Bella Vita Ristorante & Market

Recommends

Crotalus1

Joined 5 years ago

Beautiful place, great service, but.. I heard this was a great place with an interesting mix of influences so we popped in last weekend.

The place is beautifully decorated and the waitress was sweet, informative, and efficient.

But the Cream of Carrot Soup tasted like carrot juice and milk with no seasoning and no character; I was shocked.

The Eggplant Parmesan was a bed of acidic, kindergarten, thinly dressed linguine noodles, with 3-4 small fried slices of eggplant placed on top, each slice garnished with a pinch of cheese in the middle.

The opposite of what an eggplant parm lover is looking for. $13.00.

The highly touted Lamb-rack was virtually unseasoned and tossed in an oven.

Its only flavor was of meat, with carmelized onions placed on top while plating, and a concentrated Lipton-esque, too-sharp, soupgravy drizzled on top.

I scraped all onion and gravy away and just bit away at the fairly tough plain meat...

This needed (garlic, herb, salt, cracked pepper) seasoning the night before to flavor the meat & the gravy needed dairy or something to soften the sharpness.

I'm not hard to please and I'm not pretentious, but everything we ordered (excluding dessert) was virtually one dimensional & wrong.

On my worst day I could do 10 times better.

Pros: Ambience, Service, Key Lime Pie, & the lamb was $20.95 rather than $35.00.

Cons: The cook obviously called in sick that day.

Recommends

mfrayn

Joined 8 years ago

Excellent eclectic menu. Always a very good place to eat. They have a great variety on their menu. They have a lot of Thai food. Good seafood, steak and pasta. They have two sides to the restaurant. The bistro side has a small bar and there are no kids allowed. The family side obviously allows children. Nice friendly servers. Good wine list.

Recommends

karaokegirl2

Joined 5 years ago

Great Celebration Restaurant. Great ambience, very romantic on the dining side. Excellent for families on the other side. Owner on premises. Very friendly and inviting.

Recommends

impndit

Joined 6 years ago

ALWAYS MY FAVORITE!. I love this place!

The menu and wine list offer such an extensive selection that Circles is a great choice for a group. My personal favorite is the seafood, generally the herbed scallops or one of the Mahi Mahi dishes but they also offer Italian, Thai, and meatless dishes. The egg rolls are a "must try". Everything is always fresh and cooked to perfection with consideration to special requests. The waiters deserve equally high recommendation. We have always received impeccable service. This is truly my favorite restaurant.

Recommends

gingerkristo

Joined 6 years ago

Highly Recommend this Restaurant!. I always have a great dining experience every time I visit Circles. The food is amazing- it's always extremely fresh and tasty and they offer a wide variety of entrees to please any palette. The service is great as all the servers are extremely friendly and the courses are prepared very fast. The wine list offers many choices and the ambience is awesome, especially, on the bistro side if you are on date night.

Recommends

sosoma

Joined 7 years ago

great customer service. Circles is wonderful! I will eat there anytime. The variety of food is amazing as is the service. In fact, the servers are just about the best part of the experience! I want to go back just to say hello! And because I'm hungry!

Recommends

mnsjz

Joined 7 years ago

amazing food, great servers. I have been to Circles New Tampa many, many times. I always love the food! The black and white sesame tuna is my current favorite! All the servers we have had there have had great personalities, which makes the eating out experience so much better! Especially the tall server named Big Joe. He is great! We also really like the wide selection on the wine list. I think it is great to have such a unique family owned restaurant so close by when everything else on Bruce B. Downs is a chain. My only suggestion is to go during the week because there are longer wait times for everything on the weekends, but I guess that is the case at all restaurants!

Doesn't Recommend

ssou

Joined 7 years ago

Find Terrible Service Here!. It is rare to encounter bad service these days, especially in Florida where most of the state is geared toward customer satisfaction. My boyfriend and I had dinner there on September 8, 2006 and decided to sit at the bar so that we could get in and out. What a mistake. The girl behind the bar appeared to be new, having to hold up a wine glass against the wall so that she only filled it up to the line. After about ten minutes of sitting there, we had to ASK for a menu, being handed one by not the server but a kind couple sitting next to us. We found out that the bartender's name was Jessie and we had to ask her for everything: a wine list, to please take our order, to fill up our wine glasses... it felt like we were doing all the work for her. It was quite disconcerting that in the middle of all this the couple next to us had left twenty minutes after our arrival and dirty plates and wine glasses were not picked up even after we had finished our own meals. It was also a little unnerving to see that part of the problem why we received such terrible service was because Jessie was too busy checking on her text messages on her cell phone instead of checking on her customers. Though the food was good at Circles, it is probably needless to say that we will not return due to the poor level of service we received. I have heard good things about the Circles location in South Tampa, but I, myself, cannot say the same about the location in New Tampa. What a dissappointment.

Doesn't Recommend

mready

Joined 7 years ago

Find Terrible Service Here!. It is rare to encounter bad service these days, especially in Florida where most of the state is geared toward customer satisfaction. My boyfriend and I had dinner there on September 8, 2006 and decided to sit at the bar so that we could get in and out. What a mistake. The girl behind the bar appeared to be new, having to hold up a wine glass against the wall so that she only filled it up to the line. After about ten minutes of sitting there, we had to ASK for a menu, being handed one by not the server but a kind couple sitting next to us. We found out that the bartender's name was Jessie and we had to ask her for everything: a wine list, to please take our order, to fill up our wine glasses... it felt like we were doing all the work for her. It was quite disconcerting that in the middle of all this the couple next to us had left twenty minutes after our arrival and dirty plates and wine glasses were not picked up even after we had finished our own meals. It was also a little unnerving to see that part of the problem why we received such terrible service was because Jessie was too busy checking on her text messages on her cell phone instead of checking on her customers. Though the food was good at Circles, it is probably needless to say that we will not return due to the poor level of service we received. I have heard good things about the Circles location in South Tampa, but I, myself, cannot say the same about the location in New Tampa. What a disappointment.

Recommends

sohard2c

Joined 9 years ago

Never had better. My 1st trip was on Feb 14th, Calling it crowded is an understatement, but was well worth the 90min wait. You'd never know is from looking at the place that's tucked in a strip center and behind the Farm Store, but I've never had a better meal at any price, yet iy was cheaper than Red Lobster.

The wife wasn't please that I paid closer attention to the Food than her. She warned me as the meal ended that if I started to lick the plate she was going to fix it so I left in an ambulance. It is without question the best meal I'd ever eaten up to that point. The only meal I've had better has been on my return visits.

Not only do they make the world's best meals in the bistro, you have to check out the other side for the world's greatest pizza.