The Local Table

Except for the waiter having alcohol on his breath, and the slow service. the food was fine.

Very impressed! Food was so fresh and delicious, service excellent, welcoming to kids even though it’s a nicer restaurant — we will definitely be back!

I have visited this lovely restaurant several times and have always VERY MUCH enjoyed the food, both at dinner and happy hour — it’s fantastic! It’s such a beautiful, peaceful and relaxing place to chill out after a long day, and I leave each time feeling like I got a tiny little vacation from the everyday rat race. The bartender/​manager, Christopher, is always more than gracious, and although the waiters can (admittedly) be a little slow at times, the service has always been courteous and attentive. I highly recommend this place to anyone who wants a delicious break from the hectic hurry of the rest of the world!

Loved my Pappardelle last night and my wife loved her Trout! We shared a Burrata, Tomato and Arugula appetizer which was superb!
Treated well on a Monday night as the restaurant was occupied by about two tables. Julio was a good waiter.
I would suggest that you bring your own bottle and use their corkage if you want a decent glass of Italian wine with dinner. Chianti is the ONLY choice.
Net is: I don’t think it is quite as good as another restaurant (Pecorino) owned by the same company.

I took my friend for a celebration dinner here after seeing it listed in the Ventura County Axxess book. The only reason I am giving it 4 stars instead of five is because of how our night started out. We were waiting to be greeted (about 5 minutes) finally someone came up and said our table would be ready in 10 minutes which was odd because there were several empty tables. The 10 minutes came and went when someone else finally noticed us sitting there and asked if we have been helped. His name was Maurice and he was our angel. He apologized without placing blame and took immediate responsibility. He was friendly, knowledgeable, and very accommodating. It was busy so he stepped in as a server, his usual position is a bar back. He should be the manager! The way he took charge and pride in his work we thought he was even an owner. He’s a keeper! We like to try new places and have been looking for a new Italian restaurant, we found one. We started out with the Bruschetta with burrratta cheese. It was delicious. My friend ordered Penne with Chicken Sausage, Roasted Pine Nuts and Sun-​Dried Tomatoes in a Red Sauce, she loved it and can’t wait to go back for that dish. I ordered the Orecchiette Pasta with Pancetta, English Peas and Mushrooms in a Light Cream Sauce and wouldn’t have changed a thing about it. Delicious. For dessert we ordered Crème Brulee and thought it was tasty but the sugar was a little chewy. This is a not a fast food restaurant, it is a cozy, relaxing, sit down and enjoy conversation kind of place. I have already planned a date night with my husband, can’t wait to go back.

The service was absolutely terrible. When I called to make a reservation, I specified I wanted a booth. I get to the restaurant, and they tell me that they gave away the booth to another couple. They refuse to let us sit in either of the other two open booths. As we are sitting at a table, the waiter completely ignores us and serves a couple that came in after us. 15 minutes passed before I finally got up to find the busboy who came and got us water, not even asking if there’s anything else we want to drink. We then had to wait almost one hour for our incredibly salty food. The busboy felt bad, but the one waiter could not care less about us. I highly recommend not going to this excuse of a restaurant. Terrible service, mediocre food, overall horrible experience. I will not be going back.

Worst service ever.
After seeing a couple decent reviews on Unilocal,I thought I’d try it. Met two friends for happy hour and possible dinner. First of all, it was a little difficult to find the place then I looked in and it was empty (515) except one couple at the bar.
I tried it anyway and quickly understood why it was so quiet in there.
Food was ok but the service was so bad it made the experience poor.
Also, it looks like a great wine bar in the pics and inside as well but they have a very small and low quality selection of reds.
Won’t go back there.

This is my favorite place to come for dinner. The quality of food is superb! I will be purchasing several gift certificates to give to my family for Christmas this year!

My husband & I had a very relaxing & wonderful dinner here tonight. We both started with a broccoli soup & then had the barbecue shrimp. There were 12 good sized shrimp served in a lemon garlic sauce. It was served with a salad & potato. Instead of the potato we were able to substitute a vegetable. The music played was very relaxing & they also had the fireplace on. We both finished with a cup of decaf which was freshly brewed. We look forward to returning at another time.

