Restaurant Impossible - Valentino's Trattoria / Italian Bistro Update

Photo - Food Network

Tonight on Restaurant: Impossible, Robert Irvine and his crew are in Summerville, South Carolina to makeover Valentino's Trattoria.  Valentino's Trattoria is an Italian restaurant that opened in 2014, and is owned by a family who also owns another restaurant in Summerville called Italian Bistro.  Both of these restaurants are struggling and Robert Irvine decides to help them both out on this episode.  As the big reveal was done at Valentino's Trattoria, this update will mostly be about that restaurant.

As I normally do with Restaurant: Impossible episodes, I searched around the Internet to read stories, comments and reviews about Valentino's Trattoria and Italian Bistro to get an idea of how the restaurant is doing since Robert Irvine visited, and here is what I found (note - all reviews are post Restaurant: Impossible and all of these reviews are for Valentino's Trattoria):



Positive Reviews:

•  "As my go to for a  quick slice lunch place, Robert Irvine and his design team did an outstanding job on the makeover.. Food has always been solid along with  friendly management and staff. At a dinner with a friend, tried a RI Italian rice ball that was added to the menu and it was quite good."
• "Welcoming renovations. Except for the canned mushrooms the pizza was delicious as was the tiramisu. We would go again just hold the mushrooms."
• "First off, since Restaurant Impossible reworked the interior that is now up to the same standard as the food.  The only problem that I have is that the women's rest room is disgusting!!!....Other than that, not a bad restaurant.  Please clean the restrooms"
• "I have to let everyone know that Valentinos has been remodeled and is beautiful! We ordered two large pepperoni pizzas and I will say they are the BEST Summerville has! Strongly recommend!"
• "I have been to Valentino's before and looked forward to seeing the revised and improved version after Restaurant Impossible got through. Nice job. Much more open and bright. Nice paint job. There were six of us, and we all enjoyed our meals very much.....All in all the evening was wonderful, the food great, and the company superb. We'll be going back very soon."
• "Since moving to Summerville in October we've been trying to find the best pizza place that delivers. We've tried several but this has been the best yet. Delivery was fast. I thought the pizza was very good, not the best in world but definitely the best in the area. Prices we're about average. We will order from them again!"

Negative Reviews:

• "I would say our dinner was mediocre. My friends had meaty strombolis that were delicious. However, the veggie pizza was disappointing. The crust was almost soggy--probably from the frozen spinach and canned mushrooms!!!! Halfway through my first slice, I realized that the spinach was definitely not fresh! I could get fresher ingredients at Pizza Hut!...The service was ok--the server seemed to be inexperienced.... the food was decent for a pizzeria, and the prices were reasonable. However, I would like to visit again in a few months to see the progress."

*Reviews from Yelp, Tripadvisor


Other News and Links:

• The Restaurant Impossible makeover happened in January 2015
• Here is the Valentino's Trattoria Facebook Page and Website.
• On their Facebook page, they seem happy with the makeover and their Restaurant Impossible experience.
• In December of 2014, the restaurant posted the following message on their Twitter page, "Use this link and suggest us to be a Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives hot spot on the food network!!!!"  So it appears they were trying to get on the Food Network any way they could.
• There are actually 2 Italian Bistros in Summerville - One on Central Ave.(The one on the show) - Website and Yelp, One on Main St. - Website and Yelp.   The menus are exactly the same and the menus are also the same as the menu on the Valentino's Trattoria page.  So it appears that the family may actually own 3 restaurants, unless there is a different owner at one of these.
• In a local article from last week, Elsa Valentino said "It’s funny, because he introduced a new menu, but the first weekend, our customers wanted the old menu. So we went back. As far as the décor, everyone loves it. The place needed a facelift.”
• She also said about Restaurant Impossible - "A lot of the stuff, I’d say 80, maybe even 90, percent of it is real, but they tell you when to say certain things."
• There are a lot of people commenting on that article saying they were going to try the restaurant, but will not anymore now that the restaurant has gone back to their old menu and seem unappreciative of the makeover.

Conclusion:

The reviews of Valentino's Trattoria are mostly positive since the makeover with complements on the interior and the pizza.  Even though most of the reviews are positive, they are pretty average (3-stars) and do have small complaints.  There were multiple complaints about canned mushrooms and a complaint about the dirty bathrooms.

The restaurant has also went back to their old menu and judging by the comments on a local article, it seems like this decision made a lot of potential new customers not want to try the restaurant.

UPDATE - It seems that the restaurant closed in late 2015, but no reason was given for the closure and it seemed abrupt.

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