Enoteca Sogno

Best food, wine and service. The owners and staff travel to Italy to eat learn and drink great wines. They bring this knowledge back to Richmond and deliver a perfect Italian meal.

If you’re looking for truly authentic Italian food, this IS the place. If wine is your thing, this IS the place.
Don’t think that you are going to get pizza & baked spaghetti here. Be adventurous & step out of your comfort zone.

I was excited to come here, but it was a total let down. We waited 55 min. for our meal that wasn’t great. My friend went out and had more food afterwards because the portions were bad. I really wanted to like this place because I live in the neighborhood and I won’t go back now.

wonderful secret, we finally found a chance to go last weekend, went again this weekend, quaint atmosphere, the food is very good, and the owner is very knowledgeable of Italian wines, let him choose ! wonderful sommelier! hope it stays a secret, but recommend this to Italian wine lovers or simply food/​wine lovers.

Had dinner there last night, with my brother and his wife from Greensboro. His work has him traveling, and eating all over the world, he can be hard to please. We arrived an hour early, we were greated warmly and seated in a lounge area by the bar where we drank an excellent bottle of red recommended by the bartender. When seated we completely enjoyed all of our appetizers and dishes. The wine selection is large and excellent. Our waitress was absolutely fantastic. I’ve been to a couple other popular Italian restaurants in Richmond and this is by far the best. My world travelled brother also thought it was excellent. Check it out next chance you get!

I live in the Bellevue but I had missed out on this gem until last weekend. We ate there before the Richmond Forum and thoroughly enjoyed our meal. The dining room is attractive plus roomy enough for a private conversation. Our meals were tasty, well prepared and arrived after a reasonable wait. Since it was my first visit we tried an appetizer, salads and entrees. Our server was knowledgeable about the menu when we asked about items on the menu or the specials and was attentive but did not hover. Portion sizes were adequate and we had room left to split an excellent dessert. Prices are subjective but I thought our bill was very reasonable for the Richmond market. I’ll definitely be back. Definitely worth a drive across town and there are no issues finding a parking spot.

You want italian? Go to Edo’s. This place sucks. $ 75 later, two people are still hungry. Flavor, meh. Portions, what portions I had a sampling of pasta with a side of ground beef for $ 15. Atmosphere? Pretty nice. But seriously the portions!!! For half the price I could have gone to Edo’s, or Joe’s Inn, or the Mill on MacArthur and got stuffed and walked out with leftovers (not to mention better flavors). Like one of the other reviewers of this establishment said, «I would defiantly go back!»

Great food and atmosphere, love the wait staff… Friendly and courteous. Big selection of wines. Never had a bad meal.

By far favorite restaurant in Richmond area! Staff is great, food is amazing (especially the Wild Mushroom pasta, awwwww) and the wine is fair value, they don’t try to charge 3 times more than regular price. Plus the owners actually visit Italy I believe once a year (don’t quote me) so they know what they’re talking about and pick great wines and have good recommendations to pair with your meal. Plus I love the ambiance.
Highly recommend!

Enoteca Sogno is a dark little restaurant that doesn’t look like much of anything. It’s located on a quiet street, and my boyfriend and his sister didn’t look super enthused when I dragged them this far into Northside.
I already knew what I wanted the second that I sat down in our awkward little window table. (The wall was positioned in a way so that we couldn’t see anyone approaching; therefore, everyone who came to the table scared us pretty badly.)
I ordered the tagliatelle in bolognese, and I was so happy with it. The noodles were delicious, and the bolognese was plentiful and just sweet enough that I was slowly sucking all the noodles dry. It was pretty delicious.
My dining partners seemed to enjoy what they were eating as well, which always makes me happy when I take someone to a new restaurant. It’s a tiny little restaurant, but it’s just casual enough and delicious enough to make this girl very happy.

Nice atmosphere. Chicken Picca was ok (could use more flavor) but the desserts were Delish! We had the tiramisu and the kids had Hazelnut gelato! Had a scoop of their gelato and it was amazing! Like Nutella ice cream!

Good Northside restaurant. Limited menu which is the biggest drawback. Food is good and authentic. Atmosphere is nice and comfortable, particularly nice bar area. Excellent wine selection. I recommend any of the pasta dishes. Don’t expect good service, I have been several times, every time I’ve had to chase down the server for something.

A beautiful restaurant with a lovely intimate feel. I dub it the ‘place-​that-​I-​will-​revisit-​only-​if-​someone-​who-​has-​never-​been-​before-​DESPERATELY-​wants-​to-​go.’
After all the rave reviews on the wild mushroom pasta I was prepared to be transported straight to orgasmic bliss upon the first bite! Yeaaaah… Not so much. It wasn’t a ‘wow’…nor was it a ‘phooey’…It was, in a word, ‘pedestrian’ and while I don’t mind paying a premium for ambiance, some of the menu items seem a bit over priced… in my (unsolicited and inexpert) opinion. Minus one star.
The service was snail-​paced (45 minutes before the appetizer graced the table) BUT the server was as attentive as he could be given that the restaurant was busy and there were only 2 or 3 servers. Did servers call in sick? Was there no one to pick up the slack? Management explain thyself! Oops-​there goes another star.
Takeaway:The overall experience was fair. If you’re into wine, don’t care to eat, and you want to be in a cozy setting with your honey bunny I strongly recommend this place. However for the single gal out with her dad… er…awkward?

