Villaggio at the Regatta

The sheer amount of talent Jay and crew display have exceeded expectations! The Regatta was a tough act to follow but they’ve done it well. Food was excellent, service was prompt and efficient, and the wine program is very progressive. Great selections! Highly recommended.

Server was not attentive. Simple items like refilling water glasses and checking on entrees was not done. One party had the wrong dish served, but since no-​one was around, it was not possible to get it fixed. The quality of the food was OK, but not great. Scallops were overcooked, but not tough.

We had recently spent 3 weeks in Italy and come to find out we could have better Italian food in Cotuit! Jay, the chef, did a fantastic job. I had the Chicken Sambucca (?) and my wife had the Haddock. Perfectly cooked and tasted Wonderful. Tori, our waitress, was great and helpful.

As always, a great night and great food & service. Never disappointed with the bar staff, Michael, Jeffrey, and don’t leave out Anthony & Brigid… our favorite place to be! Thank you for many great nights!

The food quality is very good. The food has always been good. The service gets to be a bit slow and I don’t recommend going on a holiday or a busy night if you go. I recommend the chicken picatta or even the filet.

Had a feast. Scampi, filet and chicken. Outstanding food and service. The bartender, CT, gave us the best service. This is the place to bring friends and family for a great dinner or a special occasion. Bring your appetite.

As a first time guest, I was thoroughly impressed. The service, food, and ambiance were excellent. Calamari was super tasty with a good amount of tentacles. I got the osso buco with pesto fettuccine on the side. It was out of this world tasty. I will be returning.

We love this restaurant. The food is always top notch and they are always very accommodating! The service is very good and the staff pays attention to the smallest details. The lobster ravioli is so good I can’t even describe it, just delicious!

Sad state of affairs for a supposedly high end restaurant on the Cape.
Started off great– tasty Caesar salad served on chilled plate, not too wet and bread/​oil nice. Drinks served in solid glasses and made well.
Then…downhill.
$ 42 for 9oz ounce filet cooked medium when ordered rare. Looked very lonely served on a plate with just what tasted like French’s onion strings. Who pays $ 42 and doesn’t get a vegetable and starch? (You have to choose.) Mashed potatoes OK.
Brief uptick: Haddock Toscana nice though overly sauced, and sautéed Spinach enjoyable though nothing special (And I love spinach prepared in any manner)
Side of Risotto could have come out of a box. Tasteless with large chunks of carrots.
Wine good-​priced as expected and tiramisu fine with cool martini presentation.
Corker was disgusting smell wafting in at end –not sure if septic or rotten food or what — server indicated it was cellar and due to age of building, but we have been patrons of last 3 businesses in building and never smelled that before.
Service was excellent as usual and have had a couple (2) pretty good experiences before– chicken parm a winner– but this experience souring. Prob be a long time before we try it again and certainly tough to recommend.

to begin, the food at Villagio is delicious… no other way to describe it… the roasted artichoke app is out of this world! The chicken Francese, the veal saltimboca and the squid over linguini were excellent… the martinis are wonderful, the desserts top notch!
ok …here is the downside: the woman who acts as the hostess is rude and argumentative and should be removed from her job immediately… if we had not had guests with us, we would have turned around and walked out… she is unacceptable… the waitress was overly friendly, but very helpful. halfway through our dinner, we sat down at 5pm, our waitress told us that the restaurant was out of forks… OUT OF FORKS! who ever heard of this??? actually we recalled that last summer when we dined there they also ran out of forks… why don’t they buy a whole lot more forks for heaven sake! It was early in the evening… this is really astonishing for a high priced restaurant to be telling people that they are out of forks! So in a nut shell: great food, rude hostess, helpful waitress, and out of forks… you need a classy hostess and more forks!

