Nonno’s Ristorante

Stopped in with my wife for a delicious late lunch of calamari, salad with pine nuts, shrimp, and gorgonzola cheese, a side order of meatballs. Everything was perfect. Very fresh, nice atmosphere with Italian music in the background, and Crystal was spot on with the service. It’s a BYOB, so bring in a bottle of your favorite wine, and enjoy. Recommended!

Awesome food, great service and warm inviting atmosphere!
We tried this new place on the corner in downtown Bradley Beach. I had the lobster ravioli which was in a lemon buttersauce which just melted in my mouth! The portions were a good size as well. Crystal our sever could not do enough for us
BYOB this one you won’t be disappointed!

This is the perfect spot for a private party! I had my best friend’s bridal shower here and we could not of been more happy. The restaurant is clean and modern with large windows in the front. The owner and staff were more than accommodating. We were able to select a menu together after coming in for a free tasting! They even worked with us to pick the color linens that matched our color theme. The food was delicious. While the staff was friendly and helpful throughout the entire event. I 100% recommend this spot.

Went there a couple of weeks ago. Great food, even better service. James our waiter was outstanding. Will Definitely go again

We came for dinner last Saturday evening. There was a nice crowd seated but still tables available without reservations.
It was the beginning of Restaurant Week so there were some extra choices on the menu.
My wife had the swordfish special, and she really enjoyed it. She eats fish often and was happy it was flavorful and perfectly cooked. I, on the other hand, mistakenly chose the Veal Marsala. The two large medallions were apparently deep fried, and the grease was in every bite. The veal was tough and fatty. I kept poking around to see if I could find some solid meat, to no avail. There were plenty of capers in the sauce, but i could not taste the lemon. For $ 28 the dish was disappointing and a waste of money. I wish I had sent it back at the beginning of the meal. I could have gotten something decent. I hate going home and being hungry an hour later.

We had a very nice dinner here last night
The best part was that our party of 4 could hear each other even though the restaurant was full.
So tired of the super loud places where you. any hear your own table. everyone liked their meal.

Service was inattentive. Hostess is nice but invisible. Ordered the pork chop and it was dry. Was told minestrone soup didn’t have meat in it, but it has sausage. Pasta was bland. Steak was overlooked. A Saturday night, the restaurant more than half empty and now I know why. Avoid this place and go up the street to Citricos. (At least our Byob was good!)
Followup– I wrote the review while still in the restaurant. They don’t have the time to wait on the tables, but evidently have time to read reviews as the waiter came to the table and made a comment to us in a very aggressive manner about our review. Sorry we posted the truth of the experience. And sorry you took it personally James. It wasn’t aimed at you but your response confirms this isn’t a restaurant worth going back to not one that treats customers with any respect or concern for their patronage.

Had a wonderful dinner with 10 friends. Very comfortable surroundings and friendly atmosphere. Great menu choices, and the food was outstanding– very authentic Italian dining! The pasta is homemade and wonderful. James was our waiter and was very efficient and knowledgeable! I highly recommend Nonno’s!

We had a wonderful meal here Saturday night. The duck breast special highly recommended by our excellent server James, was absolutely delicious! The eggplant appetizer was wonderful and so was the house salad that we shared. The cappuccino at this restaurant is the best and don’t forget to try the Italian cheesecake.

This restaurant has a great hostess Marcia. She is always friendly and makes you feel welcome here. The waitstaff is attentive and entertaining! The atmosphere is perfect, clean and comfortable. Having said that the menu leaves a lot to be desired. To begin with you never in your life heard of «market price» for a plain ravioli dinner! Also market price for artichoke appetizer and a pasta and mussels dinner! It’s just ridiculous! Another anomaly was they only had Appetizer Specials, no special entrées on a Saturday night!
We started with the bread which was beautifully delivered to our table at each individual place setting, however it was cold and possibly stale. It was served with a minuscule amount of pesto to which they added inferior olive oil. We have been there before and they used to give you a little dish of ricotta with that bread but not this time! I guess they stopped that little extra.
No point to naming all the dishes we had but I must say there wasn’t a one of them that I would rave about. They were mostly below average and lacking in flavor.
I would love to see some classics added to the menu: maybe Chicken Francese, Veal Marsala, Shrimp Parmesan, Cioppino, or Stuffed Calamari.
There is a Veal Saltimboca dish on the menu but at $ 34.00, I think it’s overpriced. The pasta dishes are also marked up too high. If the prices were more reasonable we might have been more willing to accept mediocre food.
It saddens me to write this review because I so wanted this restaurant to be an outstanding addition to our beautiful Bradley Beach! I would love to see this restaurant succeed so I will be back to give it another chance.

