Via Lago Trattoria

I live for this place! The food and ambience are TOP notch. I have had their antipasto and gnocchi many times and it is the best in town. Definitely recommend.

Came here for happy hour and was impressed. Pizza, mussels and olives were all really good. Décor was nice. Staff was great. My wife loved the salad. I hear they have a great piano player some evenings. I am giving it 5 stars despite there being a weak beer selection (ipa please). Will definitely be back.

Not at all impressed. Crappy service and mediocre food. Went once and wasn’t impressed. Went back to give it another shot and ended up walking out because after 10 – 15 minutes no one came by to take drink orders or even acknowledge that we were there. Won’t be going back to a place where they don’t value their customers.

I was a bit disappointed to find out that the menu online did not match the menu given to us. I was eyeing a dish I wanted to try only to find that it wasn’t on their menu. Hence the –1 star.
However other than that we enjoyed our dishes, the ambiance and the service, which was a tad on the slow side.

Absolutely amazing on every level!
I frequently visit this restaurant after a stressful workday to enjoy it’s relaxed, yet classy and romantic atmosphere and authentic Italian cuisine, but this particular night, I upped the ante. It was mine and my girlfriends birthday! I wanted things a certain way and the manager, Jan, and the entire staff at Via Lago hit every mark perfectly. I wanted a night where I could get our closest friends together and enjoy an evening together as if we were at one of our homes, where the food kept coming and your glass was always full. I met with Jan prior to the evening to put together a menu, so that my friends wouldn’t be bothered with menus or orders.
The evening of the dinner, Jan met us at the door and escorted us to the wine room… beautiful! I was surprised to see that they had made personalized menus with the items we had previously discussed. The wine room made the night that much more intimate and special, yet you could still hear the piano and soulful voice from the guest performer that evening… amazing!
As our friends began to show up, the wine and water glasses remained full and the fresh baked bread kept coming. Not long after everyone was seated our antipasti began to roll out. Four large plates of melt in your mouth beef carpaccio and four plates of the polenta with sausage (our favorite). After we passed the plates and devoured the antipasti, we moved on to a perfectly dressed, Cesar salad, individually plated.
Now, on to the main courses. We chose the linguine vongole and the homemade ravioli… both prepared to perfection. The white wine sauce was rich and buttery, but not to take away from the clams themselves and the ravioli were out of this world!
The night could’ve ended there and would’ve been great, but it didn’t…it got even better! David brought out our entire tiramisu birthday cake as the guest singer sang a beautiful rendition of «Happy Birthday» to us. Rich and moist, the cake was loved by all.
Via Lago made that an evening that I will have fond memories of for the rest of my life! Our friends keep telling us what a great experience it was and how they can’t wait for next year. One last thing to add… we were there for almost 4 hours!!! The timing of everything was perfectly Italian, not rushed or pushed out. The perfect night and everything that I wanted.
Thank you Via Lago!

What can I say? No matter how many times my girlfriend and I dine at Via Lago, whether with friends or just the two of us, we always end up having a superb and fantastic time. We’re very lucky to have a restaurant in the neighborhood like Via Lago that not only serves delicious and authentic Italian cuisine but also delivers on every aspect of what makes an amazing restaurant simply AMAZING!

Pretty good! Ordered the spaghetti bolognese with extra meat sauce and meatballs. Also ordered a pizza. Fresh ingredients and great quality all around. Our server was very attentive and poured our glass of wine with a heavy hand, which we enjoyed! Will definitely return for great Italian food close to home.

I will NEVER EVER come back to this place again! I usually try very hard to support local businesses, but this place was awful tonight! Let me start off by saying that it took 15 minutes for us to get seated… in a nearly completely empty restraunt; then I ordered the chicken picatta, and it tasted like rubber!!! The owner is present here tonight, and he gave free wine to the table next to us, but completely neglected us… potential future customers. Horrible customer service, terrible food, I will never ever come here again. Pissed off that I wasted my birthday dinner here.

Dining in the private wine room celebrating our friend’s birthday was a different experience completely… and it was exceptional. From the attentive servers to the elaborate spread, they really know how to make your event special. It was a live music night with happy hour at the forefront, but that didn’t affect the guests in the wine room. They are moving down by TJ Maxx as CVS is moving into their current space, so hopefully it will still have the same ambience.
They let us bring our own wine to the party, but full disclosure… I didn’t pay, so don’t know if there was a corkage fee.

Very nice place and the food was amazing. It is a nice place to go for a date night!

Very nice, tranquil ambiance, great service, good food, good wine.
Not too pricey. If you’re looking for a nice dinner for the «experience» definitely try this place out.

We had dinner with friends here and really enjoyed the meal. Everything was good even if it was overpriced. The Rigatoni Salsicia was very good. They gave us 15% off our bottle of wine from the Unilocal app, and threw in a free tiramisu.
You pay more for the atmosphere than the food IMO. We will go again but not regularly because of cost.

