CLT Eats – A Charlotte Restaurant Review

Main Dining Area

I went to a visit a friend who lives downtown last night and he talked me into checking out GW Fin’s. We walked on over and turns out that it was closed. Disappointing but there’s plenty of great places to dine downtown and I haven’t been to many of them so he suggested we head over to LaVecchia’s. Fortunately it was open, however it was the first week of Restaurant Week and they were booked up until 10:30pm. Luckily the bar area is full service and not reservable with an open small table.

The inside of the restaurant is very colorful and reasonably nice and the staff was very cordial. I’d call it mid-upscale, mostly because I don’t know what else to call it. It’s a nice place but certainly not as nice as you can go by any means. Still quite nice really. When seated at our table it was a bit cramped but since all the other tables were taken we had to squeeze up to tiny little tall bar table. Aside from the two ladies seated next to use at the other bar table, everyone else looked quite comfortable.

Since it was Restaurant Week we both decided to partake in the special that was being offered. The Restaurant Week menu looked mostly just like a paired down version of the full menu. I suppose it was just the options they were willing to package together for the set price of $30. I ordered the LaVecchia’s Salad, Almond Crusted Tilapia, and White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake. We also ordered the Calamari appetizer since we were both rather hungry and suspected the food would take a bit of time to come out given how packed the place was.

The salads came out briskly and mine was surprisingly good. I say that because the bulk of the salad was iceburg lettuce. Iceburg lettuce is what you get in a salad that you order from Applebee’s. It’s a cheap hack of a base for a salad. Despite the pathetic greens it really was fairly decent. If it had decent greens I suspect it would’ve been superb. The oddest thing about the salad though was the candied walnuts. Every few bites I’d hit one and it reminded me of eating Lucky Charms Cereal and hitting one of the marshmallow treats. They were overwhelmingly sweet. Next up was the Calamari. I have to admit it looked fairly underwhelming. It wasn’t too bad but I think I’d pass on it next time. We’d actually hoped to go with the stuffed mushroom appetizer instead but they were out of those. Odd considering it was around 7:30pm on the first day of Restaurant Week. When the main course arrived the presentation was quite nice. Much improved over the earlier courses. It unfortunately not much better taste-wise but again, it wasn’t a bad meal – just not particularly impressive. Just good. The cheesecake rounded out the meal well and followed the quality of everything else. All-in-all, it’s a decent restaurant and the price is fairly in line with what you get. It’s not an overly expensive place to go so I think they’re hitting their target pretty squarely. I went there expecting a bit of a classier place and honestly I was hoping to go to a bit of a classier place so my perspective may be tainted a bit. I do have to say that there really isn’t anything wrong at all with this restaurant but there’s also not much particularly memorable about it either.

Pros

• Good Food
• Good Atmosphere
• Decent Service
• Solid Performer
• Reasonable Value

Cons

• Didn’t find it particularly compelling . . . just good

Rating: Recommended