Nonna Rosa’s

I decided to try Nonna Rosa’s for the 1^st time to celebrate my Italian girlfriend’s birthday. I called ahead to schedule the reservations and stopped in the day of to drop off some flowers, picture, candle, etc. to make the occasion really special and the hostess was accommodating and helpful.
When we got to the restaurant everything was setup as planned and things went well. I’m a health nut so it was tough to find anything that wasn’t covered in 5 types of cheese with 2 pounds of noodles so I decided today was a cheat day. We ordered a red snapper special and a 5 meat and cheese pasta with a bottle of wine. Overall the food was ok, but for the price I could have found better.
The most disappointing part of the experience at Nonna Rosa’s however was at the end of the dinner when I was greeted with a final tab and no type of special birthday drink or dessert. This was extremely surprising to me seeing as I called the day before to inquire about birthday specials and went through a ton of effort the day of to make sure they knew this was a special birthday. I doubt we’ll visit Nonna Rosa’s again on our own.

Service is excellent, food is delicious. Authentic Italian cuisine!

Over rated. Went there for lunch and was not impressed. Pasta was over cooked. How in the world can you have an Italian independent restaurant and over cook the pasta? This would be expected at an Olive Garden or Chili’s. Marinara sauce had no taste. Meatballs were bland. On the good side, the prices are reasonable. If you are not picky about the quality of food, and apparently a lot of local are not, this place would be just fine. The décor of the restaurant is nice but they need to upgrade their quality of food. Wasn’t the worst experience dining. Probably would go back for just happy hour and some wine on the next visit.

We had a groupon for here and love Italian food so thought we’d check it out. Our server was really nice but the kitchen messed up my order and put ingredients I requested to leave out, the server caught it and said they will remake it, it wasn’t the end of the world but she insisted and the 20 minutes later when it came out the noodles weren’t done and it didn’t look anything like it was supposed to. My boyfriends dish was really good though. Unique ambience and friendly server.

Was seated at a table where I sat for 15 minutes without a server or anyone coming to my table. Gave up and left, the restaurant wasn’t nearly busy enough to wait that long for a greeting.

After reading some of the other reviews, our party of 4 had some concerns about dining here. However, few of the negative comments were about the food. They were about the service and décor primarily, so we decided to go for it. And are we ever glad we did!
Aside from well above average food and enormous portions, we found the service to be attentive, friendly and overall excellent, and the décor to be, um, uh, Italian. But then again we were out for dinner in the land of Olive Garden lovers and people who still say EYEtalian. Two of our foursome were very well-​traveled locals who have lived in other parts of the U.S. and traveled extensively overseas, including to Italy (it’s not EYEtaly). Myself and the other spouse are east coast natives; he’s from Long Island and then New Jersey. I’m a NYC native, so we both have ample experience with real Italian food made by, you guessed it, Italians.
It’s clear that Nonna Rosa is a popular local spot, tucked away in downtown Robbinsdale, so kind of off the beaten trail. But it’s easy to get to, and was maybe 3 minutes off of the 42^nd Avenue exit from highway 100. Parking is ample on-​street and in parking lots just a couple of doors away. There were families there, large and small, couples, and a couple of single diners as well, so everyone should be welcome here.
So how was the food? Enough about the look and staff, tell us about the food. Well, and this is coming from all four of us… we were very impressed with the quality of the preparation and the portions were really ridiculous in size. Meaning large. Two of us had eggplant parmagiana, a staple of east coast Italian restaurants from Boston and New York, to Philly and south to Florida. And it was excellent. Served over a bed of spaghetti in a light, tasty marinara sauce, and preceded by a fresh dinner salad that was included with each meal. Others in our party had angel hair pasta with sauteed shrimp which looked and smelled great, and I was assured was delicious as it was devoured.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was the affordability of such fine food. Even the wine list, a nice one, is reasonably priced. Chef Francesco, who stopped by our table and others to say hello, has priced his food so that anyone can afford to eat at his restaurant. He is from the west coast of Italy (down by the heel of the boot he’ll tell you) and has been in the Twin Cities for less than a decade. The restaurant operated by he and his wife Tina Suglia, opened five years ago, and I only wish we had known about it sooner. We will definitely be coming here when Italian food is called for, and maybe a few times when it’s not.
Nonna Rosa is a gem for those who appreciate the real thing.

