Al Vento

Came here for brunch and to my surprise the restaurant is closed. Perhaps updating the Unilocal hours if you’re not going to be open.

We spent New Year’s Eve at Al Vento and were blown away! I haven’t had food this good in a long time. We started with roasted Brussels sprouts that came with some kind of sausage and a mildly spicy sauce. Then we shared an insanely delicious pizza with fantastic smoked salmon, feta, mashed potatoes, and a tart-​sweet berry compote. Great creative combination! Then we shared the trout, which was one of the best fish dishes I’ve had. The trout was perfectly cooked and juicy, and was coated with a crunchy topping with a hint of Dijon. The dish came with smoked tomato risotto and a tomato butter sauce, and was topped with pickled carrots. For dessert we shared a chocolate hazelnut torte concoction that came with outstanding chocolate gelato. The dessert was very pretty, and just sweet enough that it wasn’t overwhelming. (The table next to us had tiramisu, and that looked pretty impressive too.)
The restaurant had a cozy, classy ambiance, and it wasn’t pretentious at all. The service was great. On top of that, the prices are SO reasonable considering the quality and quantity of food. The amazing trout dish was only $ 21 for a very generous portion. Yeah, the tables were a little jam packed, but if you want elbow room, go to the Olive Garden. I can’t wait to go back and try more of the menu.

Charming, true Italian vibe. Great wine list and simple but delicious menu. The elk linguine and Brussel sprouts were the best. The short ribs were too salty. Service was incredible. Finish the night off with housemade limoncello or gelato, Italian dessert is always worth it.

Good food but so extremely salty I almost couldn’t finish the bruschetta. You could always add salt but you can’t take it out. I don’t know why they over salted the food. Cute atmosphere & good service. But geez lay off the salt! I would go back because the place has interesting dishes but only if they didn’t make it so salty. It would be a nice place for a date.

In the number of Italian place I have been to this one has lot of different flavours. Great wine selections. Lot of vegetarian options. Place has nice comfy feeling and look. one of the best I have been to. Service was great as well

Great pasta dishes here generally get the meatballs with mother sauce never disappoints! The service can be hit or miss but the food is great.

Recommended to us by a local, had outdoor seating and it was wonderful! Sampler Bruschetta was really good, had a type of calzone pizza and was delicious, the big bang at the end was the yummy tiramisu! Unforgettable! That Lion Killer Dentist Walter Palmer needs to come here and eat everyday, get all fat and happy on Italian food so he can forget all about the innocent wild life in Africa.

Love Love Love this place! We discovered this hidden gem a few years ago after moving to the neighborhood and is now our favorite date night destination! While the service can be slower, it’s a great place to enjoy a dynamite meal with friends or family. I love the fennel sausage pizza and recently discovered a duck leg ragu. Delicious! Their menu slightly changes on a regular basis, which is great to try a variety of authentic Italian dishes. Head there on Mondays for half-​priced bottles of wine!

The brunch here is delicious!!! There are a variety of options. Loved the smoked salmon, eggs ben, in house made sausage, pancakes, fresh fruit and potatoes. The crepes were ok. Would have been better served warm. The place is small, but the service is good and the food is yummy.

Other than the slow service (server kept disappearing), I’ve nothing disparaging to say about this place.
I’d never been there before and my girlfriend suggested going there. I’m adventurous, so thought it would be a good thing to try. I’m very happy that I did.
You can get just about anything split, so you that you can have room for the entire meal. We split the salad, which was still huge, before dinner. We had a couple appetizers and bread, as well. All were delicious, memorable, and makes me want to go back soon.
The pasta was perfectly al dente and not overly dressed. You could taste the pasta along with the sauce, which is how it’s to be done outside of Buca.
If you’re looking for something other than faux Italian, you can find a great meal here.

Delicious, true Italian!
Party of 5, enjoyed Sampler Bruschetta and Stuffed Mushrooms as apps, 4-​spaghetti with meatballs and a sausage and herb goat cheese pizza.
Apps were delivered quickly, our server and the assistant staff was very attentive, never an empty glass or empty plate left on the table. Just excellent service! The meatballs were moist, meaty and just the right amount of seasoning, excellent recipe! I haven’t had meatballs this good outside of North End Boston– kudos, I’m a fan! Very nice wines by the glass (includes a Montepulciano and a Super Tuscan)!
We were all happily stuffed but the desserts looked incredible and we’ll definitely be back!
Beautiful patio and dining area– very large 2^nd dining room, looks perfect for a gathering.

Meh. This being my second brunch buffet experience in Minnesota, visiting from NYC I was not impressed. I love the idea of a brunch buffet but I feel like Al Vento misses the mark. There weren’t enough options for me. The only items I truly enjoyed were the Eggs Benedict & green beans. The scrambled eggs which normally at brunch places grab my attention right away — just looked off to me. The place also had no bacon and the signage was off– ended up scooping a dollop of whipped cream onto my plate after believing it was butter. Save your time and head on over to the Lake Elmo Inn brunch.