Great food & Great service!
First off the service from making the reservations to table side was impeccable. This is key for us when we go out to eat and Nonno’s did not disappoint. We told Marsha who took our reservation that we needed to make a movie and we needed quick service, she assured us it would be no problem and it wasn’t. It was not hurried either. At no time did we feel like we were rushed. James our waiter was very attentive and helpful as was the rest of the wait staff. To be fair they weren’t that busy when we arrived at just before 6pm on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend but it seemed like they had enough staff to handle a full restaurant too.
The food, what can I say but the food was fantastic, it is as simple as that. My wife and I both cook and we have a (future) son-​in-​law who is a chef so we know good food & this was it!
We started out with the Bruschetta and the house salad. The tomatoes for the bruschetta were Jerseys and herbed perfectly. My salad was excellent with a tasty vinaigrette that didn’t overwhelm the mixed greens & veges. (there were some homemade bacon bits in the salad so ask first if you are a vegetarian) Oh, and the bread they serve is great crusty Italian bread from Hoboken served with fresh pesto & good quality EVOO, yum!
For main courses I had the Shrimp Scampi over homemade pasta and my wife had the Cozze Anisette which are mussels with shallots, fennel, garlic butter, olive oil and of course Anisette. Both were some of the best Scampi & Mussels we ever had.
The 8 large shrimp in the Scampi were cooked perfectly and the seasoning nailed it. Lots of garlic, good quality EVOO and it was tasty! The pasta also cooked perfectly and you could tell it was homemade. It was simply the best Scampi I have had in a long time. There was enough pasta that we had some to take home too (yay!).
My wife ordered the mussels which is actually an appetizer but the portion was large enough for a main as long as you order an app or salad before. We can’t ever remember tasting mussels with a broth with this kind of great flavor. All the ingredients just «worked» together to give you a unique and delicious dish. You know there is Anisette in there but it does not overwhelm. If you order this make sure you save some of that Hoboken bread to dip in the broth, it is not to be wasted!
For dessert I had the raspberry sorbet. I don’t know if it is made in house but it like eating fresh raspberries. Not too sweet and great consistency. I also had a «bowl» of cappuccino with the aroma of cinnamon wafting up from it which was excellent. My only critique here would be that they should offer some natural brown sugar in addition to the usual sweeteners.
The restaurant itself is clean, modern and open with Sinatra & oldies (50’s and 60’s) as your background music. Not too loud that you can’t have a conversation in normal tones. Prices are not crazy expensive either. For all of the above it was $ 82 for the two of us. Sort of on the border between mid-​range and fine dining price but you get a good value for your dollar. They are BYOB so you save there too.
Back to Sinatra, James, the waiter, sings Sinatra and well! Even the busboy (who was every bit as attentive as James) was singing to himself whenever Sinatra came on.
All in all thoroughly enjoyable and delectable experience. Get to Nonno’s before you can’t get a reservation, once word gets out this place will be packed!

Avoid fried calamari. Service was very pleasant, but slow. Food leaves much to be desired. Will we go back? NO!