Super cute Italian restaurant with dim lighting. Came here for my first time for my friends birthday dinner. The food and drinks were amazing. Our waitress was so friendly and gave my friends and I such a superb service (Thank you JOSEPHINE! You rocked). Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling pasta that night so I ordered the calamari & a Bloody Maria. Both tasted great. Except the Bloody Maria could’ve been a tad spicier & tomato-​y. Not a big deal though. Garnishing was cute.
The menu has a wide range of options for you to choose from & as well for drink menus. For those reasons, I’ll definitely be back!

Our group was a little confused by some of the low star reviews. We have been here twice during our stay and both times the service and food were 5 star! Some highlights were the arancini appetizer, the Insalata Toscana and Insalata di Mela (it’s hard to pick a favorite). The main entrees are enough for two!

I was a little skeptical with all the spotty reviews about the place mainly the food reviews, but was pleasantly surprised, our group gives it a unanimous 5. .So great on all levels.
Our server, Josephine was amazing. Very on top her game. Personality, service, everything was just perfect. Service can make or break a visit and she truly delivered on every level. Excellent job, thank you!
Food Ordered:
–Two New York Strips. One with caesar salad, one with clam chowder. Both great.
— Fettucini Alfredo
— Meditrannean Salad with Shrimp
— Two Seafood Cannellonis
— Two Seafood Diablo or ssomething like that. Something with A D, both said to be great.
— Spaghettti and Meatballs
— Salmon
–Gnocchi with Shrimp in a white pesto sauce.
–Chicken breast with apples and strawberries custom thrown together for our kiddo.
Complimentary birthday canneloni
The bread that comes out before with the home made garlic butter is good. Nice, soft, chewy bread.
Nice dining room
Excellent Food
Excellent Service
Great menu with a lot of variety
Truly a wonderful experience and wonderful tasting food.
Would defintely return!

I came here awhile back with my husband for our monthly dinner dates and our foodie adventures. I was craving Italian food, so we googled a few places and decided to come here. It was quiet with only two other tables that was taken. The restaurant itself is very dim, though there is windows, I think they interior may need some change, just to lighten the restaurant up a bit, so it doesn’t look so crowded and dense. Besides that fact, the people who were working there were extremely nice, which landed them a star, but the food on the other hand was almost terrible. I say this in a respectful manner, but the food left a really bad impression on me. It has been awhile since I’ve been there but I want to say I ordered Pollo O Maialino Balsamico? I remember asking the waitress what the dish was and she mentioned that it was one of her favorite dishes there, but when I took the first bite, I couldn’t taste anything else but the balsamic vinegar. It was so strong that I didn’t even want to finish the dish. I understand the dish is a balsamic based dish, but man was that a punch to the mouth. It didn’t look appealing either, the dish was literally dark purple.
I was quite disappointed.

food is great, but you better have a lot of free time. At least 2 hours.

The short of it: Two times here with the same subpar food and subpar service. We will not be returning. It’s our loss for giving them a second chance.
Most recently, my husband and I went on a Sunday night for dinner. We were seated and quickly ordered an appetizer and a bottle of wine. Almost immediately, a table of 4 was seated next to us. A few minutes later we order our main course. A few minutes after that the table next to us orders their food. Shortly after, the table next to us gets their food as we sit without an appetizer. We hear the waitress yell at the cooks 3 times about our appetizer. Our appetizer arrived 3 minutes after the third time she yelled at them. Meanwhile, the table next to us is almost done with their main course.
15 minutes after the appetizer we get our salads.
20 minutes after the salads we get our main course. The dish I ordered was bland although I was warned it was spicy. Noodles with a little bit of sauce and 3 or 4 shrimp. Bland bland bland. She flew by and dropped off the dishes so quickly that we actually had to flag her down on one of her passes by to ask for parmesan.
By that time we were thoroughly irritated and packed up our meals after only a couple of bites. I told the server we were very disappointed in the food and the slow service. I also told her that we didn’t plan to return after this disappointing experience. Only then did she apologize. She gave us some excuse about how the «regular chef» is off on Sundays and these guys aren’t as good. Nice excuse. The table next to us didn’t seem to have any issues. She gave us a free cannoli. Great! More mediocre food, but it’s free (it’s also the very same free item you can get by checking in on Unilocal.I wish I’d done that before we decided on this place)! And, she gave us a $ 10 gift certificate. There will be no next time and that gift certificate has already been thrown away.
The restaurant was not busy. The cooks were not swamped. We watched our server send one of the other servers home. It would have been a different story if the slow service had been acknowledged and apologized for ahead of time.
We got home a little over two hours after we left and the nearby Nonna Rosa’s was our only stop.
We will not be back.