I have to say that having dined at the original Regatta under the original owner and chef, it would be hard for anyone to live up to those standards. I was surprised and please when my wife and I had a beautiful dinner at the Villagio. We both loved our meals. I had the Seafood Zingarella. What a sweet, scrumptious dish. I had this dinner several weeks prior to this outing and both times I was unable to finish it due to the huge portion that’s served. Our server was personable and attentive, the restaurant was quiet and intimate, at least where we sat upstairs. I would gladly recommend this restaurant to anyone looking for a good mean and a great night out.

Food was ordinary and for a higher-​priced restaurant you would want it to be «food to die for»…and it doesn’t.
Our Waitress Erin was perfection and the décor was lovely… Cheese tray with wine was a nice touch and stuffed mushroom appetizers were pretty good.

Meh. Decent, not great. To much use of balsamic vinegar. It’s in the bread dipping oil, drizzled on my stuffed mushrooms and even on my salmon florentine.
One really irritating thing was the disrespect when I told them that the Frank Sinatra song had been playing on a loop since I sat down. They felt the need to discuss it amongst the workers to see if any of them noticed. And guess what they did? Changed to Greensleeves… Yes… On a loop. Utterly annoying.
Oh yeah… Don’t sit near the door in the back corner of the Tavern side. Staff use it and you get a blast of air… Hope they don’t do it in February.
Last little dig: small men’s room across from the bar, mirrors were disgustingly dirty.
This place is a sad excuse for «high end» dining. I won’t return & won’t recommend.

The staff was very friendly and the portions were more than fair. Good menu selection and you have to try the stuffed mushrooms. I didn’t love the sauce, it was a little sweet and watery, but the veal was so tender that I could cut it without a knife.

The food here was absolutely excellent. The sauces were great and flavorful and everything was well prepared. The manager was active and approached every table to ask how things were going. The chef/​owner is doing a wonderful job.
The only downside was our server. She started off by saying «I’m going to TRY and help you guys out tonight» Servers should always be confident even if they are new or nervous. The cheese and crackers that came with the wine came out when the wine was almost gone! Empty plates took too long to be removed but it was just a few little things that threw me off.
Overall a good experience, great atmosphere and fabulous food :)

Nice to see new life at the Regatta! But the kitchen needs to step up the quality. I ordered the pork chop which, when it arrived seemed like a nice cut of meat, thick cut and bone-​in. It was in a pizzaiola sauce topped with fried onions (fried onions?). The chop, though cooked through, was charred giving it a bitter taste, which would have been tolerable if the sauce had also not been bitter. The sauce had vinegar peppers in it which is traditional but the tomato portion of the sauce had, I believe, been over-​cooked causing it to also lose all the sweetness of well prepared tomato sauce. The entrée was accompanied by a side of pasta. I chose to have the bolognese sauce with an up-​charge. The sauce was meaty but contained minced meatballs, a move that I don’t think comes close to a traditional bolognese. Further, when I requested additional Parmesan the waitress came with a bowl of shaved Parmesan cheese as opposed to grated. It was both difficult to spread and not very pleasant to eat. These seem to me rookie mistakes that a first-​rate Italian restaurant charging top Italian restaurant prices would avoid.
I hope to one day return to Villagio with the expectation that the kitchen will live up to the facility that it’s in and match the quality that the menu prices lead one to expect.

