Review Valentinos Italian Restaurant - Turangi

I tried Valentinos for the first time and it was delicious! The restaurant is clean, tidy and authentic. I loved the music. My food and wine were wonderful, I can't wait to come back. The service was perfectly unobtrusive. I highly recommend Valentinos when you're in Turangi

We were looking for a place for dinner and was able to get a table here when we arrived around 2030. I think it did help that we called ahead and they let us know that the last order was going to be around 2030. We arrived and was seated and given a bit of time to look through the menu. They had quite a lot of Italian dishes and also had a few specials board scattered around the restaurant. I went with the duck livers followed by the lamb with balsamic. I quite liked the duck livers but didn't get a full hit of the marsala sauce. The bread soaked up the delicious sauce so which made it super tasty. I quite liked the lamb but the balasmic didn't have much rosemary or garlic flavour to it. The chips were what you'd expect at a fish and chip shop. I was able to try the bolognese and I wasn't a fan of the flavour. It was nice but different from what I expected. I really liked the saltimbocca. It was juicy, salty and really tasty. The special roast veggie ravioli in butter sage sauce was nice but I did find the pasta a bit on the firm side. The service was friendly, even though we were there quite late. The decor of the restaurant was also quite interesting with lots of interesting knick-knacks. There was also an area with walls covered in postcards. A nice restaurant in Turangi for food.

This is a small no-frills Italian restaurant with decent food and serving sizes. The focaccia bread was a nice starter, and the penne alla cacciatora was pretty good. Didn't really enjoy the peach dessert because it tasted a bit artificial/processed. Service was good and the atmosphere was cosy.

The food we had was amazing. It was a very busy night because of the public holiday, but we still got a table at 6pm. The atmosphere was very cozy upstairs. Although understaffed, we received our food very fast. They were also really friendly. Highly recommend if you're in the area!

We ate at Valentino's last night and had a great time. We had the large focaccia to start. Spaghetti alla Cabonara and Scaloppine con Funghi for the mains with an added side of vege. The steak was tender and the mushroom sauce was the most delicious I've ever had! Glad I saved some focaccia to mop it up!! Living in Auckland I forget how good portions are outside the city. For example, the fries that came with the steak were enough to share. We got the Valentino's Special for dessert. It's better than tiramisu as it isn't soggy. Definitely recommend and always great to support a local, family run establishment. Thanks for a great dinner!!

Last minute what to have for dinner, Valentino's it is. We really enjoyed the quint Italian restaurant setting of simplicity, just like in Italy Rome my comparison. Meals not take long at all. No reservation made, thankfully had available tables. We ordered the Steak wrapped with bacon and mushroom sauce, cooked perfect to our liking. The Lamb so tender was delicious. And the kids meal Spaghetti bolognese and side bowl of fries went a treat our daughter loved it, couldn't finish it all and was able to bring home for after snack. Starters Shrimp cocktails yummy, salad fresh and just the right amount of dressing for our likings. Dessert the Valentino Special, and Chocolate Fudge, enjoyed every little bit of it! And the recommendation of wine to compliment our meals was spot on. The service was excellent. Thank you for our enjoyable family dinner night out. Just what we needed xo

Very nice food and great service from our host.

A travelling family all over New Zealand chose a little restaurant on the main road of Turangi. A Family dine at a mini trattoria in Turangi great montepulciano Italian wine, entree mussels in a white wine lemon sauce, was the best I’ve had in quite sometime. the scaloppine con funghi in cream was divine. Tiramisu dessert to top it off. Service exquisite and food catered well for all the family. Served to perfection and fast. Thank you Ladies (Front of house) and the Chefs. Great value wonderful meal.

Had takeaway for my second experience. Really is wonderful. Had the Turangi favorite pasta,(ribbon pasta with ham and a creamy sauce) and steak and bacon with a creamy mushroom sauce, both delicious. Enough to take to work for dinner tomorrow night. Fantabulous ❤️

Had a great time here with my daughter. Enough options on the kids menu, she really liked the mini pizza and chips. I had the pasta of the day which was tasty. Home made ice cream was awesome too. Very friendly staff. Only comment I'd make is that the pasta was pricy, had expected a bit more for $30. Kids menu was $14 for mains and dessert which was great value.

