, rustic and chic decor, Burrutta appetizer was acceptable.
We live near Malverne and decided to try this new restaurant as we like to frequent local businesses. All I can say is 'wow'. Â Our server, Tegan, was amazing. He explained the menu to us which is a combination of Tapas and main dishes. Â The wine was excellent- I had white and my husband had red. Â We are 'tapas' people and love the concept of 'small plates' that we share. Â We ordered 6 items which were more than enough. Â The lobster slider and the crabmeat slider at $3.50 each were great and the price was right. Â We had dates filled with cheese wrapped in prosciuitto, roasted brussel sprouts, spinach ravioli ( a main course), and peaches (cooked) with incredible cheese and another taste that I can't remember but was excellent. Â We were full! We were impressed with the service and the food. Â It is so delightful to find a 'city-like' restaurant on Long Island. Â We will definitely be back.
Review Source:This review is a few weeks late, but I never seem to find enough time to visit this site to post reviews after I visit a place.
Anyway, my husband and I recently moved to the area and were excited when we saw this restaurant under construction, since it was posted as a wine bar, and having lived in Spain, we are big wine drinkers. Once it finally opened, we made it a point to make the time to visit and that visit was a few Fridays ago.
Let me preface this with the fact that I KNOW and expect that weekends for restaurants are the busiest - however, I was not quite expecting such rude treatment from the hostess when we entered. The place is beautifully decorated, but when you have the first person who is essentially the face of the restaurant being rude, it is not a good look. First, she told us that no tables were available. Not a problem. We asked how long it would be to get a table, and she tells us that it is not even possible to get a table. Then says 'you know, it's the weekend, we're busy.' in a rude tone. She turned to say something to one of the workers, so as she did this, I turned to my husband and said 'well, next time we come, we'll know to make a reservation', and the hostess heard me and says to us 'we only take reservations for parties of 4 people or more'. Sorry, but who does this? 1 - I was not speaking to her, and 2 - she was pretty rude with that response too. If it wasn't for the fact that we were dying to try this place, we would have walked out right then. She offered to seat us at this huge communal table up in the front, and while we would have preferred to sit at a regular table like normal people do, but since that was not an option given to us and we still really wanted to try this place, we said ok. This table is cool, but it is really massive- almost too big for the area that it is in, especially when the place gets packed, which it had gotten packed a little after we sat down. It made it very difficult for the waitress to get around and bring stuff to customers.
As far as the food is concerned, we were actually a little bit confused because the menu makes mention of 'tapas' but if a Spanish person were visiting this restaurant, they would laugh at this. This restaurant is almost an insult to tapas with the prices alone as tapas is generally not as expensive as the prices on this menu. Regardless, we tried a few of the items to go with our wine and I will admit that the food was quite good. We tried 3 different kinds of the bruschetta from the menu, the calamari, and a few lobster sliders. The bruschetta and calamari were tasty, but the sliders were only so-so.
Would we visit this place again? Perhaps. It's still relatively new, so they may possibly just need to work out a few kinks, but I think it will be a while before we ever do attempt to go here again.
I m only giving 2 stars for now but this is mainly because of the overall vibe that was given off from the beginning. This is not a reflection on the food, or even our server. The hostess needs a little lesson in how to not be rude to the customers. They should also do something about that HUGE table. It's too big and when the place gets packed, it is really uncomfortable to sit there.
Uva Rossa is a new restaurant that just opened in Malverne. Â We had a reservation for 4 at 9pm on Sat night. Â The place was packed! Â The decor and ambience (except for noise level - super loud!), gets 5 stars. Â They out did themselves on the interior design. Â
The menu was interesting.  There were so many options.  The four of us shared the polenta appetizer with mushrooms, eggplant risotto, salad, and grilled squid, and a three cheese platter.  The polenta was a big hit with our table.  For myself, I like polenta in its original form, without all the creamy cheese.  Additionally, the mushrooms were resting on top and seemed to be reconstituted dried mushrooms- I think the dish would be more successful if they were incorporated into the dish  instead of as a garnish.  The risotto was extremely salty- hard to eat.  The squid was cooked very well.  If it was sliced, I think it would be better.  My husband although, liked it served as is- very tender.  The squid came on a bed of chic peas, which was described by our server as a chick pea salad.  He explained that it was a salad comprised of numerous things other than chic peas, and when it arrived, it was just plain chic peas scattered on the plate. The waiter also told us it was "the last order".  Which made us think we got shorted on the salad part, which is really unfortunate.  The salad was delicious, perfect - it was the house salad w dates.  The 3 cheese platter was very good also- we enjoyed ourselves immensely.
The service.  We had a server who was clearly very new, and not just new to the new  restaurant, but new to the industry.  We ordered drinks and he brought us pint glasses for Pellegrino- which should be served in small or wine glasses and did not offer us lemon or lime.  He took our order, we told him we would probably order more.  Once our food came, he didn't come back for over 40 minutes.  Had we not had time to get so full on the first round, we probably would've ordered more.  We sat there with empty plates for a while.  Finally, we asked a bus person to get our waiter.  We then ordered our cheese plate.  He seemed somewhat familiar with the cheeses.  When the cheese plate came, there was no label on the cheeses, and we again, had to get his attention to assist us.  There were also accompaniments (honey, nuts, mustard, etc), and he did not tell us what paired with which cheese.  The cheese plate was good- but needed more bread or crackers with it.  It was served on a cutting board, which was cool, but there was a brown paper between the cheese and the board, which was also weird.  The waiter also did not offer us wines that paired with the cheese, which would've been a nice touch.  Later, when we ordered dessert, he brought us coffees with demitasse (espresso) spoons instead of teaspoons- really odd!  He also did not explain the desserts well, and did not take the time to sell us on them. When the check came, he came back to pick up the check!  Which i think is so unprofessional for an upscale dining establishment.  When he cleared the table, they cleared glasses, including water glasses which is also a big NO.  In general, the waiter was friendly and tried really hard, but his inexperience was very obvious.
OVERALL- Uva Rossa has a ton of potential. Â Like so many LI restaurants, it almost hits the mark, but is slightly off. Â If the chef tweaks the menu a bit and oversees what is being sent from the kitchen (oversalted risotto, plain chic peas in place of a chic pea salad, etc), this place could be successful. Â The staff could use more training, and a bit more professionalism. Â Other than that, my husband and I would go back and try this place again in a few months.