I am sorry to say, but the experience we had at Villaggio at the Regatta last Friday (8÷1÷2014) evening was very disappointing.
Here’s the story –.
We (a group of 4 adults) arrived at about 7 pm for dinner. We had called earlier and although they do not take reservations they said that they should have a table available for us at 7 pm. We waited about 10 minutes and we were then seated on the 2^nd floor, where it was nearly impossible to hear what people were saying due to the acoustics in this room, when all of the tables are in use.
They have a large menu which looked interesting. The also had an impressive wine list although most of the bottles were very pricey.
We were warned by the waitress that the kitchen was «backed up» when we sat down but never did we imagine that our two course meal at Villaggio would turn into a 3 hour event.
Our appetizers took 45 minutes to be served (after being ordered) and the main course took over 2 hours! Yes, 2 hours. The service on this evening was so slow that the table of six next to us settled their check and WALKED OUT after waiting over 2 hours for entrees that were never served!
As for the food, it was for the most part not great considering the price
The lettuce in the Caesar salad was at room temperature and was not crisp. The salad dressing was so so.
The Asparagus wrap, which tasted to much like balsamic vinegar, was okay.
The Shrimp Scampi was very good.
I only ate half of the Pork Chop Pizzaiola that I ordered after having difficulty cutting the meat. It was smothered in sauce, to the point that I could not really taste the meat.
The other two main course were reported to be «just okay» but one of them included a sauce that consisted of so many capers that you basically could not taste the main dish through the capers.
A word about the service –
The waitress tried hard but there seem to be real problems in the kitchen. The manger walked around and made excuses without really finding a way to solve the problem or calm down the dinners who had been waiting for their food to arrive. We found it sort of odd for a high end restaurant to not have a dedicated person busing the tables. It looked to us like this restaurant is trying to be super high end, without higher top front-​of-​the-​house staff.
We were not the only people who were very disappointed which their experience at Villaggio. Besides the table of six that walked out, there was a table of two near us who sent back the main course because of a problem. And there was another table across from us that was so upset that they had part of their check comped.
BOTTOM LINE:
I cannot recommend that anyone eat at this restaurant at the moment.
A few footnotes:
The restaurant does not take reservations on Thursday-​Saturday nights. Instead they ask that you call about 30 minutes before you wish to dine and they put your name on a list and then they let you know then how long the wait is. When you arrive they then ask you to wait at the bar until a table becomes available. This wacky system, from what I saw, does not seem to work well.
Do not take a table on the 2^nd floor if the restaurant is full. If you do you will have a very difficult time hearing what anyone is saying since the main room upstairs is very noisy when full. Instead it is much better to sit on the 1^st floor.

Just had dinner tonight. I had Chicken Scarpariella, my wife had Shrimp Scampi, my son had Seafood fra Diavolo. The meals were absolutely excellent. The sauces, in particular, were stand-​outs.
The prices were reasonable, especially compared to the old Regatta. Our waitress was new and a little nervous. Though, she did a fine job overall. Service was at a leisurely pace. I liked the setup of the place with its private little rooms.
The menu is not your run of the mill Italian. While they have some of the familiar Italian dishes, there are a bunch of what I can only call gourmand items with unique sounding sauces. They also offered Prime Steaks.
Overall, we were very well pleased. It was a bit more expensive than the chain restaurants, but well worth it. We will be returning.

The concept is good — take the old stuffy worn out Regatta with its «seafood trilogy» and «buffalo steaks» — and go Italian.
Except it’s not very good Italian.
1. antipastos were prepared with meat cleavers. chunks of meat. chunks of cheese. Bleh. Buy a slicer.
2. the red sauce — the bolognese was prepared by Chef Boyardee. Pro tip — invest in a copy of Marcella Hazan’s essentials of italian cooking and learn how to make a decent sauce.
3. some sausage and shrimp thing in cream sauce was pretty gross.
4. A veal chop for $ 42? NFW
5. the saltimbocca was pretty good
6. All the pasta sides — the sauce was extraordinarily boring.
Service was excellent.

Went last night (2^nd night open) at the location of the old Regatta Restaurant in Cotuit. Went with 3 girlfriends. We sat in the tap room. Menu offers a variety of traditional Italian dishes. We started with cocktails then moved on to salads and dinner with wine. Michael, our server was pleasant and helpful. Service was very good. On to the food. The four of us split 2 salads, the caprese and romaine wedge. Both were very good. (One salad could be split by 2). Entrees were eggplant parm, veal piccata, veal francese, and salmon. All were very good. Entrees come with choice of starch or veggies or pasta. I had the penne Bolognese which I am finishing for lunch as I write this. All entrees were very good and we are already planning on returning with our husbands! Good selection of quality wines by the glass. Also, it should be noted that there are many meat and seafood entrees. For a casual meal you may prefer the tavern, more formal/​romantic, one of the dining rooms.