Alfio’s La Trattoria

First, let me say, I grew up going to Italian restaurants like this with my family in NY and these spots hold a special place in my heart. With that, I believe Alfio’s deserves a 5 star rating for what it is — a cozy, casual and classy old world Italian American restaurant. They are not trying to be a chic hip place, nor should they be– DC seems to have enough of that. I’m so glad we came upon this place; the chain restaurant atmosphere of Friendship Heights can be a bit soul crushing.
Anyway, the ambiance was classic; the servers were kind and attentive; and the food was true Italian American. Simple menu, simple ingredients — very satisfying. In fact, when we first got there, I turned to my boyfriend and said ‘this place smells exactly like my Grandma’s basement’ (note: the basement was where she made the gravy and hosted family meals.) Though the prices are a bit high ($ 14 – 20 for an entrée), it’s par for the course in the area. And you do get your money’s worth– between the side of pasta, bread and solid salad bar. Looking forward to returning and bringing my family when they visit.

If you like mediocre Italian food at a decent to high cost, this is your place to go. Salad bar is decent with a little bit of variety. The place is usually never crowded with people during lunch hours — can’t say the same for dinner time since I’ve never had dinner there. Overall, it’s ok.

We came here with friends for dinner in the middle of the week thinking we will find hearty Italian good. To our dismay, the food was tasteless, and the pasta was soggy. The tomato sauce was noticeably acidic such that every thing tasted unusual. The salad bar was extremely scant and left much to be desired. Give it a pass.

If I could provide zero stars, I would. I was at this establishment for a work lunch (about 30 of us) and we were provided five options with no descriptions of the entrees. Just a laminated piece of paper with the entrée titles. I ventured out and ordered the Broiled Flounder. I still have no idea what was layered on this thing, but the dominating flavors were lemon, sugar, and cheese. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. After the lunch entrée, we received an oddly shaped (rectangular cube) vanilla ice cream dish that managed to remain in its solid state for 30 – 45 minutes before showing any sign of melting.
Outside of the «food» experience, there’s an entire book that could be written about the restaurant’s décor. Just imagine walking into a medieval dining hall where every object on the wall (and ceiling) could be used as a weapon.
This place needs to be shutdown to make way for, well, pretty much anything else.

It’s a welcome throwback.
In the ground level of an apartment building, this place screams «this was the fancy Italian restaurant your parents went to in the 70’s»…and the charm is maintained. The décor, the food, everything. You’ll smile when you enter if you know what I’m getting at.
Nice little bar area where the owner, Matt, conjures up the classics. The whole place seems to be frequented by regulars since it’s an easy walk from all the tall apartments and everyone seems to know each other. And at that, many of the regulars are retired regulars who have been going here since, well, when your parents were going.
The food is a solid.
The place has a salad bar with those funky clear bowls and as one would expect, the salad bar is included with your dinner. The usual suspects exist: lettuce, cottage cheese, pickled beets, cucumbers, dressings, croutons, potato salad, and some sliced meats. It’s hard to control making a mountain out of your bowl.
Bread: good Italian bread, which means it’s Italian bread and Italian bread typically isn’t good (even the Italians will admit the French have them beat on the bread thing). And salted butter comes in the little foil packets that litter the table throughout the night. Happy days…
Appetizers. Crab stuffed mushroom caps were the surprise and the special of bruchetta with calamari and shrimp was phenom: it was like the bread was just swimming in a pool of sauce (not the same sauce used for their pastas and was addictive with a jalapeño (!) in it) covered in big shrimp and calamari rings. All cooked just right with not a drop left.
A pizza appetizer as well and we’re going back for pizza as this was ringer; you see people walking out of the place with boxes of it so we had to try. Try we did and try again we will. There was a collective «Man this is good f’ing pizza,» coming from the table and we were sad there was no more.
It’s refreshing to NOT get an eggplant parm made from seven whole eggplants taking up a serving platter for three. Portions are right sized, with pasta dishes just a bit on the larger end of things as all pasta dishes should be. My buddy’s linguine w/​clams looked magnificent it being loaded with big clams in their shells swimming in white sauce. And in terms of spaghetti carbonara, you’re not gonna find any better in DC: you’ll have to make a trip to Baltimore or Philly to get anything close. And the secret? It’s a proper carbonara: no cream. Just egg, pancetta, cheese, salt, and pepper. Only my mom’s is better… and that’s only because it’s my moms.
Pastas come on the cooked side (i.e., not al dente) but that’s how this place rolls. That’s why you come here.
Desserts are the classics and thankfully not on the half-​the-​cheesecake size of things. Spumoni is the green-​and-​white ice cream slice with embedded maraschino cherries. The rum cake could have used a tad more sugar but was devoured anyways. And the Sambuca comes with the three prerequisite flies.
Single entrees seem to hover $ 15 range and you can easily get out for $ 30/​person if you don’t over do it. Us? That’s impossible as Overdoing It is my middle name: more than multiple cocktails, a bottle of wine, apps, a pizza, entrée, dessert, and a final digestif resulting in being stuffed to the gills put us at… $ 60/​person after tip. In the In DC this is a bargain that can’t be beat.
Service? Excellent on all counts. Not continually in your face with to bogus hi-​how-​is-​everything-​going? every five minutes. Everything came right. Major plus here.
Come if: you wanna relive your past with in a great atmosphere (lime green booths with mirrored walls!) with one of the few remaining red sauce Italian joints in the region.
Don’t come if: you’re expecting something from Mario Batali with $ 100 shaved truffles as a starter.

