Vongole Positano
Via Veneto

Via Veneto

1309 Shenandoah Rd, Alexandria, United States

Soup • Coffee • Cheese • Italian


"Really, really mediocre. I wouldn't recommend this place for date night, nor for anyone I looked after. For $40, my wife and I got Chicken Florentine and Spaghetti Puttanesca. Served before our meal was homemade bread. The bread is very dense - it took more time to prove before baking. (And possibly more baking time: its texture was... restless. Then our meals came. None of us have finished our meal. 1. Chicken Florentine Fried chicken stable, with a bed spinach, melted cheese, and served with sauce. the chicken was tendered accordingly; but was unbelievably bland: the chicken was not seasoned. I don't think the pre-packed chicken stall was. The spinach was disgusting. It was bitter. It was soggy. It was prepared for one of two ways: 1. Either it was in a tub of heated, wet spinach or 2. Frozen by boss Mike. The microwave. This is more likely, more details next The cheese was melted, but there was no browning. Nothing to recommend the typical preparation: heated and melted under a broiler. No. That was the sign of Chef Mike again. (The microwave The lemon sauce had no taste. No lemon: not even a hint of lemon. It was just... Bland. Spaghetti Puttansca I admit: the sauce had a good taste. I like the fishiness of the anchovies. The noodles: They were from a box you got in a grocery store. Cooking according to the package. I would expect a Nordic Italian restaurant to be proud of its pasta: I don't think so. The sauce was delicious. But so... wet! So watery! Tomato sauce is usually thick. This is the stuff of coloring your favorite shirt: wet tomato water sprays everywhere you eat. Both meals were served with one side of Parmesan cheese. It was a small bowl of power grated Parmesan, with a discarded straw winder hidden underneath. It is an impressive piece of mental gymnastics, for an upscale looking Italian restaurant too: 1. failure to bake bread accordingly 2. Choose to cook dried noodles... bad 3. Serve the poorest quality cheese that is 10% not cheese. (For more reading, you can post an article by Forbe's magazine entitled Most Parmesan Cheeses in America are fake, here's why this restaurant is characterized by feeding large amounts of hungry mouth (children who are only happy to eat something, eating the food similar to a class school cafeteria. If you want to treat yourself in Italian, I recommend the 15 minutes drive to the old town. The waiting staff is... mediocre, but not so appetizing. We were not offered a list of daily specialties, nor did they do a courtesy check after we served our meals: How is everything tasted? I understand it's a courtesy. And we were not interested in any of the specials (a table next to us asked. If the waiter had asked, the Florentine would have been sent back to the kitchen. ...that would have deliberately... Overall: I am not going back. I would encourage anyone I knew not to go. Your location is probably the only contribution t"