Sofia’s

Second visit. Place was packed and tables were very close together. They had MMA fights on TV, I am not sure why they would put that on TV while people are eating. Services are okay and food was decent and price was reasonable. Portion size were just right. We had crab cake again, since we remember that crab cake was good there. And we had salmon dish and veal cutlet Parmesan dish, all of them are good. It took while to get food. I think we would definitely go back there, but probably in less busy time. It was good that I was able to call about 10 minutes before getting there and we were seated right away. Table I was sitting it was not on even surface so it felt that right side of table was little higher. But overall, this is nice Italian place. We had tiramisu to go, it was also nice. And we save some money since we had Groupon.

Really awful experience. First they wouldn’t accept a Groupon even though the Groupon said «no exceptions». When we asked to speak to the owner we were told he wouldn’t talk to us and didn’t care if we left. Staff seem disinterested. It took 15 minutes to get a menu. Our adult children sat at another table and the service was even worse. We were done with our dinner and our kids hadn’t even been served. When we complained the owner was rude, told us «he needed respect» and asked if we «wanted to go outside».
Food was mediocre, calamari appetizer was tough. Linguini with clam sauce was passable but portion wasn’t to big for the price. Rigatoni barely edible.
Dining room was loud, it was hard to hear people sitting at our table.
Not sure why big screen TVs with sports on are in an Italian Restaurant.
There are many much better Italian Restaurants in this area too choose from, choose on of them instead of Sofias

1^st visit courtesy of a dining deals cert but will review if 100% out of pocket
Easy to find on main strip right next to Chinese Restaurant (interesting parking lot almost like an actual street going thru the middle.)
You enter a small lobby – reservations made for a Saturday night seated right away. No marinated carrots, etc. Bread standard. This is BYOB.
Appetizer was calamari & requested mild & hot sauce (only difference is hot has red pepper seeds). Only rings, lightly breaded & virtually tasteless, calamari a bit chewy – best part was the sauces.
Entrees were shrimp parm – so so light tasting & farfalle w/​shrimp & sundried tomatoes. Farfalle was undercooked (& I like al dente but not when i’m pulling it out of my teeth), shrimp a bit overcooked, ½ the sundried tomatoes i had to pull out peels.
Desserts standard nothing stood out. Cappucinos weak.
Noticeable service laps between each course. When the hostess is helping the servers bring food out & I didnt see anyone who looked like a mgr which usually is not a good sign especially on a Saturday night. The place was never full (though close) but the noise level was almost intolerable.
Décor was ok sort of reminded me of iLL Gabbianos in Cranford
So for 1 appy, 2 soft drinks, 2 entrees, desserts & cappucinos with tax/​tip came to $ 80 which is ok.
I prefer to give a detailed rating as opposed to just saying I liked it or I didn’t.
For me I rate a restaurant in 4 categories in order of importance:
Food
Service
Value
Décor/​ambience/​misc
If you’re wondering why this is the order for me I rather have great food & so-​so service than the other way around. You can always plan around a slower evening to make it just as enjoyable but not around mediocre food whether it’s fast or slow paced.
My 3^rd item I call value instead of price because based on the taste & serving portion of the item compared to similar items at other restaurants tells me if it’s a good value.
Food (2.0), service (1.5), value (1.0) & décor/​ambience/​misc (0.5)
I then take the # stars for each category & multiply by the # in parentheses then divide by 5 to get my final rating. If the final average is near ½ I’ll round up or down depending on other reviews & anything out of the ordinary (good or bad).
So my calculations are as follows:
FOOD 2×2 = 4.0
SERVICE 2×1.5 = 3.0
VALUE 3.0×1 = 3.0
AMBIENCE/​OTHER 3.0 x .5 = 1.5
Total pts 11.50 divided by 5 = 2.30 which rounds to 2

I enjoyed this Italian restaurant starting with the complementary carrots. The chicken parmagian dish with eggplant was excellent. The manager Jason came over to our table at least 3 times to check to see if everything was ok. We felt well taken care of.