Awesome place!!! Food is amazingly good, very flavorful, rich, tasty! Not the regular «pasta filled menu», very home-​like cooking, the menu doesn’t remind a bible lol, though the variety is good.
The interior is really nice and clean, great tasteful decoration, music loud enough not to be overwhelming and disrupt a peaceful conversation.
Highly recommend!

Alfio’s is very old school, the waiters even wears a tuxedo. I came here for lunch and I ordered some sort of chicken sandwich. I didn’t think it was really good. So if food isn’t the main attraction for this restaurant, it must be the décor and atmosphere right? Wrong, unless you like really dark dingy places that needs a renovation and completely updated everything.
For dinner patrons, there isn’t even a parking lot for this restaurant so the valet has to park the car for you or you’ll have to settle for street parking. I just don’t understand going through so much trouble to just eat at a mediocre restaurant. I would skip it because there’s better food options elsewhere around Friendship Heights.

Very tasty.
Loved the THIN crust white pizza with a bit of pesto on top! Nice authentic style salad bar, great dressing.
Cute, very old school. Not a young place but feels nice, a bit cavernous and sweetly Rome like Italian. 3,5

Went with some friends on 10/​26/​2014. The Veal Picata was very good, but the side of pasta left mush to be desired. I was over cooked, and the sauce (which was tasteless) was put on top, almost as an afterthought Server was attentive and saw to our needs. All the plates came out at the same time and the food was hot.

Dark and dingy in an old apartment building. Went there with family, and after the dinner, some racist lady asked my dad, who was dressed head to toe in armani, to get her car.
Service and food just average. Go elsewhere.

I’ve been going to Alfio’s off and on for about 20 years, but hadn’t been in quite a while. I thought it would be worth it to check out whether the food was still good, and decided to come with my father…
Suffice to say, the food is quite tasty. I had the eggplant parmigiana, which was wonderful in that it was lightly fried, but not overdone. The salad bar is varied, with a multitude of options to choose from. Additionally, the wait staff is friendly and prompt. The chocolate mousse cake was definitely the highlight.
After coming here, I can honestly say that I plan on coming here over a few of the other places that I having been eating at over the past few years. I WAS GLAD TO HAVE CHECKED IT OUT AFTER SO LONG.

3.5 stars. The chicken marsala was very good, but the pasta that came with it was overcooked. The marinara sauce on it was tasty, though. The salad bar is great; it has a nice selection of fresh veggies, as well as some prepared salads and some sliced meats and cheeses. The bread served with the meal was good, but it’s better at Pines of Rome in Bethesda. The service the night we went was pretty bad. The server wasn’t super friendly, and it was tough to get his attention for anything, including trying to pay him. Alfio’s an easy place for a decent Italian meal, but I prefer Pines of Rome.

An update to my previous review — I have now been here more times than I can count as it is so close to my office. The lunch specials are a good deal; no salad bar included but you do get soup or salad. The bread is always tasty. I particularly like their pizza and the cannaloni a la romana (white sauce). The Bolognese is also very good. The salad bar is pretty darn good and I like the fact it is stocked with cheese and salami, along with cole slaw, potato salad, and various other things besides just greens. The restaurant is in the Willoughby condominium, a little off the beaten path and a lot of the older residents like to dine here regularly, so definitely not young and hip, but solid food and the atmosphere can’t be beat. As for the décor — straight out of The Godfather, fuggedaboutit! :-)

The bolognese spaghetti, frettucini alfredo, and pasta in general at Alfio’s is my favorite in the DC area. Despite the fact it is not very popular, I really like the atmosphere of the restaurant at night. It is very relaxed. The pasta is comparable to the dishes I’ve had in Little Italy in Baltimore. Every pasta dish I have had has been very rich and homemade, and there are generous portions. The salad bar is also a really nice aspect of the restaurant. They have marinated mozzarella balls and pasta salad, and salami. I have been going for the past 3 years.

