Rosalia’s Italian Kitchen

My boyfriend has a huge appetite and I was worried this place would serve ridiculously small portions, since most fine restaurants serve delicious entrees in petite portions. This place is a true home Italian restaurant. They satisfied my 6’5 body building boyfriends appetite. This is the first time we’ve gone anywhere where he left stuffed. When you arrive, you pick out all the fresh ingrediants, cheeses, and pastas. She has a wide healthy whole grain selection. Then she cooks your meal to your exact specifications. Whatever you wish. I chose a pesto pasta which was served w fresh salad and homemade baked garlic bread. My bf had a hearty fettuccine Alfredo. Of course we started w antipasto, clams casino and escargot. All Rosalinda’s deserts are homemade and beyond decadent. It was an amazing meal.

Worst experience I have ever had in a restaurant food and service. Three and ½ hour meal with two small kids. I felt like I was in a dream as the level of service couldn’t have been any worse and the food was sub par at best. The only positive of the night was that the owner picked up our entire check, but for whatever reason she never came out of the kitchen to acknowledge us. Beyond Weird…

The food here is so good you would swear that Rosie must be in the witness protection program. Call ahead for reservations. The menu is verbal and changes daily. Make sure you visit the kitchen !

I’ve seen this no menus system work very well with great service and great food, but I’m afraid with one waitress this place fails. After arriving and being ignored for ten minutes we were told it would be a half hour wait, the Resterant was two thirds empty. We were seated after forty five minutes. The only drinks available were two types of red wine and water, the water was on the table but the wine took forever I’m sure she just forgot it. the food was good but it was much to obviouse hot sauce was put over cold pasta. being the last ones left in the place we were handed our check immediately after dinner, we were never offered the homemade cannoli offered to everyone else after
was also obvious that the couple that arrived ten minutes after us and seated ten minutes before us were probably locals and deserved better treatment than we got.

The service was good. The fare good, but not great, Italian. I would return.

This isn’t your conventional restaurant. Come in, seat yourself and they will be with you shortly.
First you are offered wine or drinks. Then, you are served the freshest salad with a lot of fresh and cooked vegetables. Shortly after you are done with this, Rosalia will come out of the kitchen and tell you her specials of the day. She will cook it fresh to your order. Finally, you will receive the best, most authentic Italian meal you can find this side of Italy!
I would recommend this place to everyone!!!
They even have a bowl of water out for our canine friends.

You have to think of this as less of a restaurant and more of your grandma’s kitchen because there is no other way to describe the experience.
The cook — Rosalia
The menu — whatever she has available and whatever you feel like. There is no printed menu.
We wandered into Rosalia’s kitchen after a day at Lake Placid, shortly after the restaurant opened. We wanted to grab take out as we left our poor puppy in the crate at our rental for most of the day. We were greeted warmly and was told to place our order with Rosalia by the kitchen. She told us what she had available for the day to include eggplant parm, rack of lamb and a few other things. I told her that I was feeling more of a creamy pasta and she responded with she can whip up a carbonara for me. We placed her order and off she went cooking our four dishes. She was the only one in the kitchen. I’m serious she did all the food prep and the cooking all by herself!
As we waited for our food, a few other parties were walking in and were seated. Some were locals and knew the deal but others were tourists and were a little bit weirded out by the lack of menu or service.
Our food was ready in about 20 min or so and off we went back to the cottage. Everything was exactly what we wanted, absolutely delicious and perfect.
Like I said, hang your expectations of dining out at a restaurant at the door and think of it more as your grandma’s kitchen and give yourselves plenty of time to enjoy and unwine (see what I did there!!). You will not be disappointed in the deliciousness!
TIP — if you guys are grabbing take out, grab a bag for the containers and be very gentle with them. They are super fragile!

Rosalia’s is wonderful, we enjoyed fresh green salad — unique and tasty anti-​pasta ingredients, then we shared amazing fresh chicken parm with pasta.
Chicken was so tender we cut with fork — it melted in our mouth, very fresh sauce and pasta!
Service is relaxed and a bit slow without reservation, we asked for quick meal and Rosalia very graciously accommodated; we were in and out in less than an hour. Thank You!

Rosalia opened for us for lunch and served us a delicious meal at an extraordinary price. Since she is normally only open for dinner we were very surprised and delighted that she accommodated us. We will definitely return.

