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. Â Our waiter was pleasant and attentive. I had the salmon with cream sauce for dinner and my fiance had the veal marsala. Â 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!
Review Source:DINER BEWARE!!! Â 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. Â A colleague and I went out to dinner (travelling to the area) and happened across this place. Â We arrived on a Tuesday night in October around 7:30pm. Â We waited for roughly 5 minutes to be seated, no one was to be found. Â As it turns out ... the bus boy seated us. Â After being seated we waited for 10 minutes to be given menus and have our drink order taken. Â The restaurant is pretty dark. Â I do agree with some of the other posters - it could pass as a romantic atmosphere. Â The reason for it being romantic... it was completely and utterly EMPTY. Â 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. Â I was in for a RUDE awakening. Â I forget the appetizer that I had (I think it was the Baked Stuffed Clams?) Â the clams were overcooked (and subsequently very chewy) and bland. Â I immediately knew we were in for a rough dinner. Â
I ordered the seafood fra diavolo as my entree. Â GROSS!!!!!!!!! Â Every single piece of seafood was FROZEN, overcooked, and atrocious. Â My first bite was calamari rings that were in the pasta: Rubbery and Tasteless. Â I then tried a clam, which was so chewy after about a minute of I had to spit it out. Â 10 minutes later our waiter came over to see how our food was. Â I informed him that my food was inedible. Â I asked him to please have the manager come out so I could speak with him directly. Â The manager was actually cooking the food and was not interested in speaking with me. Â 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. Â How could they possibly justify $32 for a meal with seafood which was frozen and obviously from a bag and horrible. Â 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.
I was here for a work dinner. Valentino's is nestled in the quaint suburbs of Bergen County. The atmosphere is cozy but warm and welcoming, I was amazed at the amount of food that was served just for the appetizers alone. We had stuffed clams, sauteed and cooked shrimp, eggplant rollatini, and fried calamari. Everything was very fresh and prepared to perfection. The service was fantastic. The wine selection was very impressive as we feasted on some excellent California red wines like Cakebread Cabernet and Jordan 2003 Cabernet. The main course had a lot of selections but I opted for the Chilean Sea Bass. It was a perfect portion that was in a light sauce with vegetables. We also had a salad (Caesar...yum), pasta, and dessert. Needless to say, our party left stuffed and satisfied. I will definitely be back! I highly recommend this restaurant for a small party as well. Enjoy!
Review Source:Food good. Service not that great. Management completely non-existent.
Came in on a Sunday night. there were 2 or 3 other tables with people at them. Stood at the empty  host stand for about 10 minutes before we were noticed. Seated by our own waiter.
I got the lamb chop in a Gorgonzola madeira sauce. It was excellent. We started off with a gnocchi plate and it seemed a bit undercooked but was still enjoyable. Service a bit spotty, and with an empty management, I really only blame the lack of management. probably why there were only 4 tables on a sunday night.
I think this is a great place to sit with someone you enjoy and have a bottle of wine and an intimate dinner. Â The place is very cozy inside and the waiters are nice and accommodating. I had the asparagus soup which was yummy, and the fried mozzarella which was delicous. Â For dinner i had the veal marsala. Â The sauce was very good and the mushrooms added a nice flavoring to the dish. Â Now for the best part! Â The dessert. Â We had the chocolate cake with ice cream. Â We shared it so they cut the cake in half and set up two little dishes for us which was great. Â The chocolate cake was very rich in flavor and the ice cream was a nice touch. Â I would recommend this restaurant for a nice date night where you can sit in a quiet setting and enjoy each others company.
Review Source:My wife and I spent a good deal of time searching for a place for Valentine's Day dinner. She is a very picky eater, so it was very important for us to look at the menus online. According to the website, Valentino's was in our price range and had a few options for her.
We get to the restaurant, however, to find that there is a special V-day menu, and you cannot order off the regular menu. There was nothing for my wife to eat on this menu, so she was forced to order a chicken dish pretty much without anything on it. Not only that, but the prices on the "special" menu were considerably more expensive. I understand that alot of restaurants will have special menus for special days, however there was no indication of it on their website.
Next issue is that they were very overbooked. We had a 7 o'clock reservation, and were lucky that we got there at 6:45 to be seated. By about 7:15, the bar area was packed with people waiting for tables. From the grumblings we overheard, people with reservations were forced to wait over an hour for a table.
Being V-day, we expected the staff to be busy, but our waiter acknowledged our presence twice. Once to take our order, and once to give us our check. He never checked on us during the meal (drinks were empty for the majority of it), and never looked in our direction when walking past. After finishing our meals, we waited 10-15 minutes to get our bill (the only reason we even got it was that I flagged him down from across the room when I finally saw him).
Lastly, the food was lackluster. The fresh mozz appetizer had a solid coating on the outside, pieces of my shrimp still had some of the tails on them, and the chicken was stringy.
Reading other reviews, I'd guess this place is OK on your average night out. However, stay away for special occassions, they were extremely unprepared.
Went here for a lunch. The food was fantastic, but the place was literally empty. Service was very attentitive and everything came out hot and delicious. Prices are steep, but I wasn't paying. It is setup like a classic italian restaurant. Everything is very nice, food was super fresh, great time.