My family lives in Dos Vientos. We decided one night to walk down for dinner. It was around 5:30 on a Tuesday and we were the only ones seated; there were a few folks at the bar. The décor & ambience was real nice, and the background music was American classic. I had the Chicken Parm sandwich with a Caesar salad and my wife had linguini with seafood, while my daughter had chicken from the kid’s menu. All the food was excellent and the house wine was great too. My sandwich was one of the best I have ever had, and the service was nice and relaxed. All in all a great dinner — we will return soon.

I’m only compelled to write a bad review because we’ve been here 3 times now and each visit has been progressively worse. Our most recent visit was around the beginning of September. That’s two sub-​par visits of reserving judgment and trying to stay positive mostly because we’ve had friends come here and say they’ve had better experiences. We love this location, and would really like something GOOD to be successful.
The reality — Unfortunately the food is overpriced, subpar and really just lacking any pizazz. Kids meals are way overpriced for what they get. Food is maybe a 2 – 3 star.
The service — Zero stars. The person I’m assuming was the manager, older gentleman, kind of over-​bearing, fake and annoying, kinda weird about seating arrangements (as evidenced by other reviews here too) who has been there all three times, Was also our server on two of the occasions. Every time the service was sporadic, and generally pretty inattentive. But on this most recent visit it was really weak, culminating with being held hostage for our check, then to find out that we were mixed up with another table’s check (not sure how when there were probably only 5 – 6 other tables seated?), and then had to wait for that to be corrected, and then the icing on the cake was that we had to ask for our card back because he gave it to another table… and then come to find out later we were double charged for our very unfulfilling $ 90 meal. We had to wait about 6 days for it to be refunded. Seriously? And if I’m going to spend $ 90 on a meal (with only 2 drinks) for 2 adults and 2 young children, it better leave me with a smile on my face at least.
We’re over it. We’ll wait until the next restaurant opens in this location and try again with an open mind. Hopefully someone will get this location right eventually because it has a lot of potential.

Under new management and the all night hoppy hour is back!
The filet mignon and osso buco specials were great!

The service and atmosphere were great. It’s got an upscale yet family friendly-​feel, but the food was lackluster. Had the margarita pizza which was more of just cheese pizza, with a thick layer of cheese and tons of thick sauce. The crust lacked any kind of crunch. I also had the ravioli filled with spinach and ricotta in a creamy vodka sauce. It was solid with delicate fresh pasta. For the area, this place isn’t bad, it just left a bit to be desired.

II was a bit disappointment with my experience. Torn between 2 or 3 stars, I went with 3 star because the two guys that worked there were friendly & seemed sincere.
I started with Diver scallops served with peas and diced tomato which I think were sauteed. The scallops were good enough, but the peas were mushy and had no taste, as if frozen or canned. The tomatoes were the same. Taste came from whatever sauce they had been cooked in, which was too oily. I followed up with the Pollo Al Mattone, which is described as: «De-​Boned Half Chicken, Barbequed Tuscan Style, Roasted Potatoes and Sautéed Spinach.» I felt misled by the term «Barbequed» it was probably broiled. The meat was bland and a little dry, but OK. However, again the sauce was oily and did not add much to the overall taste of the dish. Some of the roasted potatoes where charred and on the outside to the point of tasting bitter and all of them were mushy on the inside. Spinach was overwhelmed by the oily sauce.
The service was OK. When I came in there was nobody inside the main dinning area. But when a large (noisy) family group came in, they were seated right on top of me.
My two drinks were well poured and good.
Bottom line: The food was not bad, but the quality & taste did not intersect at all with the price.

I always feel bad when I am not giving an excellent review, but… I try to like this place just to promote the local business, but they really need to pick it up. The menu needs some adjusting and the prices are high for a family oriented area. We tried the $ 5.00 happy hour items a few times and it’s a lot of fried foods. I’d like to see some simpler things on the menu… and I’d like to see a better price point. I think the business would double if it were just a little more suited for the general population. We have always come in when it is not so busy and the service is very lax. They will seat us right on top of another table, when there are 98% of tables open. Sometimes we sit at the high top bar tables and they are not always wiped down, which is confusing when it’s not busy and everyone is standing around talking. We’ve come in when the servers are sitting at the bar talking to the bartender, and the tables are not clean. The service and the staff are hit and miss. Sometimes, they are super friendly and other times, they don’t give you the time of day. We don’t mind waiting for service or food as we have often, as we are not in a hurry when we come in… so that’s okay. The ambiance needs some upgrading too. The fireplace is on over in the restaurant, when everyone is at the bar, but the fireplace by the door closest to the bar isn’t on… The desserts are a bummer. They look stale and old and are expensive for what they are… which is okay as there is a cute little yogurt shop just across the way. we head over there afterwards! Seriously, the happy hour drinks are about it for us… maybe a pizza…
My advice… keep it simple, reasonable, clean and user friendly.

