Soheil Khatib Ghavami
Staff Writer
On Wednesday, May 11, 2022, I visited Antonucci’s Italian restaurant in Mission Viejo. I met with their owner, he was a very kind man and let us do our restaurant review.
One thing I noticed immediately was how organized and neat the restaurant was. It already gave the whole experience a fancy and professional atmosphere.
There were three different rooms in which you could be seated for your meal, all of them were large. The first room was a more casual bar with big screens and different sports matches on each TV, it was more of an adult atmosphere.
The second room you could call the family dining room, it had beautiful red velvet carpet and tables and a few booths. They were all very high quality material and gave us a higher class feeling.
The third and final room was meant for company or business meetings, and was organized to be that way. It had many more paintings, and had fewer tables but much longer tables that could seat more people.
It was a little bit fancier than the other two rooms and it had one painting in particular which I really enjoyed. It was of a house on a hill with a very meaningful background of the hill, grass, leaves, and trees. The texture made it feel as if I was there. This made the dining experience even more enjoyable.
On to the food part of the experience, I personally enjoyed a dish of spaghetti and sausage with meat sauce. I also had the appetizer of bread and balsamic vinegar and oil. It seems simple but was very enjoyable.
On to the spaghetti, it was very relieving that it took a good 20 or so minutes to be ready. This made me feel like it was being made after I ordered it which was very good to hear because this means that they did not use any frozen ingredients.
When I received my meal it was very hot and fresh. After letting it cool for a few minutes I tried some of the spaghetti which was way better than I would’ve imagined. I imagined something decent that I would have had before.
This spaghetti was extraordinary, and the meat sauce gave it a really nice kick. The sausage was also really good but what I learned was that if you cut it up and mix it with your spaghetti it is so much better. The two flavors combined are magnificent.
For my beverage I ordered an iced tea which was very good, it was naturally flavored with peach which was really nice.
Now for the customer service, it was pretty good. Our waiter would check on us every 7 ish minutes or so making sure we had refills and everything we needed. The owner checked on us a few times, which was very kind of him because he most likely had a lot of other work to get to.
We had a small interview with the owner himself and we got some information from him. He stated,”The restaurant has been here for 70 years, but I just bought it a few years ago.” He explained that the restaurant has been there for 70 years and that he did not change much when he took ownership of the restaurant, so that he would be able to keep the loyal customers that were coming before he took ownership of the restaurant.
He went on to say, “It isn’t one of these company owned restaurants, I own it myself,” He was trying to give us the impression that it was a small family restaurant and that it wasn’t some cooperation just wanting the money. We got that impression while eating, as they really seemed to care whether we were enjoying our food or not.
In conclusion, it was a very good experience and calculating everything I would give it a 9/10 respectfully. It had everything and more that you would expect from a small hidden restaurant. It had way more than most restaurants and was very worth the price. The staff are very friendly and enjoy their job which makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable.
I would definitely recommend Antonucci’s in Mission Viejo if you’ve never been.
