Giuseppe's Review

Last night, Fancy and I joined our D'ville family for dinner at one of my favorite little Italian joints: Giuseppe's in Gates. This half bakery/half restaurant is tucked into the back of a half dead plaza on Spencerport Rd across the street from Wegmans, and it is small, but totally worth seeking out.

I'll begin where every great Italian meal must start: The bread. The loaf is homemade and delicious. I love the crusty exterior with the soft, doughy interior; it's everything Italian bread was meant to be.

This okapi goddamn loves calamari. The lightly battered and fried squid pictured above was cooked just right, which is the most important part of calamari excellence.  Although cooked well, it unfortunately wasn't terribly flavorful. A little more seasoning would have pushed this from "pretty good" to "perfect" since the homemade red sauce is a delightful accompaniment to this dish.

This salad (dressing requested on the side) came with my meal and was pretty good. I liked the variety of toppings such as black olives (4!), peppers, onion, tomato, and chick peas (Fancy likes those disgusting things). My issue here was that some of the lettuce was brown and soft which should have been noticed in the kitchen.

Mrs. D'ville ordered one of my personal favorites, Chicken Parmigiano. The chicken is fried perfectly and the portion is generous for this $12 meal. This is the same homemade sauce used for the calamari: you can taste the delicious Italian meats and old world spices cooked right into it. 

Mr. D'ville ordered the Chicken Piccata: battered and fried chicken in a caper, lemon, wine, butter sauce over pasta. He loved it! The sauce was reminiscent of a Chicken French sauce, light and tasty. I would recommend this to anyone who wants something a little different from classic Italian red sauce. It's still homemade and freaking awesome, especially for just under 13 bucks.

The D'ville kiddos had spaghetti and chicken fingers which were quite good and each plate was under $4. The fries taste home cut and the portions were fantastic. 

Normally, I would picture my meal next, but I messed up. I managed to take a pic of everyone's meal but my own. Okapi fail. Anyway, I had the All You Can Eat Pasta for $7.95. Oh, and it gets better: It comes with a salad and either 2 meatballs, 2 sausage, or 1 of each. I picked the spaghetti as my pasta of choice and it was a larger plate, but otherwise looked like the kids plate pictured above. I had to get extra sauce which is fine (okapis love sauce), but what was not fine was the pasta being WAY overcooked. There was even a piece that was half brown indicating that it was burnt. My second plate was cooked perfectly, however.

Fancy calls the greens and beans from here the best in town and she'd know, that okapi loves her some greens and beans. It's spiced perfectly with high quality sausage and delicious homemade broth. This giant bowl for only $5 could easily be a meal all by itself.

By the way, they also serve subs and pizza. This is Fancy's steak special sub which was also around $5, not a bad deal at all. They give you plenty of steak, peppers, mushrooms, and mozzarella on a delicious homemade roll.

All in all dinner was good. The all you can eat special can't be beat and is available most week days. I suppose I could have had it sent back due to overcooking, but then I would have had to watch everyone else eat and okapis HATE that. Since the place is very small, you might want to call ahead on weekends or if you have a larger party. The service is good, if a bit slow. That being said, everything is made from scratch, so I'm willing to wait. Oddly, this is the most negative experience I've had there and all of my other experiences would be an easy 5, but because of today's issues,this okapi gives Giuseppe's 4 stars.