Excellent made to order by the chef herself! Very personable, you feel like you are eating at your friends place. Food was excellent and portions great.

This place is phenomenal. Just 1 waitress and 1 cook. Feels like you’re at grandma’s house for dinner. There is no menu, but still plenty of fresh options to choose from. A very authentic experience we wish we could experience over and over again. While the prices are not listed, they are certainly fair for the quality and quantity you receive. My wife and I agreed that this was the only place we have finished EVERYTHING that was put in front of us: an appetizer, 2 entrees, 2 desserts, and wine. Fantastic!

Wow. The smell of walking into a log cabin that retains the aroma of Italian food. Perfect! Some people might not b happy that there’s not a menu. But I can tell you, the only thing that didn’t make this feel like an Italian dinner cooked at some nonna’s home for u was I did not spanked on the ass with a wooden spoon and told «sit down! What I cook is what you’ll eat!». And I would’ve welcomed that. 1 cook –the owner.
1 waitress. No menu. However the dishes offered in my opinion has greater variety of entrees than most restaurants I’ve been too.
Started with garlic. Oh I think it was on some hot baked bread… Did I say garlic? Amazing. House wines just fine. Then onto a cold antipast and whole calamari lightly pan fried. Never had them whole and that lightly fried. Very tasty. We both has Parms, chicken and veal. I have never had such veal pounded so perfectly thin. Wow. The homemade marinara has a TLC taste written all over it. Dessert we shared a rediculous oversized cannoli. For 1 waitress she was very attentive and we wre outta there in 2 hours. Impressive for 1 cook and 1 waitress. Very impressed and fair priced as we had no idea of proving and felt bill was well worth it.

We came here after an unsuccessful attempt to go up nearby Whiteface Mountain (why did we think that was a good idea on a rainy day?). With the uniformly rave reviews, we were pretty excited. Our large group arrived very staggered because of poor communication, and they were friendly in letting the earlier arrivees hang out at a table for most of an hour before the last of us showed up. (Not that the restaurant was anywhere near full, but it was still nice.)
The food was good, but nothing exceptional. As an example, the caprese salad was about ¼ caprese, ¾ miscellaneous meats and vegetables separate on a big tray, which were all tasty and fresh, but nothing particularly special. Because the restaurant doesn’t do menus, we didn’t find out until the end that this was $ 18. The clam chowder, on the other hand, was a perfectly good clam chowder and only $ 6. Had we known this from, say, some kind of listing of available foodstuffs along with their pricing, we might have made a different decision.
Not having a menu, at least here, is a gimmick. Other reviews talk about how the waitstaff gives you lists of ingredients and you can pick and choose among them; that wasn’t our experience. Our waitress basically just read off a list of meal options, exactly the same as if it had been a menu, but without prices or any time to consider. Maybe the menu changes every day, but laser printers are cheap.
I got the eggplant parmigiana, which was exactly the same as the eggplant parmigiana you’d get at any Italian restaurant. Friends got clams with linguine, pulled chicken pesto, various types of ravioli, lamb, and veal parm. Bread to start with was garlic bread that wasn’t garlicky enough and was made on a bread that just wasn’t that tasty; even, say, Bertucci’s bread is superior. Nobody complained about anything, but nobody was especially impressed, either. Portions were largeish, but for the taste of the food, prices are too. (We averaged about $ 33/​person with few appetizers and no drinks.)
All in all, it was fine, but the uniformly five-​star reviews on here are a mystery to me.

A very different restaurant experience! Rose cooks everything fresh daily and the menu that day is what she has decided to cook. It was a little disconcerting not to have the standard written menu in hand with prices listed but we took a chance and were not disappointed.
The waitress tells you the choices for the day and you order from her offerings. Being a little distractible myself, I was worried about this method but it worked. The meal started with warm garlic, Parmesan bread and a good glass of wine. We shared a huge green salad with a great variety of additions (tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, beets, garbanzo beans, green beans, etc). My dinner entrée — a cheese and spinach ravioli dish with a mushroom cream sauce was exquisite and my husband’s lobster ravioli was similarly wonderful. Our second visit with lasagne and a cod dish was just as satisfying. The portions were more than plentiful!
Given that we had one cook and one waitress, service was a little slow the first time but not terribly so. The second time we came earlier (5:30pm) and there was no wait at all. There was a nice mix of local and tourist patronage. We really love this place and plan to come again next time we’re in the Adirondacks.

