Restaurant Review: Bella Vita

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Kelly

Unfortunately, as of Spring 2012, Bella Vita is now closed

Full Disclosure: I paid for this meal with my own money and I was in no way reimbursed for this blog post. The opinions are completely my own.

The ability to buy discounted meals through group deal sites has really helped me to be more excited to try new restaurants. (This particular restaurant I knew I actually want to go to before I bought the group buy deal.) The time limit on the group deals of course can be a good and bad thing. I’ve definitely gotten stuck before when I realize that my deal was about to expire too late and ended up not using it. Generally though, if I know that my deal expires in a month it helps to make our dinner decision when there is a deadline approaching and I don’t want the money that I already paid to go to waste. In this case, I was actually able to make it to the restaurant before my deal expired.

Bella Vita is a new(ish) restaurant to Madison. It took the place of what was at one time a Hooters, and most recently a Tilted Kilt so honestly I didn’t expect very much to come out of whatever restaurant followed. (There may have been one other one in between it too, but it was gone so quickly I don’t remember what it was.) Fortunately, Bella Vita is not a chain like the others, it is a local restaurant, and seems to be here to stay…..we had to wait for a seat at dinner last weekend so I’d say thats a good sign.

For dinner, I started with a glass of Sangria – on Saturdays they have it on special for $5! It was pretty good, but honestly not my favorite. It wasn’t actually very fruity tasting.

The meal, of course, also started with fresh bread with olive oil dipping sauce and herbed butter that didn’t make it into the photo. The bread was warm and delicious.

For dinner the husband had lasagna and a side salad.

I chose the Tricolore Pizza – traditional crust with olive oil and roasted garlic topped with smoked mozzarella, baby spinach, fresh tomatoes, and their house cheese. It was very good. The crust was thin and cripy and the toppings were plentiful. I ordered a “small” size because I knew I would eat leftovers, but now I’m thinking I might have even had leftovers with the “personal” size. Oh well, it will definitely get eaten!

The service was just kind of so-so. The server was pretty slow to get us our drinks, bread, and water refills – but not so slow that it was really a big issue. It just seemed like maybe they were a bit overwhelmed by how busy it was. I’m hoping that this will improve as they are in business longer and the staff gains more experience.

Taste: A-, not everything was perfect, but it what was good was delicious!
Cost: A, it was around $30 for the two of us (not counting the group deal) which doesn’t seem all that bad considering that I had a cocktail and will have at least a couple meals of leftover pizza.

Would I go there again? Yeah I think so. The pizza was really good, the prices were good, and there are other things that I’d like to try on the menu as well – they have a scallop dish that looks very similar to my favorite scallop dish so I’m intrigued!