Great food

I made reservations for 4 at Nonno’s on Saturday night, excited to try what seemed like a really nice new addition to the neighborhood. Unfortunately, it was one of the worst dining experiences we’ve ever had.
We arrived at 7:30 and were seated promptly. The restaurant is nicely decorated, just simple grays and whites. And I will say that our waitress was very attentive and really hustling. The problem was the kitchen and the food.
Our poor experience began right from the bread — which was brought with ricotta and about 2 drops of pesto that were served with poor quality olive oil, which was clearly not extra virgin. Both the ricotta and pesto were so stingy, not nearly enough for 4 people.
We ordered the Pizza-​Gain as an appetizer. Unfortunately, it came still ice cold in the middle. So, we sent it back. The waitress said it would take 10 minutes to heat a new one and that she would take it off the bill. At 8:55 — an hour and a half after entering the restaurant and WAY more than 10 minutes after the arrival of our first cold Pizza-​Gain, the replacement came and… yep…cold in the middle.
Thankfully, we’ve polished off 2 bottles of wine at this point, because our general state of inebriation was the only thing keeping us from walking out, as we were starving, and had still yet to see anything edible. At 9pm, our food finally came out.
— My father ordered the pork chop which came cooked to death and accompanied by potatoes that had a really off taste to them.
— My husband ordered the cavatelli with broccoli and sausage, but was brought the cavatelli with tomato sauce. The cavatelli was way over cooked, to the point of being mushy, and the tomato sauce was some of the worst I’ve ever had — it had so much sugar in it, it was overpoweringly sweet.
— My mother and I ordered the artichoke, which was the best thing of the night, but was incredibly dry.
I should say that the whole time, with his kitchen and waitstaff obviously in the weeds, Nonno himself just stood in a corner. He didn’t greet guests, he didn’t come around to ask how our experience was, he didn’t pitch a hand to help his staff. It was really a display of the utmost poor management.
The final kicker came at the end, when we received our bill, and the waitress had failed to remove the appetizer. At that point, we really just wanted to leave, so we paid and made our way.
I’m so shocked by the positive reviews of this place, it’s so incongruent with the experience we had — which was just terrible pretty much from start to finish.

Food was fine. But service was very slow Ran out of peligino water really. The prices for entrée, not pasta seemed high

Great host (Marsha) and great server (James) as well as the entire staff. They are really on top of keeping your water and wine glasses full. The restaurant is very clean and the customers are even very friendly. BYO is great too as it keeps the cost down. For service alone I would give five stars.
In reality I came out for great food and based on the reviews I thought this would be a winner. Unfortunately this place failed and I have to base this on my main course only. I had the salmon and it was way overcooked. The entire entrée was not good. The polenta had absolutely no flavor. My old jobs cafeteria had better. The Italian melon sauce didn’t make the salmon better and the green beans had no flavor. The items they did extremely well on were the special beet salad (flavorful) and the calamari and the sauce were so good I forgot there was no lemon to squeeze on it (but it should have been on the plate). You were able to tell the oil the calamari was fried in was fresh because the batter didn’t come out dark. Food I would give two stars and that’s only because of my starters.
I really was rooting and hoping all would be great!

The food was top notch but the waiter was somewhat inexperienced.
Food = 5 stars
Service = 3 stars (Hostess/​greeter was excellent but waiter needs training)
Ambience = 4 stars
Ease in making/​confirming a reservation = 5 stars

Exceptional quality! The food was so amazing! I ordered the Linguine with Clams, it was so delicious and filled with such tasty flavor. My friend ordered the Pasta Nonno, which was also made perfectly!
The Service was truly outstanding! My server really paid attention to detail and was extremely tentative.
Definitely going back A+++++ in my book.

Say NO to Nonno’s!
Terrible Italian food in an area where any pizzaria would be better than this place. Starter pesto was painfully salty and inedible. My cavatelli was cooked to a mushy consistent and drowned in jar sauce. My meatballs showed up cold and tasted mediocre at best. Asked for grated cheese and got what looked like pre grated Kraft from Costco and tasted stale. My husband had the bolognese which was bland at best. Pick another Italian restaurant… Any other

Nonno’s is the newest addition to the Bradley Beach dining scene and serves traditional Italian cuisine. Although, opened just this week they do a very respectable job with their food and service delivery. The owner/​chef is hands on and eager to please. He makes all of their pasta in house and serves it perfectly al dente. They have created a nice ambience with their remodel of the old Cerrato’s space at 401 Main St.
We shared a large house arugula salad and two pasta dishes consisting of spaghetti with two very large meatballs and their version of vongole clams with thin linguini and white sauce — both were delicious. No room for desert but there is always next time as we will return here for sure. Overall a very nice dining experience and a decent price value as well.