Valentino's Italian Restaurant
Reviews · · · ·Rating: 1
We ate dinner here in January 2023.
Penne cacciatore
Eye fillet with rosemary and red wine sauce and chips
Their tagline reads “The ultimate Italian venue for Pizza, Pasta, Seafood and Steaks.” So you could colour us surprised when we found there were no pizzas on the menu and the steak was one of the worst we’ve ever had.
Valentino’s opened in 1990, and it hasn’t changed since. Every chair, every table cloth, every curtain, every tacky postcard and dusty trinket, they’re all still there. The service was indifferent, although they did light a candle at our table which romanced up the joint a bit.
It wasn’t all negative. The pasta was actually rather nice. Great flavour, a little kick of chilli, and the right amount of parmesan, it was a pasta we would eat again. But the steak was truly awful. It was a nice piece of meat and plenty of it, but way under cooked (we ordered medium, this was rare to medium-rare). But the true horror was the sauce. Gelatinous and smacking of vinegary cheap red wine, Business Andy was literally scraping it off the steak. And the rosemary, which was in the Italian name of the dish by the way, was totally non-existent. It was insulting to pay $39 for this inedible mess.