Alexander’s Italian Restaurant

We are regulars — Dining here is always a great experience, food and service superb.

I love the food at this place. The chicken Parmesan is my favorite but really you can’t miss in here. Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah.

I’ve been coming here since it opened. LOVE. If you like home style Italian food… this is the place to go. It’s been my favorite since I was a little girl. Tomato sauce and Veal Francais are delicious. The roasted red pepper appetizer has extra oil and spices to soak your bread in. Prices and food portions EXCELLENT. Owner and staff always warm and friendly. They have a great house wine served by the carafe for such a steal. I have never had a bad meal here and I have been coming since it opened. Great food, great prices, good service in an un-​stuffy atmosphere. Thank you Alexanders for giving me YEARS of my fave food. Must come soon for more…

I love the eggplant parm/​Every time I come here I get it. My husband get a veal dish he loves. I agree the bread sucks and the interior needs an update but the eggplant parm rocks!!!

Had a lovely lunch here yesterday with my cousin Eileen. Crab cake appetizer and Chardonnay. I had the ½ size chicken parm with garlic and oil on my linguini with marinara on the side. The marinara was chunky and delicious and the bread was yummy. Eileen had the lasagne which she loved. The atmosphere is fancy and the service is impeccable. The prices are good too. Close by to my home and I like to come here and be pampered. Others may think it’s a little old fashioned, but what’s wrong with that. Try it, you’ll like it.

Nice staff, decent décor, poor bread, mediocre sauce, mediocre food on all plates, above average price for quality.
Not a recommended place for any reason.

I understand the crowd is getting older and understand the reviews but this place still has the best chicken parmesan and white pizza anywhere. Yes, the new owners have cheaped out with low end bread, servers that are not the best and the décor is tired but the two above dishes are still great.

My husband is a chef and we go out to eat often. We really enjoy good fresh food, we love cooking it and experiencing new restaurants. On that note, the food here is terrible. Most reviews on here are completely accurate. I make better italian food at home. The food lacks any real flavor, the clam chowder literally tasted like dirt water, the tomato sauce is watery with no flavor, the filling in the manicotti was gritty and watery (it was probably frozen too), our app was completely unseasoned and soggy. The food isn’t okay, or blah it is TERRIBLE. The service was good, but seriously why has this place been in business so long?

One of my favorite places. The service is always good and it has a nice comfortable atmosphere. The food is always good and consistent. Eggplant parm with hot sausage, shrimp parm and fettuccine Alfredo are my favorites. They also make the best white pizza ever. Prices are very reasonable. I just wish the bar downstairs was open more regularly.

The people are nice, the place is clean, and the food Isn’t good. I’ve been there three times trying to figure out why they attract repeat customers. Could I have missed something?

I go to Alexanders at least once a month. The food is always good as is the service.
Portions are huge and I usually have leftovers, enough for another meal.
I would recommend this resturant to anyone.

Despite many negative reviews, I’ve been a fan of this place for a while. Maybe its because the waiters know us… and the kitchen, but I don’t have much to complain about.
The food is pretty good, and the portions are large. The white beans and the caprese are great starters, and the desserts are killer. The entrees, while huge, are decent — it would be a lot better if they had a variety of pastas rather than linguine and fettuccine.
This place certainly could use a menu renovation and try to utilize locally grown ingredients, but I’ve yet to have a bad experience here.

I live just over the state line, drove by several times, typically looked dead. Friend of a friend never gave it great reviews but finally went in. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed the food and service. Don’t let the outside fool you. I will note I’m usually surprised at the cost (a bit high) when I receive the tab but for the amount of times I go, it all balances out.

OK, so everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but the reviews posted to this point about Alexander’s are sooooo far off that I think everyone should completely ignore them. Honestly, I find it extremely hard to believe that any of the reviews are even legitimate. Maybe they were written by a disgruntled employee? Maybe one of those scam companies that write bad reviews and then make you pay them to improve your image online? I don’t know who wrote them, or why, but I will set the record straight right now.
First, I have grown up in an Italian home that was always very picky about food. We regularly drive about 2 hours from our home in Derry, NH down to Rhode Island to get good pizza. When it comes to Italian food, we are not the easiest family to impress. So it should carry some weight when I tell you that the food at Alexander’s OUTSTANDING. Their eggplant parmesan is literally the best I have ever had — in either any restaurant or homemade. Their chicken parmesan is delicious, and it is also the largest portion I have ever seen. They make the best pizza in NH — fresh ingredients, perfectly cooked, nice and crispy crust. The prices are great — I would gladly pay much more for any of their dishes. The overwhelming majority of the meals fall into the $ 10 – 20 range. My dad has been bringing us to Alexander’s my entire life, and in all of that time I have never once had a meal I didn’t love, never once had a waitress that wasn’t friendly and attentive, and never once had an experience that would keep me from highly recommending the restaurant to anyone I know.
The bottom line: the food is excellent; the portions are huge; the service is great; and the prices are very reasonable. Five stars. Awesome restaurant.

Sorry Chris, I’m not a disgruntled former employee or sham company that writes poor reviews (do those really exist?). I’m just a big dude who loves food and hasn’t been back to Alexander’s for a long time because the last couple of times I was there it was terrible.
Yes, the portions are large. I’m of the opinion that bigger isn’t necessarily better. The portions at Olive Garden are huge too, but everything there is cooked in a microwave, so is it really good food?
I would drive past Alexander’s even if they were giving out their food for free. This place just doesn’t cut it.
On a positive, note, I believe they had free bread the last time I was there, and I remember the server being polite.
Thanks for reminding me to write a review of Alexander’s, Chris.