Lasagna is as good as it looks. Price is at par with dining at Red Lobster. The sauce to the calamari was not zesty more on the tomato side. Very nice atmosphere. Service was excellent. Only issue for me and nothing to do with food or service quality was the view of the air cooling system filter on the ceiling. It definitely needed to be changed.

I’m surprised I never really noticed this place while I walk around the plaza. It’s really open and fancy, with high ceilings and an artsy home feeling, as well as a nice patio outside. Overall, a classy ambiance.
The food was okay. Sadly, I enjoyed the bread the most. It was freshly baked, with a crunch on the outside, warm and soft on the inside.
My family shared the calamari. It wasn’t as crispy as I would have liked it. The sauce kind of reminded me of chef boyardee spaghetti sauce.
I had the short rib parpadelle. The sauce was decent. The noodles were too al dente, on the verge of mushy. Not sure if that’s how they’re supposed to be since it’s a wide flat noodle, but either way I wasn’t too fond of it. I wasn’t a fan of the prosciutto and mushroom pizza at all. It wasn’t very fresh and the mushrooms weren’t fully cooked. The cheese had a rubbery texture and seemed cheap. It looked like the pizza had been sitting for a while. The prosciutto didn’t have much taste and also didn’t look fresh. My family shared the lemon cheesecake. Pretty good!
Service was alright. Our waiter only checked on us once. Some of the waiters seemed too casual about their job considering the ambiance. Our waiter went outside to talk to a friend while on the clock (I’m assuming on the clock, since he didn’t tell us he was on break or that another waiter was filling in for him).
As for prices, I could easily get better quality and better tasting food for the same price elsewhere, like downtown!

Just want to give a shout out to Via Lago Trattoria for accommodating a last minute reservation that kept growing in number (sorry for this) but it meant more profits for you! Hahaha. The appetizers including the bread with oil, vinegar and pepper held us down. We really enjoyed our entrees. We were also seated in a semi private room for large parties at no extra cost. Only one thing was missing. Please restock your inventory with more bottles of Château Ste Michelle, Riesling;)
This restaurant has a lot of new fans. Try it. It won’t disappoint.
P. S. Almost forgot, ample parking and it’s free.

The atmosphere here is worth paying. We sat near the water fountain with the fire, I took a picture ill upload later, they have live music, happy hour, good wine selection and the food is really good. Our waiter was pretty cool too. I would come back again.

Food 4*
Service-​1*
The food was excellent, really strong menu with some great tasting flavours and strong presentation.
I’ve never given a low score for service but it was pretty damn bad. The hostess seated us without much of a welcome, we waited ten minutes to be seen to before the hostess realised we still hadn’t been served and got in an argument with a waitress who didn’t want us to be sat in her area. In plain view of us waiting.
The hostess proceeded to take selfies on snapchat shamelessly in front of the whole restaurant, lacking all professional courtesy.
This is a nice restaurant, with great food but really poor staff and service. Shame.

I came here for a Mexican wine tasting event and not the restaurant. Lovely place and I would love to come back here to try their food. I’ve heard very good things about their food.

This place was one of my favorites until last night. Was so looking forward to a relaxing night, glass of wine and great live music. Usually all the staff is very nice and professional. Last night was different. One perverted waiter approached me very aggressively while I was walking to the restroom. After I ignored him, used the restroom and was washing my hands he entered the bathroom and asked if I needed anything and was I ok.
Are you kidding me! This old man was so scary. As I forced my way out, he followed me to my table saying he was only doing his job. To me this is so unexceptable, and I made sure I told him that. I could possibly give any employee the benefit of the doubt, but due to his aggressive behavior initially I have concluded he is a peverted old man!

The lack of 1 star is due to their lack of service! Sure, the décor and ambiance is amazing. You walk in and hear the live musician singing and playing the piano sounding like the radio. He’s that good. But, other than the ambiance and decent food, the service really lacks!
I felt our server took our order, then literally disappeared. Well, not really. We saw him greeting other frequent diners nearby, but he never followed up on us. We had to flag down other servers to ask for refills and our check.
My husband and I both agree that we would give this place another chance, but only if we were dining in the bar area (where service shouldn’t be as much of an issue).
I tried the Pescatore (Seafood Linguini dish), and surprisingly there was a bunch of seafood! When my dish arrived all I could see was a pile of seafood, and for a second I thought it was the wrong dish. I couldn’t see the pasta because it was sitting at the very bottom of the dish. Each bite of pasta had a hearty piece of seafood meat. It was delicious and filling! I’d recommend it.
The back area of the restaurant has a great private dining area with glass windows. I thought it’d be great for parties (maybe up to 20 people?). I definitely think this place has a lot of potential, they just really need to work on their service :/​
FYI: you might feel out of place if you come in wearing flip-​flops and a sleeveless shirt. Very upscale, romantic and classy place. Just beware :)