Good wines. Service was fine.
$ 17.50 for ordinary spaghetti and meatballs?
Seriously.
I had burnt walnut and grapefruit shells. sounded fab but was burnt garlic in a pool of oil.
Not going back.

Meh.
Just Meh. I went with a friend for their brunch buffet. It wasn’t anything special. I was really looking forward to some good breakfast food, and what I got was overly fancy and not very tasty food. I did enjoy the olive oil bread and the fresh fruit. There was a chocolate fountain which we were very excited for, but the chocolate was so bitter it wasn’t even worth it. We went with the boozy brunch and I will say, the wait staff kept the drinks flowing. So yes, I’ve experienced better brunch definitely, but I do want to go back and try out something for dinner.

Sunday brunch here is fantastic. It’s a buffet style of mini versions of the brunch staples. The mimosas are bottomless. The service could have been a little faster about filling up my empty mimosa glass, but then again it was probably a good thing, haha.

After seeing several reviews giving this place high marks, I was eager to give Al Vento a shot at the title for the best brunch discovery this year. However after sitting down I was taken aback by my first discovery: the $ 14 /​$ 20 brunch pricing that I have read so much about, and that truly is a great deal, has gone up to $ 18 for brunch with coffee and juice, and $ 24 for the «boozy brunch» with unlimited mimosas and Bloody Mary’s. I’m not a cheap person, but I do love feeling like I got a good deal, and at $ 20 — that’s a good deal for unlimited brunch cocktails. And likewise, $ 14 is a good brunch buffet price, but $ 18/​$ 24 is pushing the envelope of a «great deal» given the limited food offering at Al Vento.
The buffet had 6 hot food items: pasta, mini pancakes (that were firm enough to skip across Lake Nakomis), andouille sausage, egg florentine, scrambled eggs, and roasted potatoes. Then there were some house-​made bread items: an olive oil cake (that tasted like pound cake), filo dough with mascarpone cheese, and a few other sweet items. Then they had fresh fruit and a chocolate fondue fountain which is a big hit with the kids — and a big mess with the kids. Heck, it was a big mess for me too (the strawberries were nearly the size of my palm!). The one thing that was VERY good is a house smoked salmon. And because I came here looking for something like this this that was light and healthier than the usual brunch fare, I was happy. I seriously could (and did) make an entire meal out of this fish. It had a deep smoky flavor with bits of charred meat mixed in — it was noteworthy and memorable.
The downside was simply that the overall selection of food was tiny with no option to order something from the kitchen. Secondly, the buffet was crammed into a corner at the bar where people would get log-​jammed making it very difficult to maneuver around. The food on the bar is too high for anyone less than 5′ tall, so your either are waiting on someone to serve their kids or you’re having to hold up the line while helping your own kids get something to eat.
So to go, or not to go? I wouldn’t go back for brunch. Not for those prices given the small selection of things to choose from: it’s just too much unless they start making the price to include the tip for the server. I really did love that smoked salmon… if there was a way to get that without being saddled with all the other things that weren’t worth a darn, then I’d be back in a heartbeat. I am interested in coming back for dinner some time in the future.
Also worth noting is that they do take reservations and I expect they may get busy enough to warrant them; we got there when they opened their doors at 10am, so we were fortunaltely able to slide right in to a table. However they don’t use Open Table, and their online reservation system is a bit wonky, so it’s probably best to call ahead.

I wish I could give half a star. I’d give this place 3.5 stars. Sunday brunch is good. It’s small, but everything is tasty. I LOVED the eggs florentine! They were my favorite item of the buffet.
We didn’t have reservations and just showed up. They got 5 of us out on the covered patio in March. It was a really warm day. The little snow we’d had left was melting… right into the covered patio. I sat over a puddle which was a huge turnoff. Not totally a bad thing just … very awkward. But hey, they got us in after our horrible experience at a different brunch local.
For $ 20 you can get the Boozy Brunch with bottomless bloodys or mimosas, or until they run out of orange juice, whichever comes first. It’s not advertised this way but In my case, they ran out of orange juice. I don’t even understand how that’s possible. It’s not like boozy brunch is a surprise. It’s a weekly occurrence for them. The sever didn’t offer me a bloody even though when she first greeted us, I showed interest in being able to try both a mimosa and a bloody. Just to even get a refill, we had to flag our server down.
The food was really good! Like I said, I LOVED the eggs florentine. I also loved the cocoa pancakes, salad options, cheeses and the messy chocolate fountain. This buffet is small, however the food is good and they were working hard to keep it refilled. However, there were several times when they ran out of plates. It was just unfortunate.
They didn’t have desserts, other than the chocolate fountain and they didn’t have prime rib, something I love and get seconds of when all my friends get desserts.