I agree with the other reviewers… I have had better Italian food from a can. Really nasty watery sauce, waited forever for a table and then they sat us right next to the kitchen when there were other tables availible. The host was a bitch, and to rub more salt in the cut, the menu was way overpriced. They seem to have fooled the over 70 crowd though. Wish I was a casket salesman… sorry that was mean, I have no filter…

I wanted to take my wife out to a nice place for New Years eve, and we decided on Italian food. This place looked nice so we gave it a try. We had to wait downstairs in the bar area for about 20 mins, no big deal, but the lighting was to low and we could hardly read the menu we brought down. The bartender was a young kid who didn’t pay attention to anything. We were 2 of 4 at the bar and our drinks were empty for 5 mins until we got his attention. Once seated the waitress was pleasant and the service was ok. Now, the food… I ordered Manacotti, it was marginal, but they put on way too much sauce! and the sauce didn’t even taste good. It had big clumps of tomato and it was very blan. My wife had Ravioli which was ok, but she found what appeared to be some kind of hard plastic or some strange thing in her sauce. That was it for us. we paid, left, and will not return.

Went for the first time tonight. I had heard it was an alright restaurant– not too great but not too bad. We were seated right away and the atmosphere was quite nice-​dim soft lightning. Service was good for the first few mins but after dinner we waited 20 mins b/​f our waitress showed her face again. We were by that point beyond ready to go. We ordered drinks which were alright and the food we ordered was nothing to write home about. Overall we won’t be goig there again unless by chance we won a gift cert or someone else was paying. If that were to happen a different restaurant suggestion would occur. Save your time and money and hit some place in ports. The Italian aspect of Alexanders was severely lacking

Wow, where to start. I guess from the beginning. I was excited to go to Alexander’s because it is one of the few restaurants in the South Berwick area plus I happen to love Italian food. It looks relatively adorable from the outside but that all changes the moment you walk in the door. The parking lot was pretty packed but as we walked up to the hostess we noticed there were still many seats left open. She told us there would be a fifteen minute wait and sent us to the dungeon bar where I swear if we had stayed for an additional fifteen minutes I would have most definitely been rufied. The bartender was young (which isn’t bad to begin with) but he didn’t know how to make the drinks we ordered (even with the help of a bartender’s manual), and he had the personality of a dead moth. One whisky sour and Guinness later we were brought up to the dining room. Appointed in the most ugly fashion with bad artwork, chandeliers, fake plants and more, I have seen few gaudier and less appealing restaurants in my life, and this is before the food even arrived!
The waitress came and took our order for drinks and appetizers and then proceeded to bring over bread. Sysco (the giant food manufacturing company) makes good quality cafeteria food, food that should be served to huge numbers of people to keep costs down. Not food that should be served in fancy restaurants. So when the waitress brought over a cold roll of Sysco bread to us with butter in packs we knew it was off to a bad start. The bread wasn’t even freshly baked let alone homemade, let alone good.
For our appetizer we ordered the breaded zucchini slices. They came with a blue cheese sauce and when I asked for a little marinara for the side she said it would cost a dollar extra. For a tiny cup of sauce. When they arrived about ten minutes later they were still hot from the fryolater. They were average at best and the sauces did little to improve them. Only the top layer was crispy and the rest were soggy and oily.
Still quite hungry our main courses arrived. We tried the eggplant Parmesan and the pasta carbonara. I requested that the meat be taken out of the carbonara and they obliged yet added onions in their place apparently as there was a plethora of them in the dish. A frozen pasta dish from the frozen foods isle at the grocery store would have been just at tasty. The eggplant was covered in more skin than a Shar Pei and there were huge chunks of tomato in the sauce which did little for the overall taste. Average at best, finished half, couldn’t bear to eat the leftovers though — not a good sign.
Now, I’m not saying it ruined my birthday but if it had been my birthday, it probably would have been ruined (aside from my stellar company). Not sure how or why this place is still in business but there’s no accounting for taste!

Went to Alexander’s with a group of friends who live locally, after one of them had heard really great things about it. From the outside, it was nothing to rave about but that never concerns me since a lot of great restaurant finds have shoddy exteriors. The inside was warm, cozy, and decorated like someone’s grandmother’s house, but it was charming in it’s own way. Our waitress was really attentive and knowledgeable about the menu.
The menu seemed like pretty basic Italian, lots of pasta choices, and choice of sauces, and old favorites like Chicken Parm and Veal Marsala. The bread that was served with our drinks was really good, warm, soft on the inside and crusty on the outside.
I had the crab cakes as an appetizer and they were very good.
For my meal, I had mussels in marinara over linguine. They gave a huge portion of muscles but the marinara was so chunky that it stuck more to the shells than anything else and didn’t taste very good. The whole dish was really bland. It could have used some garlic, wine or something.
One of my friends ordered the Baked Scallops and when they came out, they were super chewy and dry. They were overcooked. She never sends things back but asked the waitress if she could get them remade. The waitress apologized and quickly went to the kitchen to talk to the chef and came back and told us that she may want to choose something else on the menu because the scallops are all cooked that way. !!! Well if they are all cooked that way, that’s too bad, because I’m sure other customers scallops are overcooked and chewy.
Overall no one at our table really had anything good to say about the meal (except for the bread and crab cakes) and I can honestly say we have no plans to go back. There are much better Italian restaurants in the area for the same price range.