Review Source:We were a party of 6  and the restaurant was very busy and the wait staff was quite attentive at times and at other times not. We've been there a few times in the past few years.  The food is  good.  We had two vegetarians in the party and there was no problem finding food for them.  In fact one in the party ordered the Fettucine alla Matriciana minus the bacon.  It was just superb.  The salad from the special was delicious a gorgonzola with apples and lettuce.  Very good too.  Bear in mind everything is ala carte and yes there is quite a lot of choices.  As one the reviewers here stated his dinner was salty and cold, we had quite the opposite from him.  Our dinner was very good, service attentive, no broken tables but as he stated we had to ask for refills, etc.  It is expensive, there are other places, but this is Park Ridge, not Manhattan.  We didn't mind the wait as mentioned it was a party of 6 with time to linger, etc.  Everyone has their one ideas of what their needs are.  Ours was perfect for that moment.
Review Source:My husband took me to Valentino's for Valentine's Day last year. To begin with, it took 15 minutes for the hostess to seat us because she was so overwhelmed. We were seated upstairs in a small room with maybe 10 other tables. It took another 20 minutes for someone to come take our drink order, and we thought it would be wise to place our entire order at once. Our wine arrived and my husband's was wrong, but we couldn't find our waiter to let him know. A busboy came and delivered our appetizer after another 1/2 hour. We asked him to get the waiter so that we could get more wine and nobody came to help us. He did however stop by other tables to get orders and passed right by us avoiding our "Excuse me please!" We waited for our food for another 1/2 hour before losing any patience we had left, dropped a $20 on the table and walked out.
While we were there those 2 hours, two other couples in our room left without food being served and one couple left without even being able to place an order. Not to mention the middle aged woman who came in every few minutes to make the room brighter or darker - very annoying!
I would NEVER suggest to anyone to go here and I frequently tell people about the horrible dining experience we had.
Introduction:
I took my girlfriend to Valentinos for a special occasion and was very disappointed. I spend 2 hours on-line looking for a romantic upscale restaurant in Northern NJ. After reading through hundreds of reviews I finally found Valentinos. It has been rated one of the top romantic restaurants in NJ, the only thing that had me kind of skeptical was the HUGE menu (they must have over 100 dishes) and the reviews; If you google, yelp, urban spoon etc for reviews there will always be 20% 1-2 stars "service was slow, food was poor, not worth the money, we will not be returning" then the other 80% 5 stars "I come here all the time, the food and service are exceptional" how come there no reviews in the middle, why did all the 5 star reviews seem to be from locals or veteran diners??
First impression:
That brings me to my actual dinning experience. From the outside it looks very romantic (FYI, on some websites it says they have valet parking, this is not true). I first entered the restaurant the décor seemed outdated. I was greeted buy a very friendly little old lady who hung our coats up then we entered the dining room; EVERYBODY looked like they were 60+ and not only that, but it was obvious this is not somewhere where you went for a romantic fine dining experience, these were all affluent retired people that probably ate here on a weekly if not daily basis. My girlfriend and I are both in our early 20s and it was very awkward, everyone was staring at us (I'm guessing because we were young and not "locals") We were seated at a table that was all over the place; on my girlfriend side of the table the retractable part that folds out to make the table round was broken and hanging on her legs. It took 10 minutes for our waiter to walk over, I explained the problem and he sent the bus boy over to fix it with a piece of cardboard! He attempted to fix the table extension by leaning over my girlfriend's lap under the table, which I found very inappropriate! He couldn't fix the table so our seats were switched (we had now been in the dinning area for 15 minutes). When we finally got our menus the waited listed another 20 specials! Yes 20! On top of the 100 entrees!
The food:
VERY SALTY I swear to god I think they intentionally make the food salty so you drink more. The calamari was similar to my local pizzeria in presentation and taste. My meatballs were cold and overcooked, my girlfriends chicken was disgusting, it had this horrible glaze and was very bland, it tasted like it had been micro waved. The best part of our meal was her garlic mash potatoes and the presentation on both dishes was very poor.
Service:
Very slow, not attentive, poorly trained! We had to ask our waiter for refills, I waited 15 minutes for him so I could ask for Parmesan cheese for my meat balls then he disappeared and didn't return for 30 minutes!! In total were there for 3 hours, we spent most of our time waiting for the waiter.
Price:
For 1 appetizer, 2 entrees and 6 sodas it was $84. Thankfully neither of us were in the mood to drink alcohol because the check would easily been over $200.
Conclusion:
If you are a retired affluent couple or elderly group that enjoy wasting your money on bad food and have 3 hours to kill and argue about your children's college tuition fees this restaurant is for you!!!!
If you're looking for good service, good food, at an upscale romantic restaurant this is not for you.
My Husband and I have dined here a few times over the years and have always enjoyed our meals. I see the previous poster was unhappy with their Mother's day meal. I can't comment on that because I have never dined there on an Holiday type of day. All our meals have been on random weeknights. The restaurant is never overly crowded but consistantly has a few tables filled.
Our Food and Service is always top notch. The Osso Bucco is one of my favorites.
I brought family on Mother's Day to a nearly empty restarant and  was forced to order off the Mother Day Specials menu. 3 of us choose the chicken dish wich was left unfinished by all three of us. The chicken did not taste like a $26 dinner should have tasted - more than likely frozen or a reheat. Looks like they had anticipated a large turnout for mother's day but the crowds never materialized.
My wife had the special fish dinner which she rated very good and finished the entire dinner. Benjamin our server was attentive and pleasant throughout the evening, as he always is. Perhaps it was a bad night but nothing like the great meals I remember from years ago. A big disappointment especially when you are treating someone for a special occasion. I will not write this place off and will give them another try soon.
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