I am of Italian descent, have lived in Italy, and make a lot of traditional dishes at home, so I’m familiar with the cuisine. I was looking for a local eatery that was relatively authentic, with good food and service, and to some degree, Nonna Rosa fit the bill. I began eating there for lunch about a year ago, usually taking my 4 year old granddaughter.
While the service was spotty, (generally there is only one server for a busy lunch crowd, even though there are 2 rooms that are usually full), the quality of the food, and the personalities of the owners, made it worth the wait. There seems to be a very high staff turnover, even for the restaurant business. The servers fall into one of three categories: experienced and personable who can get your order to you in a timely fashion; enthusiastic but unable to comprehend that when you give them an order they are supposed to come back with food; and the ones who fall into the I-​hate-​my-​life-​and-​you-​are-​going-​to-​pay-​for-​it category.
One day, I even gave an order to one of the owners, who then disappeared into a back room, never to be seen again. The inconsistency was a bit too much for the price and I did not return for about 6 months.
I went back again alone, about a month ago. The menu and quality of food have deteriorated. The cioppino, which formerly came in a fragrant broth, is now served in a clump of tomato sauce and literally made me sick. Their tiramisu was formery the classic layered lady fingers;now it is a generic frozen wedge cake.
I came in today with my granddaughter, because she has always loved their chicken tenders and fries. The chicken was superb: big strips of tender chicken breast in a delicate batter, with thick, home style fries. We always had enough to take home. When we sat down, I ordered this first, as in the past, it took awhile to get. About 5 minutes later, I put in my order for spaghetti with meatballs and marinara sauce. I also checked off a gelato for dessert.
The chicken arrived a full 20 minutes before my pasta. This time, we got 4 thin, overcooked strips of dry chicken, surrounded by soggy, stringy fries, with a plastic cup of ketchup stuck in the middle. When a 4 year old thinks your fries are bad, you’re in trouble.
When my pasta finally arrived, I had to ask my server for cheese and pepper, as she did not offer either. As she went to retrieve these, I picked up some pasta with my fork and discovered it was sitting in red tinged water. There was also only one meatball, a contrast to previous meals. When I pointed out the water to her, she said, as though I were an idiot, «Well, that water drains from the noodles.»
I think even the cooks at Perkins know that the water from the noodles is supposed to drain out in the colander, not the customer’s bowl. She asked if I wanted her to take it back and have the cook «thicken it up» and I said yes. She then proceeded to grind cheese over it. When I said that I still didn’t want pasta in water, she said, «Well, that’s why I asked you before I ground cheese all over it.» To which I replied, «Well, that’s why I told you before you ground cheese all over it».
Another 10 – 15 minutes later, I got back my pasta, now with no water but virtually no sauce. I took a bite of the sole meatball, which was horribly dry. The pasta was soggy. A can of Chef Boy Ar Dee would have tasted better.
I asked to speak with the owners, and was told that neither of them were on the premises, although I had said hello to one of them when I came in. The waitress did take the pasta dish off the bill. She never asked if I wanted the ice cream I had checked off on the lunch menu sheet.
Olive Garden has better food and service at a better price. It pains me to say this, because the owners are really lovely, the ambience is nice, and it would be wonderful to have a quality restaurant, as this could be, in Robbinsdale. Unfortunately, this lack of attention to service and consistency is endemic in family run restaurants in the Robbinsdale/​Crystal/​New Hope area. If your service is lousy, your food had better be spectacular. Gimmicks like mystery nights and Halloween parties won’t make up for a bad experience. I hope this gets better but I won’t be back anytime soon.

Really nice local Italian spot! Service was great. Attentive, kind, and knowledgable. They knew beforehand that we had a Livingsocial deal and had it all set up for us quickly. The deal was great too! A bottle of wine and a four course meal finished off with a shot of Limoncello for digestion was one of the most valuable deals I’ve ever gotten in a restaurant! Well done! Would definitely come back!