Came here on friend’s recommendations. Right up front: if you will be uncomfortable with the eccentricities, don’t bother coming. The main ones are –no menu-​single very competent waitress-​resulting slowish service-​single cook in kitchen-​treat the «experience» as long family meal-​savor each course and drink and be merry between courses. –find out what you have spent at the end of meal — resulting meal a couple hour event. This place is the polar opposite of fast food.
Now all that said this place can be a great fun night with very ample Italian food in an informal setting deep in the Adirondacks. We were impressed with 7 of 8 dishes served and we took home a full meal again from the more than full plates served. Absolutely everything was fresh and served perfectly as to presentation, temperature and aroma. You knew immediately you were being cared for by a cook who knows her stuff. Meatball, sausage and pasta (chief’s choice, handmade daily) was a standout as was the Caprese appetizer. The wines are excellent Italians.
When in the mood for a food event Italian style visit Rosalia. Well worth the trip.

Very satisfied with last nights delicious meal out on the patio. They served plentiful sized portions so we have extra pulled chicken pesto and ravioli with sausage and meatball to enjoy for lunch today. My cabernet was jammy and perfect; the warm garlic bread to start was fresh and we split a local garden salad that included tomatoes grown steps away from our table. We are in town for a few days and already thinking about eating here again instead of in Lake Plastic…

We spent a weekend on the slopes at Whiteface and stayed in Wilmington, because it’s closer to the mountain and not as congested as Lake Placid. On Saturday night, instead of driving into Lake Placid, we decided to eat at Rosalia’s because the reviews were good and it was in town where we were staying.
I will give it 5 stars, with a caveat that you must go with the expectation to be there for a while. As the other reviewers have stated, the service is slow… because they only have 4 or 5 people working.
However, the food is worth the wait. Rosalia apparently makes all the food fresh everyday, and never quite the same any two days. Hence, they do not have a standard menu. Your waitress will give you the daily selections verbally, and is completely open to changing the meals if you want to pick and choose. They also have a selection of wines that will change from day to day. They serve fresh bread and butter — which was absolutely delicious (I’m a bit of a bread lover… any good Italian place should start your meal this way). For the main course, I got a stuffed pork tenderloin with asparagus, and my wife got spinach and mushroom ravioli. Both meals were excellent, top notch. For dessert, we got a cannoli and a slice of chocolate cake. Again, both were very good. I can honestly say that the meal was excellent from beginning to end.
The restaurant staff were extremely friendly and accommodating. The only complaint I could have was that it was slow — but again, that was my expectation based on the other reviews I read. We will absolutely be returning to Rosalia’s, hopefully for an entirely different menu selection!!! Love it.

Rosalia’s Italian Kitchen is an authentic italian restaurant located a short driving distance (about 10 miles) from Lake Placid… and it’s 100% worth it!
In a few short words:
— a hidden gem
— no menu
— dishes are creatively put together each day based on fresh ingredients
We ordered mussels and their pastas. Mussels were very fresh (in the dead cold of winter). Pasta was cooked perfectly al dente. Complimentary bread was delicious with a good selection of wines!
Tip:
— Save some room for dessert… the portions are rather large here!
MUST. GO. WHEN. IN. LAKE. PLACID. AREA.
You won’t regret it! It’s a trip to Italy without actually having to go to Italy.

I completely agree with Rebecca! Rosalia’s is a real gem. There is no menu, just a list of ingredients. If you’re not picky, you’ll let Rosalia craft something from your main choice ingredient. I had the lamb chops this evening, pan seared, topped with pinoles and raisins, asparagus, cauliflower, and mushrooms on the side. Rosalia came out of the kitchen to ask if I wanted potatoes or pasta. I had her choose. My husband had lobster and mushroom ravioli. Everything was fresh and delightful. The place itself is adorable and charming, and the service is always pleasant and helpful. Oh, and the cannoli was amazing!

I can’t believe Rosalina’s isn’t on Unilocal!Rosalina is the only person in the kitchen and she makes all of the food from scratch daily. Since she’s the only one cooking, service can be slow, but it’s well worth the wait. We had the spinach ravioli and artichoke ravioli and both were delicious. There’s no website and no written menu, the sole waitress read it to us, but if you like Italian food, you’ll love this place. They also have a gourmet dessert selection and liquor license. This place would be a great date night location in the Adirondaks and is about 20 minutes from Lake Placid.