Vanelli's

[wittzo]

We ate at Vanelli's last night, our baby-sitter happened to spend the night with us so we took advantage of it to have a late birthday dinner for Magnolia. We got a great parking spot right in front of the door, there were a few empty spaces.

We thought we would have a wait because there were a few people milling about, but they immediately seated us in nonsmoking. We ended up with a six-person booth. Sorry BSIGrim and TFAdmin!

The whole point of eating out by ourselves was to get away from the kids. Don't worry, there was a table full of preteens acting up next to us, being completely ignored by their parental units. There was also a group of twenty-something buffaloes at the table next to the kiddie table. We couldn't talk to each other in a normal tone of voice, we had to wait for the crest of the sound wave to dissipate. I was tempted the whole time to ask for a booth in smoking to get away, but...

We ordered the mushrooms for an appetizer, they were okay, but too greasy and too spicy. Better than O'Charley's, though, they are not spicy enough.

I ordered something that I thought would be semi-exotic, it had a Greek name but it tasted like Lean Cuisine stir fry. Magnolia ordered a mini-pizza, it was good, not like a normal run of the mill pizza.

We had baklava for desert, it was good.

My meal was sort of blah, the environment was bad, service was good. The dinner menu was a let down, there wasn't anything on there that was unique, they hid a lot of regular everyday menu stock under pseudo Greek and Italian names..The only things truly unique were the pizzas.

[calliope]

Wow, wittzo, I'm shocked to hear that! It's been a while since I've been to Vanelli's, so I don't have a recent experience to compare with yours, but I hope this was an anomaly.

As to the other patrons, I could start a new and very lengthy thread on the decline of manners in restaurants settings (not just Vanelli's, of course). I know we all have different standards of behavior, but it seems like the lower end of the spectrum is winning.

[wittzo]

I wish I had gotten a pizza...
I thought they had actual Greek and Italian cuisine, not just the same stuff everyone else had...

[calliope]

They used to, Wittzo. They had an incredible lamb dish with some sort of wonderful Greek marinade or sauce -- yummy, and nothing like lamb I'd ever tried. Can't even begin to pronounce the name of the dish, though, sorry. I think there was a Greek strogranoff kind of thing, too, but it wasn't called a stroganoff. (I'm really good with names, as you can tell.)

And they had some fabulous Italian food that went WAY beyond the kind of stuff Olive Gaden has. I remember Vanelli's had a calzone dish that put every other calzone I've ever had to shame. Then there was a stromboli thing, and of course the pizzas...

But it sounds like Vanelli's menu has changed since I've been there, and not for the better. So sorry, Wittzo. I don't know what's going on, but I hope Vanelli's gets back on track. It used to be a genuine one-of-a-kind restaurant, especially for this area.

Poor wittzo.

[The Jones]

Vanelli's is bad. I've been there a handful of times since my "incident", and everytime, the food seems to be way too greasy, and I feel sicky afterwards. By my "incident", I'm referring to the shrimp alfredo. I ordered the dish about 6 years ago on a date. I didn't pay much attention to it's looks when it was brought out to me. I suppose the crustaceans were too smothered in sauce to really get a good look at them. When I took my first bite, I discovered that the shrimp were unpealed! How do you eat a dish like that with the shells intact? The answer is, you aren't supposed to.