Very nice. Service was promo and very attentive. The menu selection are good. We both had pasta dishes that more than met expectations. Will definitely be back.

The manager on staff was so kind to introduce the likes and dislikes of his contemporary twist on Italian food at the Local Table to me. Walking in feeling flu-​like, I wanted something hot and spicy and he made the chicken sausage pasta amazingly spicy, perfect for my tastebuds and threw in a large piece of tiramisu to boot. Thanks for the splendid customer service! If I’m ever in the need for quick Italian, I’ll stop by and the service is fast and friendly. If you live in Dos Vientos, The Local Table is a great find.

I’ve been here several times for dinner. I liked all of their pasta dishes I’ve tried and their happy hour, though I miss the old $ 5 pricing.
Most recently, I came in for dinner on a weekday and then happy hour that weekend. When I came in for dinner, I had the penne arrabbiata. The pasta was tender and the sauce was thick and pleasantly spicy. The service was quick– the manager was waiting on us that night. When I came in for an early happy hour (for dinner) on a Saturday, my boyfriend and I ordered the mac n cheese, the truffle fries, the buffalo chicken fingers, and the chicken sliders. The food was good, but nothing special. My favorite was the mac n cheese. I had the house chardonnay to drink and it was tasty.
The biggest thing I like about this place is that it’s convenient. If I didn’t live in Dos Vientos, however, I’m not sure it would be worth the trek to make it to this place, though its my favorite restaurant to be in its space. I hope that business picks up for them but the food needs more character or they need to do some aggressive promoting. It’s a little off-​putting to be the only party in a huge restaurant.

This was my second visit to the restaurant. My mom and I had gone last summer and basically enjoyed our meals (there was an equal number of hits and misses.) The highlight for us then was the creamy burrata cheese, roasted sugar plum tomato, basil and aged balsamic appetizer, so much so that this was the reason that we came back. We checked out the menu online, and thankfully it was still on it.
Sadly, so much has changed in less than a year.
We were told that the appetizer does not use the sugar plum tomatoes anymore. I didn’t think that it would be a big deal, but it turned out it was. They now use regular sized tomatoes, and they don’t roast them. There were just slices of tomato on the plate, with some burrata cheese plopped next to it. The center of the plate had a small pile of arugula on it, with a few pieces of basil on top of that. And no balsamic vinegar at all. It was nothing special to look at, especially compared to how the dish was presented in the past. This time it looked dry (it was), boring (it was) and not appetizing at all (it was.)
We both ordered the baby greens salad with (among other things) candied walnuts. The greens seemed too wilted, like they were old, or maybe just not refrigerated properly. The «candied» walnuts were straight up burned.
We ordered a pizza to share, the shiitake, portobello and champignon mushrooms, Brie Cheese, arugula and white truffle oil. The thin crust was dry and looked like they bought it pre-​made and just added the toppings. There was a decent amount of mushrooms on the pizza, but I can’t believe that some of them were portobello mushrooms, since they were so tiny. There was a small piece of Brie cheese on each slice of pizza, so basically you had to portion out your Brie or risk eating it in one bite.
Never were we asked if we wanted re-​fills on our ice teas. And we had to ask for sugar. (Although this is happening more and more at restaurants. Has there been an uptick of people stealing sugar packets? Is the trend to make people beg for sugar? I don’t get it.)
The upholstery in the booths were stained, and not like someone had greasy hair and rested their head up against it. There were small splotchy stains all over the backs of our booth, as well as on the others. It’s like people have been using the furniture to wipe their hands off.
I think that the manager was acting as the server for the handful of tables that were being used. He seemed nice enough and sincere, but that isn’t really going to save them if their food quality keeps going down and/​or was never good to begin with.

The food is improving but the bar is inconsistent.
First drink is almost toxic so we sent it back. So we tried something easy. A vodka cranberry and it was 99% juice.
Get a new bartender. Get a cocktail menu and keep improving the food and hopefully this attempt at a business will succeed where all others have failed.
Right now I am not optimistic this will survive on any other merit than it is one of two restaurants in dos Vientos and the sushi place is always busy.