Was on our way to Auckland and stopped in here for a quick meal. WOW what an experience, the meal was very poor. I thought the meat tasted off but I thought I wouldn't make a fuss and say nothing. My wife thought her meal tasted off as well, however, the man running the place seemed to be somewhere else. Little or no acknowledgement of customers and seemed more interested in taking out money than providing a meal which took a long time to arrive. Really though I couldn't expect great things after all it was Turangi. Would have been better of we had gone to Burgerking. The place reminded me of Fawlty Towers.

I learnt the hard way to read reviews on here before you go to a restaurant in a small town like Turangi. <br/><br/>A group of six of us visited this establishment, and this is the most disgusting restaurant we have ever had the displeasure of going to. Not only was the food utterly tasteless, but the customer service was extremely bad as well.<br/><br/>The manager was ill-mannered, had the attention span of a goldfish and lacked proper managerial skill when it came to taking the eventual complaint laid after our very expensive meals.<br/><br/>The pasta dishes we ordered tasted like rubber with only enough sauce to glue everything together. <br/><br/>The alcoholic drinks tasted like cordial and flavoured soda. They cost around $15 a pop and, as my partner used to be a bar tender, certainly should have contained a double shot for that price. <br/><br/>When we complained about all of the above to the manager, she became hostile towards all of us - at this point we should have left without paying a cent. However, as we have more manners in our pinkies than she, we gave her the $400!! for our meals. <br/><br/>Never returning again. In desperate need of a visit from Gordon.

This is undoubtedly the worst meal I have ever paid for. <br/>The food was disgusting, dry, unappealing. The beer I ordered was flat. And all the prices were ridiculously expensive for what you got in return. <br/>I have no problem spending a fair whack on dinner, but when i do so, I expect to get a decent meal and a freshly poured beer. <br/>Not difficult. <br/>And to top it all off the customer service was shocking. <br/>Very disappointed. Will not be going back.

This place is terrible, don't bother eating Here. Staff are rude, and don't have basic customer service. It took over an hour to get water on the table. The pasta Is bland and lacking flavour, and missing one key ingredient, SAUCE!!!!. You are better off going to the burgerking across the road, or going to the New world and buying some pasta from there. At least you will get sauce. Very expensive too. $25 for a main ouch. If you do complain you the staff, they seem to roll your eyes, or yell at you that you don't know Italian.

After spending a few nights convincing my travel friends to go to a restaurant in Turangi, we discovered this place being the only one open.<br/><br/>The décor on the inside was hideous, with closed curtains that resembled couch cover patterns and one wall covered in postcards for no apparent reason which made it look cheap. There was no Italian feel to the place whatsoever which felt the same after viewing the menu which consisted of a few expensive dishes and strange appetizers like eel for an "Italian" restaurant. We were told that the venison dish was already sold out for the day. <br/><br/>First we ordered cocktails, $14 per cocktail which was bought out in a hurricane glass which was 1/3 the size of a usual hurricane glass. The drinks tasted alcoholess, you would expect at least a double shot for that price, all we could taste was the juice.<br/><br/>After being disappointed with the drinks we purchased our meals.<br/><br/>As the woman was taking our orders, she would casually take one persons order and then walk off and then walk back to the table which we found strange. She did this throughout the dining and also during the point we were trying to pay at the end which we felt rude.<br/><br/>We had 2 people with spaghetti Bolognese, 4 with a pasta dish that had bacon in it and 1 with the chicken dish.<br/><br/>The pasta dishes were uneatable, completely tasteless with no sauce, it seems to have consisted of cheap frozen string pasta, unproperly cooked bacon pieces and covered in some grated cheese. It had no sort of sauce on it whatsoever which made it plain and boring. Pasta dishes were $25 each.<br/><br/>The Spaghetti Bolognese lacked sauce and taste, consisting of the same "pasta" from the previous pasta dish, a few bits of meat which we were unable to tell of what sort it was and a small amount of tomato sauce over it. This dish was $25 each.<br/><br/>The chicken dish was equally disappointing which is what I had, consisting of what seemed like microwaved chicken on top of a tasteless, what seemed like cheese sauce. On the edge of the dish was a single little piece of lettuce leaf with about 10 pieces of grated carrot and a single thinly cut piece of cucumber. She then put down a separately placed plate in front of me saying "that's your roast potato," this was covered in sour cream and walked off hastily. This meal costed $28.<br/><br/>When the dish was placed in front of me my brother said to me "Is that a salad?" referring to the small amount of carrot and piece of lettuce on the side. The woman turned to him and snarkly remarked "He didn't order the salad, did you say something?" Glared at him and hurried off.<br/><br/>As previously described, the food was uneatable, no one took another bite of the pasta and bacon after trying at least 2 bites and feeling sick, one got heartburn from eating it. <br/>The spaghetti Bolognese was cold and had a very small amount of sauce which made it tasteless.<br/>The chicken was bland and boring (the sauce didn't add anything to it, the salad, non-existent for a main. I asked to take the chicken away since I paid so much for it but couldn't bring myself to eat it the next day.<br/><br/>As we were paying for the expensive frozen food the we had barely touched we made a complaint to the woman saying that the pasta had no sauce and was cold. The woman suddenly became very aggressive and demanded that it was "authentic Italian" and that "this is how it is cooked, it doesn't have sauce in it." Considering we have eaten at many Italian restaurants in Auckland we are fully aware this is not the case.<br/>We had paid them over $400 for the food and drinks and found the owner to be one of the rudest people we had ever dealt with in a food place.<br/>She was obviously not Italian herself and I'm assuming she hasn't left the township in such a long time that she hasn't tried proper Italian restaurant food (or any infact) in quite a while.<br/><br/>All and all it was a very disappointing and disgusting experience, the entire experience of the bad food and the owners rude behavior and poor customer service skills ruined our entire weekend and we were in a miserable mood for the next day. The prices were insane for the cheap food that we had been served.<br/><br/>I would strongly recommend not eating at this establishment, it's really put us off eating in the area all together, next time we will just opt for the Burger King close by or buying our own food from the local supermarket and making our own food.<br/><br/>If we had seen the bad feedback on these sites before we went, we would not have bothered, sadly the lack of the reception in the area meant our 3G would not work at the time.