The food was terrific. I had spinach ravioli in a tasty cream based sauce. The service was excellent and the dining room was immaculate. Can’t wait to go back!

Two of us just had lunch here, and it was pretty good. Salads were fine. I tried one lobster ravioli with a big piece of lobster, and it was REALLY good (though I’m not a ravioli guy, despite the fact that I look like live on a diet of nothing but raviolis). My entrée was the Salmon Oregenata, which was just OK… not terrible… not spectacular. This place has potential as a nice BYOB in Springfield, but it needs a few upgrades. All in all, I would come back for another lunch/​dinner.

Arrived with a Groupon. DELICIOUS. Wow. OK so the bread they put on the table was NOT freshly baked and warm. but the food was fantastic. we had the mozzarella and roasted peppers appetizer, delicious. the mozzarella was home made tasted like they made it right before we came, spongy and soft and porous. I got the angel hair pasta with shrimp and broccoli rabe WOW delicious. too good I wanted to go to sleep after I ate the whole thing, the shrimps were plump and juicy and it was amazingly delicious. my daughter had the old fashioned lasagna with no meat as she is a vegetarian. she loved it. we had the Italian cheese cake so fresh for dessert. we drove in from staten island and loved the quaint little village feel here. the atmosphere was cozy and dated in a good way. steady stream of steady customers assured us that this place is a local favorite as when the people arrived the waiter knew them all by name. Highly recommend.

Expensive by any standards. The minimum entrée is 18.95, Doesn’t come with a soup or salad. The bread is cheap quality. A BIG BIG NO. Nothing good to say at least from my first experience.

I was there last night to use my groupon.
The place looks nice inside in my opinion. Low lighting, spacious, perhaps just a tad dated. There is plenty of parking in a lot at the back of the place.
As expected was served a small bowl of carrots with a light dressing. It didn’t have much flavor, i think because the carrots were not sweet at all.
For appetizers we had a salad which was a mix of green, strawberries, pears, peanut brittle, goat cheese. I thought the salad was pretty good. We also had a clams oreganatta, which was decent, although i’ve had better at other places.
From there we decided to have lobster ravioli. Very generous portion. The ravioli is tasty but… is there any lobster in it? Usually lobster ravioli comes with lobster pieces, but in this dish there was shrimp?
If they ran out of lobster, why not just say you ran out? Anyway, it was fairly good, but i sorta felt cheated out of a true lobster ravioli.

Horrible business policies:
I received five $ 50 gift certificates and NO where on the certificates did it say I can only use one per visit which is what «Trish «the acting mgr (owner had left) said at the end of our dinner in which I brought three friends out to dinner
I go out a lot and don’t mind spending money, but the deceptive practice of not accepting all my gift certificates and saying only one is allowed per visit is insane (unless it’s noted on the certificate itself which it’s not)
I own my own business (larger than this business with much more customers) and if I deceived my clients like this they would never cone back
And that’s what I’ll go: never come back
I told them I’d write on every internet site my experience but their «do not care» attitude presented itself
For their mediocre food. Someone needs to train them about better policies and customer service (ps: took forever to get served)

Absolutely the worst service and food. I sat with inedible food in front of me for 20 minutes when the waiter finally came and asked if we wanted the check !!!

I was at a graduation party and this was the place that catered the food. I have listed below what I had and a thought about each dish.
Hot Sausage and Peppers — This was my favorite dish from Sofia’s. The sausage had a very nice kick to it. The peppers added a nice complement to the sausage. The ratio of sausage to pepper was great.
Eggplant Parmesan — This dish was alright. I thought the eggplant was bland as well as the sauce. There was a hearty amount of cheese, which was nice though.
Broccoli — The side of broccoli was pleasant. It was cooked with lots of garlic. The broccoli I believe was steamed.
Chicken Francese — I’m not a fan of this to begin with, but I thought it was decent. There was not too much of a lemon taste. The chicken was very tender and the pieces in the platter were of good size.
Shrimp Scampi over Rice — The shrimp was fresh and the rice was cooked perfect. The rice was different. Most scampi is served with pasta, but this was with rice. I liked the combination.
Sweet Sausage and Peppers — This did not compare to the hot sausage and peppers. I am more of a fan of hot sausage to begin with, but this was solid. The sausage had a solid crisp to it as well as the peppers. The ratio was good too.
Will I go back? I would definitely like to check this place out.