Had lunch here today on the boss. The food was mediocre; I’ve had much better Italian in other places (Olive Garden, Pasta Plus. .. .). I did get the flounder, which had spaghetti on the side. Neither were bad, just not impressed. The service was not impressive at all. In fact, they were almost rude. Maybe they don’t like serving large crowds. I don’t plan on coming back here.

It’s weirdness overcomes it’s faults. I’m going to call this the restaurant for poor planners. The chocolate mousse was more like soft serve chocolate ice cream, which is not bad, but is also not chocolate mousse.
«Chocolate mousse pudding» is obviously about to be something weird.
Eggplant, gnocchi and salad bar were all ok. Don’t go there for great food. Go there for food that is good when you need a table.

The service was okay. Bread was cold but would be good if hot. Salad bar was average not great. Main courses were less than average.

I kind of feel like Alfios should get 3 stars and a smiley face. Walking in it feels like you’re in some sort of medieval kingdom theme restaurant, or maybe the queing area for a Disney ride. It would actually be sort of cool if it wasn’t so run down and messy looking. There’s no doubt about one thing: you’re not in a trendy modern Italian place!
We choose it because we couldn’t get a reservations at Carmines and we were in the mood for checkered tablecloth Italian. Plus the wife is a big salad bar fan.
So, starting with the salad bar: its pretty lame. Sort of like Ruby Tuesdays’ but ¼ the size and most of items were pretty tasteless, They had a tray of cheese and mysterious cold cuts — didn’t try the meat, but the cheese was totally devoid of taste.
As for the entrees, they were damn good. It had the stuffed trout which I gather is a frequent (maybe daily) special, with a choice of spinach/​feta or crab meet. I choose the former, and it was fabulous. Butterflied, lightly sauteed with a crisp super thin crust, and a thin layer of wonderfully tasty spinach and cheese. Very fresh tasting fish, perfectly cooked — an absolute winner of a dish. The thin fried zucchini was wonderful — crisp, greaseless, and like the fish served piping hot and clearly straight form the chef with no wait. The veal parm was exactly what you’d like — very tender and tasty veal. Its about as elevated as this old standby could be. The tortellini in panna cream was meh– not alot of taste happening there.
There’s a great description of the service below: erratic but earnest. We waited a while to get rolling, but once we did it was mostly pretty attentive. As noted, the food came out perfectly timed.
The cannoli, which I gather is house made, was perfect. Reminded me of the ones from my youth in NYC.
The prices are great — a couple beers a apiece (nice big Stella glasses served at perfect temp) and dinner for 3 came to $ 90 with tip.
On the night we were there BTW, the patrons matched the décor. Felt like we were at a Disney these park — sort of the opposite of Café Milano.
The chef here definitely knows how to turn out a fine meal and you have to love the prices. If they cleaned it up and upgraded (or ditched) the salad bar, you’d have a pretty interesting and super value destination restaurant cause they’re not making them like this one anymore. I wouldn’t make a special trip again, but if I found myself in the neighborhood and hungry I’d come back.

I’m not sure where these reviewers are coming from, but I love Alfio’s. It’s a trattoria, ie: a traditional Italian Bistro. Being Italian myself, and my family having owned a restaurant or two, I’m very picky about Italian food. This place is great, nice home cooked style Italian pasta and entrees. The Braciola di Manzo is one of my favorites, but I also like the Pollo Diavolo (in Italy this dish is normally Pigeon but you have to cater for the American palate sometimes.)
The décor is great — it transports you back in time to a New York style immigrant Italian Kitchen reminiscent of the 50’s /​60’s. I’ve brought several of my family members (Italians) here when visiting and they all loved the place.
They also have a sports bar for all your favorite games and they offer some great specials during playoffs /​big games. The party room can also be booked and there is no minimum requirement on food orders. Most of all, free valet parking.
Don’t miss this place, it’s a hidden jewel.

I work in the neighborhood where this place is and so the only reason I’ve been here is because eventually I got tired of the same old lunch options and a few of us decided to branch out. Bad idea.
The best way to describe this place is that it is just weird. For starters it is located on the first level of an apartment building, don’t see that much. Secondly, the décor is dark and can only be described as a medieval, renaissance look. I remember suits of armor and lots of paintings and sculptures, again just weird.
They have a salad bar, pizzas and pastas but I don’t even recall what I got. It was either extremely unmemorable or I was distracted by the décor the entire time.