Villagio is a strange restaurant which seems to suffer from some sort of split personality disorder.

The crust on the A’Pizza Villagio was certainly excellent. Nice and crispy, it is second only to Ferrante’s here in Spokane, and I recommend going to Villagio just because of it.

On the flip-side, the toppings were not entirely a success. Sure, the prosciutto was fine, and the amount of cheese was perfect—not too much, but still enough to add a bit of flavor. The problem was with the balsamic port reduction. There was simply too much of it, and it overpowered the rest of the pie to such a degree I had to scrape some of it off. I have a feeling it would have soaked through the crust had I waited to do so.

Not good, but lesson learned, and I have a feeling the PHT (pancetta, fresh herbs, and fresh tomatoes) or Carni Italiane (salami, pepperoni, sausage, and pancetta) might have been better choices.

As for the service… It’s friendly, certainly, though possibly a bit too far on the eager side. The owner came up and talked to us numerous times, often bragging how awesome his restaurant was. That does not give a good impression, particularly when the place is far from perfect. I mean, talking about how authentically Italian your restaurant is when the house wine is from Chile? Strange.

The interior is a bit “eh” too, and I’m guessing it was done by a wannabe designer. The bar area, in particular, just looks like a mess, with a PC tower on the bar, the bottles stashed around willy-nilly, and the cable box, stereo, and wiring proudly on display for everybody to see.

Villagio’s savior, then, is the pizza crust. It is very very good. Other aspects of the restaurant need work, but I’m optimistic the place could turn out quite nice in the future.

A hesitant recommendation in other words.

The pizza is NY delicious and the restaurant is surprisingly romantic…

it was like n.y. crust – which is a real good thing. the sauce and cheese was in perfect harmony w/the crust. we usually get the tomato “pomodor” pizza and it is flavorful and delicious.

The price was very high for what you receive! Pizza was bland and small.

Yes, I agree that the price can be high but the crust is outstanding and the ingredients are delicious and fresh. Excellent service, wine and beer selection. I recommend the tiramisu highly.

If they reduce their prices, they might last more than a year. The service is friendly and food is OK, but $17 for a single-serve pizza? $5 for a beer? Does that come with a baseball game?

Best tiramisu in town—seriously delicious! Great pizza crust too, but I wish one pizza was either big enough to feed both my husband and me, or was just a little less pricey.

Villagio is typical South Hill Chicness, a nice charming interior, attentive service and the white linen napkins add an elegant touch to the dining experience. The bathroom was less then stellar—seeing the mop sink and the toilet paper / paper towel storage area is not nice, how about a curtain or cabinet doors to hide that mess.

As other people have mentioned the prices are $$ expensive $$, a meal (salad personal pizza) and a martini will easily cost you over $30 multiply that by 2 and $ 60 for a date is pretty expensive when you consider what you are getting.

I had the house villaggio salad with pears and candied walnuts in a light vinergarette, they did NOT drench the salad in dressing, YEAH, making it a very nice dinner salad.

I then had the Villaggio pizza—and was not impressed. The dough on the pizza is a thin crust but is made with way too much high gluten flour or it’s either been kneeded excessively and not given time to rest. The result is a tough, not crisp or even chewy crust. The edges of the pizza were simply not good and I left them on my plate.

The overall pizza needed some improvements—first of all I could barely taste any gorgonzola on it and the prosciutto was just layered on top in thin long strips, which made eating it very tough. If you tried to cut it the prosciutto would crumple up leaving you with large sections of the pie without any on it. If you tried to bit it the whole long slice would come off leaving it dangling out of your mouth. It would have been far better to have cut the prosciutto thicker and then diced it. The balsamic port reduction was good, however I would not order this pizza again.

The restaurant is popular, but almost any cutesy chic restaurant on the South Hill will work, people are not really very critical of the food quality and seem to be more into the overall appearance and feel of the restaurant. (EX: Laguna Caf, Ferrantes, Luna, Twigs).

For my money there are much better options.

After eating here several times I developed an irritation in my bowels. I would end up going to the bathroom several times a day and my fecal matter was hard as a rock, when I was finished I still felt as if my insides were working on more to come. Long story short, I visited my bathroom ten times in one day. My doctor told me to stop eating the pizza there and low and behold my bowel issue went away. The prices are also very pretentious for just a mere twelve inch pie. The owner as well talked up his place so much that it became a complete turn off. I would not recommend this place to anybody!

I was eager to finally try Villagio a few months ago after it had received rave reviews upon its initial opening. First impressions were that I didn’t care for the interior, which contrary to what I had heard, was not cozy and inviting but rather stark and somewhat offputting – perhaps the awkward location of the bar had something to do with it.

My friends and I order 2 pies between us – the prosciutto (allegedly straight from Italy) and the vegetable. While the vegetable was quite flavorful, it was the prosciutto that we kept going back to. It was interesting to see other reviews about the prosciutto as it seems to be that the problem here is inconsistency. The balsamic reduction was just the right amount and having requested for the pizza to be cut prior to being served, we had no problems with the size of the prosciutto itself.

We did have a similar experience with the owner; however he didn’t come off as arrogant or bragging. It just seemed that he was quite enthusiastic about his business and wanted people to have knowledge of the origins of the end product. Overall I enjoyed Villagio; what lacked in atmosphere made up in fantastic service and delicious food.