Cafe Valentina

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Located in a small strip mall behind a gas station, Café Valentina isn’t easy to find. This small, somewhat cramped neighborhood Italian restaurant offers a casual atmosphere, with an intimate dining area in the front and a tiny bar in the back. The menu isn’t imaginative by any means, but features a nice selection of Italian standards, including pasta, pizza, veal, chicken, and seafood dishes.

Jeff’s Take:

Café Valentina is known for its delicious garlic bread, and deservedly so. Each table gets a serving of large, pillowy dinner rolls, drenched in extra virgin olive oil with fresh chopped garlic and a sprinkling of parsley. What makes it so good is that rather than serving the olive oil on the side, like most restaurants, the plated garlic bread at Café Valentina is already swimming in the olive oil and garlic, so the bread has gotten a chance to absorb the flavor. Despite the large size of the rolls, a second helping was necessary.

For my entrée, I ordered the Veal Saltimbocca Romana—a thinly sliced veal cutlet topped with prosciutto and fresh mozzarella, served in an olive oil, broth, and white wine sauce. The sauce was excellent—light and zesty with some nice Italian herbs. However, the veal was much too bland and tough. Veal is supposed to be much more tender than a regular beef steak, but this one was rubbery and overcooked. Not even the prosciutto, mozzarella, or the sauce could save this one.

The meal also came with an underwhelming salad and a side of pasta with marinara sauce. The light, simple marinara sauce on the pasta was on the sweeter side, which I liked, but was too watery.

It was disappointing to have a meal start off so well and falter at the main course. I wouldn’t consider Café Valentina to be a destination for great Italian food, but if you love garlic bread, a special trip is warranted.




Mike's Take:

I have quite a different take on Cafe Valentina than Jeff. While I agree that the salads are completely underwhelming and probably come from a Grocery Store Bag-O-Salad, I have thoroughly enjoyed my dishes on both my trips to Cafe Valentina.

Jeff has already touched on the fantastic garlic rolls, which are probably the best I have ever had, but I believe he made a mistake in ordering the veal. On an earlier trip, I had Cafe Valentina's Homemade Gnocchis. While these were not the best gnocchis I've ever had, they were very scrumptious. Cafe Valentina's strength is clearly in the starches and homemade recipes. On this past visit, I went with a homemade spaghetti pasta with meat sauce. Again, the homemade pasta was perfectly cooked and quite good. I also prefer my sauce to be on the thinner side, so I definitely disagree with the assessment that it is too watery. To me, too watery means a lack of flavor in the sauce and an overall blandness. While Cafe Valentina's sauce is thin, I think it has an excellent sweet flavor. The thinness of the sauce allowed my sauce to drip down into the pasta and left all the delicious meat on top allowing the sauce to be absorbed by the pasta.

Cafe Valentina's weak point is certainly its weak salad (and apparently it's veal) but is strong in its homemade italian recipes and starches. It's hard to penalize the place on its salad since the little restaurant is a great value with huge portions that include amazing garlic rolls and a salad. I definitely would petition Jeff to give Cafe Valentina another shot and recommend he try a pasta dish. Though, Cafe Valentina is clearly lacking in the slaughter department.




1323 McKennans Church Rd.
Wilmington, DE 19808
(302) 996-0301
http://www.cafevalentina.com/

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