This is my second time here and I have to say I’m very underwhelmed. I ordered the steak, which was so tough it was almost inedible. My daughter ordered the chicken with arugula salad and it was very bland and came with a small piece of chicken. The chicken giambotti and the pork giambotti were both very good, however we waited almost an hour for our food even though it wasn’t that busy. Finally we said something to the manager and our food came out immediately and was cold on the outside– so I’m assuming that our food was sitting there for several minutes. As an apology they offered us a free dessert, which was very nice. I will be coming back, as it really is a great restaurant but I will be ordering something different.

The food was delicious and nice size portions but the service was horrible the guy that bought out the water, carrots and bread had no manners. The waiter came out did not introduce himself rumbled on about the specials and quickly walked away.

Went there for Mother’s Day dinner with my mother and my wife. I couldn’t understand why all TV’s were on to soccer games when no one was watching.
Waitress was very good.
We ordered pork chops Giambotta, which was very good. The veal parm was ok. The biggest disappointment was the special lobster ravioli, five ravioli with so so cream sauce but one of the ravioli was empty and the others hardly had anything in them. The special price was 24.99, outrageous.
We will not be rushing back anytime soon. We live in the next town too.

Besides the dining room needing an update, this place is very good.
Service is on the money, and the food is simple yet well presented Italian.
Sometimes all I want is solid Italian food!
Some of the best sausage I’ve had in a while.
Wish they would update the dining room!
Must check out for the delicious food.

Cozy and homey local Italian restaurant. Good service. The pork chops were delicious! Humongous portion. BYOB.

Food was great but service was horrible. It took them 30 mins to send us a waiter. After taking our order it took another 30 mins to get the apps. People who came after We did got their food first and we ordered the same thing. My friend ordered a salad said «no onions «5x and still it came onions. Then ordered his linguini fri divilo no shrimp. The waiter came out to make sure no shrimp he said yes no shrimp and guess who gets their meal with huge shrimp. Yup you guessed it! Word to management get this issue with the kitchen fixed and hire people who know the specials and is excited about work.

We arrived 45 minutes early for our reservation. The hostess graciously found us a table in the very crowded restaurant. It is BYOB so we hopped next door to the liquor store for a bottle of wine.
The waiter was very pleasant and rattled off the specials without hesitation. We had the balsamic drizzled stuffed mushroom, veal parmigiano and eggplant parmigiano. All excellent. Even the pasta was cooked aldente.
Excellent meal, excellent service, excellent atmosphere.
We used a Groupon while there… no hassle… no shananigans when the bill came.
We will 100% eat here again.

During our 1 visit – on a Saturday night– the place was crowded, so perhaps our experience was unusual in some respects. Sofia’s is tremendously noisy – even on the less crowded edge where we wee seating.
Bread should have been served warm and waiter did not offer to refill it when our large group finished it.
Cajun Calamari was ok. Mussels in vodka sauce was small.
Entrees offer nothing beyond usual Italian-​American standards – only 2 fish dishes; only 1 beef option; lots of red sauce and parm.
Shrimp was served cold and had to be sent back. When it returned, it had mediocre taste. Pork chops were too dry and lacked flavor. Waiter did not remember who ordered what. Although we were seated before 7, food was slow to arrive. No offers of fresh pepper. Forks taken away were not replaced without asking.
BYO was helpful. Large tv screens were not.
Entrees are about $ 20; apps about $ 11.
I do not know of another Italian place in Springfield, which must help them a lot, as nearby Summit, Westfield and Milburn all have multiple Italian places in this price range which are much better, much quieter, much more interesting and offer much better service.
Obviously, some other reviewers had much better experiences.