Absolutely divine. The best service ever. We thought the meal sizes were generous and as close to Italy as you can get. We have dined here several times now and always come back. Price wise great and the kids loved the pizza. Thanks for a lovely evening.

We have a holiday home in Turangi and have eaten here many,many times and always enjoy it. The deep fried sage leaves are wonderful and the crowd favorite (pappardelle) is delicious, though decadent. The steak is also hard to pass up - always perfectly cooked and flavourful. The service is friendly and efficient. So surprised at the bad reviews; we love the place!

We dined here on the way to Taupo- quite frankly it would have been worth staying in the car for the extra 40 minutes or just having a burger from the nearby Burger King. Food was awful- particularly the kids meals that were the 'value' range frozen mini pizza. We ended up leaving most of our food it was so bad. Would not recommend that you eat here. The waitress did not ask 'how was it' when I paid, otherwise I would have told her! To top it all, the pricing is excessive as well

We holiday in Turangi yearly. Many years ago I must have received a great meal here because I put the number on my phone.<br/>We have dined here about 5 times and each time it has declined further.<br/>I hate the fact that they have Venison on the menu my favourite dish when dining out but 3 times in a row they had some excuse for not having any.<br/>This being the case remove it from the menu and make it a special.<br/>The seafood chowder was the saving item real nice and very generous in size.<br/>However the main courses with their included potatoes of the day were such a joke a garnish of veg salad that would have been the same size of what you get in a McD burger and the Potatoes of the day being budget chips.<br/>We did not hang round for desert as it would give extra $$ that they did not deserve went to burger King across the road.<br/>I have removed their number from my phone and will never return.

No Italian would like to eat here! Even I as a german without much gourmet cuisine experience can tell that. My girlfriend and me went there today. We got Spaghetti Carbonara and the Pollo di Marsala. The first one were a small portion of simple spaghetti from the discounter with undefinable sauce and bacon that had never seen a pan to a price of 23 bugs. The second one were two pieces of deep-fried discounter chicken fresh out of the microwave and french fries (both surely from the discounter, too) for 27 kiwi-dollar. Toilets were dirty, but we got the clue where to search for the ingredients for this cheap and delicious meal: A New-World discounter bag dressed the garbage can in the toilets for each gender.

Will never go back. Terribly bland and 'home made' food. Tacky decor. Good portion sizes for adults, but small and overpriced childrens dishes. $6 for 1 scoop of icecream.

very good food, was on holiday. <br/>service was good also.<br/><br/>we had two pasta dishes, the sage with butter pasta was spectacular!

Good choices on the menu. Friendly staff. An enjoyable evening out.