Valentino's Restaurant of Park Ridge

Old crusty - poor service - best days long gone since Nixon dined there.

My fiance and I had dinner at Valentino's recently to try the cuisine and possibly arrange for our upcoming rehearsal dinner to be held there. We were pleased! The restaurant is in a quaint old Victorian home and it appears to be family run.  Our waiter was pleasant and attentive. I had the salmon with cream sauce for dinner and my fiance had the veal marsala.  Both were delicious, with just the right portions and sides. We were so content with our meal and service that we booked a private room upstairs for our May rehearsal dinner! Can't wait to return!

DINER BEWARE!!!  The 4 and 5 star reviews are simply not reality!!

I eat out an awful lot, and this is the first restaurant I have ever seen that deserves to be on a reality TV show - because this is eventually going to go under.  A colleague and I went out to dinner (travelling to the area) and happened across this place.   We arrived on a Tuesday night in October around 7:30pm.  We waited for roughly 5 minutes to be seated, no one was to be found.  As it turns out ... the bus boy seated us.  After being seated we waited for 10 minutes to be given menus and have our drink order taken.  The restaurant is pretty dark.  I do agree with some of the other posters - it could pass as a romantic atmosphere.  The reason for it being romantic... it was completely and utterly EMPTY.  If this place was even decent, it should have 2-3 tables seated.

The first thing I noticed was the prices of the items was very high - I was actually excited since higher prices usually indicate better than average food.  I was in for a RUDE awakening.  I forget the appetizer that I had (I think it was the Baked Stuffed Clams?)  the clams were overcooked (and subsequently very chewy) and bland.  I immediately knew we were in for a rough dinner.  

I ordered the seafood fra diavolo as my entree.  GROSS!!!!!!!!!  Every single piece of seafood was FROZEN, overcooked, and atrocious.  My first bite was calamari rings that were in the pasta: Rubbery and Tasteless.  I then tried a clam, which was so chewy after about a minute of I had to spit it out.  10 minutes later our waiter came over to see how our food was.  I informed him that my food was inedible.  I asked him to please have the manager come out so I could speak with him directly.  The manager was actually cooking the food and was not interested in speaking with me.  Personally - I found this to be ridiculous - how could you not speak to a customer when the customer is specifically asking to speak with you.

I spoke to the waiter again when he came to tell me this and I told him that I expected fresh seafood for $32 dollars.  How could they possibly justify $32 for a meal with seafood which was frozen and obviously from a bag and horrible.  The waiter seemed irritated in general, and then after 2 or 3 trips back to the kitchen said that he would take it off the bill, although his tone of voice was quite negative.