My personal experience at Al Vento was a good one. Food was great, service at a good pace, ambience nice.
My husband and I came to Al Vento to CELEBRATE! We had our 20 week ultrasound earlier that day AND closed on our first house. I was a little bummed they they didn’t have lemonade to make an arnold palmer, as that is one of my main pregnancy vices. My husband enjoyed his wine.
Waiter gave us great insight on entrees — I was down to 2, he chose for me (and chose well!). My husband asked a question about one of the dishes — the waiter asked if he like salty food and if he was turned off by anchovies. He said, if so — he wouldn’t recommend the dish my husband was planning to have. Great tidbit! Hubs is NOT a fan of salt and NOT a fan of anchovy. Neither were listed in the description of the dish, so that might have been disappointing.
I ended up having the spicy bucatini pasta and my husband had the ravioli. Bucatini had some heat — but it was welcome. The bread that came out before entrees was tasty.
We finished with a shared tiramisu and my husband had a coffee. Tiramisu was some of the best I’ve ever had! I think the trick is that they put the coffee liquor on the plate, so the ladyfingers/​deliciousness didn’t get all soggy like it sometimes does.
Sadly, our experience was not the experience that those around us had. I watched a couple next to us (seated before us) order drinks, appetizers and entrees. In the time my husband and I had bread, drinks and orders fired, their appetizers barely came out. Mid appetizer noshing for them, and our entrees came out. Waiting, more waiting — we were done, signed our check, and their food STILL WASN’T OUT! I was feeling majorly guilty knowing we had come in after them and were ready to pay before they had started eating their main course. YIKES. I thought it HAD to be that the husband ordered the osso bucco (trying to rationalize why the kitchen’s timing was so horribly off). That was my second choice dish — so I’m glad I went with pasta!
Long story short — my dinner was delicious and experience was wonderful, however seeing the table next to me have such a rotten time makes me think that pasta is the way to go every time.

We had a bad experience with our first and second attempts at brunch this morning, so on a whim without a reservation we decided to show up at Al Vento with a party of 5 and hoped for the best. And we were seated right away, on the patio (in March) but still! Score. We were a hungry bunch of girls so this was okay with us.
Service was pretty slow. Our server was plenty nice, but we had to flag her down every time we wanted refills.
The brunch buffet options were bottomless coffee and juice, or boozy brunch with bottomless bloodies or mimosas for $ 20. Yes, please.
The buffet was smaller than some, but it was all quality stuff. The eggs florentine benedicts were to DIE FOR. The salmon, the orzo salad, and the crepes were also legit, and the mini coco pancakes. They also had eggs, sausage, potatoes, pasta, salad, some other baked stuff, and fruit in a chocolate fountain, which was fun.
They ran out of plates frequently, and ran out of items on the buffet, which were stocked fairly quickly but at times there was some waiting. Overall good quality stuff and a good deal considering the drinks. The place was busy the entire time we were there too, nonstop people coming in until it ended at 2. Definitely recommend this one. It would be nice to have some sort of desserts too though, like cheesecakes or something, but that’s just because I am gluttonous when it comes to my brunches.

I’m having a bit of a crisis situation. On the one hand, it is my duty as an Elite to report back on my experiences so that you fine people can go into situations better informed. On the other, I don’t want my experience at Al Vento’s Sunday brunch to change due to an influx of other people trying to get in on that awesomeness. Because it IS awesome. So, so awesome.
For $ 14, you get access to their all-​you-​can-​eat buffet spread that ranges from somewhat standard breakfast fare (mini pancakes, egg scramble, sausage, potato wedges, eggs benedict, etc) to more exciting options like fancy-​pants meats and cheeses, nuts, olives, fruit, pastries, salads, and more. I’ve also heard there’s a chocolate fountain but I was overwhelmed with options and completely missed out on this. In any case, the food is worth making a couple of trips back through the line.
$ 14 also allows you unlimited coffee, OJ, etc… but for $ 20, you get the brunch fare, non-​alcoholic beverages, as well as unlimited Bloody Marys, mimosas, and screwdrivers! And you can mix and match so you’re not committing to one or the other for the duration of the meal. I did not try a screwdriver but the Bloody was fantastic — especially for an all-​you-​can-​drink situation — and the mimosas were also tasty.
In addition to the total affordability, I thought the service was great. Granted, at times it was a bit slow — but we were not ushered out the door as soon as our trips through the buffet line slowed, and our server graciously delivered another round of drinks when we were paying the bill so we were able to sit a bit longer and chat over one last mimosa. It wasn’t super packed, but it also was pretty steadily well-​seated both on the oudoor patio and inside the restaurant. We had the foresight to make reservations since we were going with a slightly larger party, but I would probably go this route anyway just to be safe.
Al Vento, I cannot wait to come back. You dangerously live a mere bus ride from my home and for that I am grateful.