Restaurant Review: Valentino's

Our first visit to Valentino’s (6627 Harford Rd., 410-254-4700) is on a rainy Monday night, and it is the perfect place to find warm, comforting food. The restaurant is upscale, with tablecloths, stemmed glasses, and wait staff in shirts and ties. The plants that hang from the ceiling and top the half-wall around the dining room are reflected in the mirrored walls. There are two dining rooms in addition to the carry-out and bar areas. Upon entering, we walk past the carry-out area and are seated in a booth.

The menu is so extensive it is almost overwhelming. We order calamari ($9.99) as an appetizer, and chicken parmesan ($15.99) and spaghetti with meatballs ($12.24) as our entrees, with a glass of chianti ($8) and a bottle of Yuengling beer ($3).

What else is on the menu? Better to ask what's not on the menu—all the basics are covered, such as salads, sandwiches, wraps, steaks, ribs, subs, burgers, quesadillas and pizzas.

Traditional favorites include Maryland seafood, Italian entrees and Greek specialties like spanakopita and dolmades. Breakfast is served all day (Valentino’s is open 24 hours), salads include Cobb, Waldorf and fruit, and you can even get calve's liver!

But the real treat is the variety of desserts. Almost any sweet you can imagine is represented at Valentino’s: puddings include rice, banana and bread; pies include apple, cherry, lemon and pecan; cakes include cheese, pound and a rotating gourmet variety, which included three kinds of chocolate cake, red velvet, coconut and carrot the night I was there. Other desserts are: ice creams, brownies, cookies, cannoli, waffles, fruit, baklava, éclairs, sundaes and even Jell-o.

Our calamari comes and it is a generous portion of lightly breaded and deep-fried rings only—no tentacles—served with a side dish of marinara sauce. The menu mentions the calamari is fried with banana peppers, but there are no banana peppers in evidence. It comes out very quickly, and is piping hot. The order of garlic bread that comes with my chicken parmesan is served with the calamari—it's four generous, warm bread sticks, also served with marinara sauce.

We each get a small side salad with our entree as well, and the dressing is served on the side automatically. The salads are fresh and crisp, with basic garden salad ingredients cucumber, cherry tomato, onion and iceberg lettuce.

Our entrees are served immediately after our appetizer dishes have been cleared away, and our entrees are so hot we can’t eat them right away. The spaghetti comes in a large bowl with a generous amount of sauce and four huge meatballs. My chicken parmesan is a chicken breast that has been pounded, breaded and fried, and topped with melted mozzarella cheese and served over a large plate of spaghetti, and the entire dish is covered with a hearty helping of marinara sauce. The serving is so large that I can’t finish it and still save room for dessert, which I certainly plan on having.

I end up getting the carrot cake to take home, because the chicken parmesan is so good I can’t help but eat more than half of it. The carrot cake doesn’t disappoint—the slice is large, the icing is fresh and the cake is delicious but not overly sweet.

If you have a craving for great food and especially for dessert at any time of day or night, Valentino’s is the perfect place for you!