If I can save one Unilocaler from eating here, then I feel like I’m helping.
We were there at 5:30 on a Thursday night. I went in with high hopes as it looked fancy and I prefer mom and pop restaurants to the chains. Maybe that was my mistake.
I’m baffled by all the good reviews. Even by Olive Garden standards this place is a pass.
Our party of four was seated and promptly ignored for the next 20 minutes. When our annoyed waitress finally graced us with her presence, she seemed to not only not know her menu, but was irritated that we might have any questions.
All this could be forgiven with amazing food, but sadly, this was embarrassingly far from their «chef driven» claim or the $ 19/​entrée price they’re asking. The pasta was cold, mushy and overdone. This is an Italian restaurant right? How do you miss on the pasta? The gnocci was like oatmeal, I can only imagine the risotto. The seafood was sparse, cheap and frozen, the chicken dry and tough, the flavors were bland and homogeneous and the presentation of every plate was sloppy and unappetizing. Even the bread basket looked like it had sat out all day. At the end, no one wanted to take leftovers from the still mostly full plates. Not that anyone working there offered.
Throughout, the service was awful at best and bereft with service errors. I had to repeatedly ask for basic service items. Refill our empty water glasses? I think not. Ask about dessert? Nope.
Unilocal offers a free cannoli with your order and after multiple attempts to get our waitress’s attention, we asked for that. Again, annoyed to be bothered, she huffed off to the kitchen.
How long should it take for a half full restaurant to plate a premade cannoli and get it out? In our case, it was half an hour. We would have left if we could have gotten the check from our waitress who was nowhere to be seen. When it finally made it out, it was tiny, upside down and rock hard. Inedible. As our bill was still no where to be seen, I actually had to get up and walk to the wait station to move things along.
If authentic means «low standards» then Nonna Rosa’s nailed it.

I had the Pork Balsamico. It was delicious and I had enough to bring home for an additional meal.
My drink, the Pompeii Punch, was alright but warm and served in a Champaign flute for $ 7.
It was hotter than the blazes of hell in there, if they do have air conditioning, they don’t use it. I sweated through my clothes (I was wearing a sleeveless dress) and was stuck to my seat, so was my companion. It was 85 outside yesterday and it was a relief when we got outside into cooler air.
The service was slow, and the bread was subpar, the salad had rust spots on the lettuce and crappy hot house tomatoes (WHY WHY WHY??? Its July in MN, fantastic tomatoes are all over the place!!! Get some!!!).
This place could easily get 5 stars from me if they turned on the air-​conditioning, had decent bread (I’d even take mediocre bread), and a trained wait staff and served fresh lettuce/​tomatoes.
It really sucks to give this place 3 stars because my meal was absolutely delicious.
Oh! And the salted caramel gelato was delicious too!

Don’t let the nearly perfect rating deter you.
Food is definitely 5/​5, I’ve eaten there 4 times now and have some recommendations:
1) Anything with chicken – it’s amazing
2) Insalata Toscana with chicken – delicious salad
3) Chicken Balsamico – probably the best food I’ve had in at least a few months. I don’t love creamy pasta sauce but this balsamic cream was the perfect light sauce with mushrooms and onions over fettuccine noodles. The portion was HUGE (2 pieces of chicken) so I took home and had it for lunch the next day, and the flavors still popped. Highly recommend!
I’d say service is super friendly, but also really relaxed – and pretty slow. So come here to enjoy the company you are with, sit outside, but don’t expect to be in and out quickly.

I met a group of girlfriends for dinner at Nonna Rosa’s a few weeks ago. I had no idea how cute downtown Robbinsdale is! There are so many cute shops and restaurants that I want to come back to check out.
Nonna Rosa has a very extensive menu of Italian food. There are a lot of meat-​based dishes. I ended up ordering the Maialino Mediterraneo, which is a pork tenderloin with feta cream sauce, mushrooms and kalamta olives. The pork was cooked perfectly, very moist. The cream sauce wasn’t too heavy, which I liked.
While my entrée was great, our entire table agreed that the service was pretty poor. Our waitress seemed very confused most of the time and frequently forgot to bring refills of drinks. She didn’t even bring our table our bread basket until after our meal. We weren’t missing much, the bread was stale and dry.
We checked in on Unilocal and received two free cannelloni for dessert. They were pretty tiny, but tasty.

Pleasantly surprised. I had dinner with some friends after work. Enjoyed the food and atmosphere. The salad was really tasty. I would recommend the small Toscano salad with chicken. Perfect size for one. The food portions are fairly large, so they are good for sharing or bringing home leftovers. Reasonably priced as well. Wait staff was a little slow, but pleasant. Looks like they could use some extra staff.
Then cannoli is a nice little bite at meal end. We shared between 4 people but one is reasonable for a single person.

The bread was exquisite reminded me of grandma’s warm fresh baked bread. My tortellini was a mouthful of flavors from the sauce all the way down to the bottom of the plate. I recommend if you are ever in the cities to stop in and check this place out. It is on fair side for price.