Nice spot! Wish i wouldve came here sooner. The service was fast and the waitress we had was really nice. I had the porckchop and a salad. It was pretty expensive but the porkchops were very thick, and it was two.
Nice ambience — it wasnt as busy when we went so i suggest you all go during the week because it was practically empty in there.
The Menu is limited, but the good taste made me forget about all that!

This is one of our favorite local places and comes closest to an authentic Italian experience anywhere outside Italy. We love to eat at the bar because the bartender is fabulous. My husband and I don’t know a lot about Italian wine, except that we like it, and he is always patient and willing to talk to us about the wines. The gnocchi is our favorite. They also have good seasonal menu options that we like to try. The ambience is great too!

Great dinner sitting at the bar. Last minute, and so enjoyable. The mushroom pasta was awesome. Thanks to Dick Fowlkes for the recommendation!

I wish I had known about this place sooner. I was so excited when I left Little House Green Grocery and saw this little place with a menu in the window. After viewing it I immediately texted my Mom and husband a picture of the menu and we were all stoked to try this great-​looking new place. Little did I know it had been here for a while!
Either way, I finally got to try it this past weekend and I was blown away. The décor makes you feel comfortable in a pair of jeans and a sweater, yet it doesn’t feel like a hole in the wall. The menu itself is small but I think a friend put it best recently when she said places that have small menus tend to do things RIGHT and she couldn’t have been more spot-​on with this place. My Mom got the soft shell crabs that were on special and we both agreed that they may have been one of the best things we’ve ever eaten. The clams in the white wine and butter where tender and delicious. My gnocchi with the bolognese melted in my mouth. I kid you not — even the salad was amazing; tender leaf greens with the EXACT right amount of light, sweet but vinegary dressing — the whole meal was simply phenomenal.
The ONLY critique that I might have is that the service tends to be just ever so-​slightly lacking. Everything was great until we were through eating and waiting for our bill, which took a while, and I saw another family seem to run in to the same issue. Would this deter me from recommending this place to EVERYONE I know? Absolutely positively not, I will be back in the very near future!
Oh — I must add, the only way I found out that Enoteco Sogno was not new is from a friend who is authentically Italian, very picky about food and he mentioned he had gone there a while ago and was extremely impressed.

Tried this restaurant after a wait at another popular Italian restaurant was too long. Arrived around 830 and the place was a little more than half full (which was good for us). Service was friendly but not overbearing. A lot of specials and we tried the brussel sprouts which was good but not as crispy as desired (from description). The seafood pasta which was very garlicky good. The sausage and rappini (in the broccoli family) pasta was also very good. The sausage had a nice spice to it. Portion size is ok, enough to be filling with the bread and app.
The interior is nice and airy, bigger than expected. Dim lighting made it fairly intimate but the openness of it made it not as much.
Would have to try more dishes to consider this a destination, but very good.
The meal was $ 60 for beer, wine, an appetizer and two entrees. I thought that was fair and bf thought it was too much. I think its a great option for the area.

I would give this place 4 stars if the portion size was just slightly improved, or if the prices were lower. Our appetizer and entrees were rather small, and for the price, that’s disappointing. The flavors were good — I got the gnocchi with a fontina cheese sauce and it was a solid flavor, if a bit simple. And so tiny! I certainly appreciate not receiving a gigantic portion of lackluster pasta, but I felt like I was being teased.
As a side note, the service was fine. Richmond seems to have a tendency to pair good food with crappy service, so I was kind of dreading it. But it was neither impressive or bad service — and I am just fine with that.
I would likely return here in the future, but I’ll keep my eye open for other places.

This place used to be down on Broad Street, and just recently reopened in Northside… It was awesome when it was on Broad Street, and it’s just as awesome in it’s new location. The food is fresh and the ingredients are really high quality.
Case in point– the Parmesan cheese served with our pasta was sharp and salty and a little nutty. Unlike so many places where the cheese is just white powder, this was the real deal. Same thing with the olive oil– it tasted like really good dipping olive oil should! And the gnocchi– tasted like it was made with actual potato! My grandmother makes her own gnocchi from scratch, and the gnocchi at Enoteca tastes just like it.
My husband and I both started out with appetizers, which are definitely big enough to share. I got the white bean and arugula crostini, which had a little heat from some red pepper flakes, fresh red onion and olive oil, and tons of garlic in it. That could have been a meal in and of itself.
For dinner I got the gnocchi with pesto, which was definitely heavy on the garlic but awesome nonetheless– just simple light potato pasta and the perfect amount of freshly made basil pesto. And my husband got fettucine with bolognese, and we were surprised to find that it was a really light sauce. Usually bolognese at restaurants is a heavy meat and tomato sauce, but this was very light with hardly any tomato, and infused with vegetables. It coated the pasta perfectly without overwhelming it.
The only thing I found kind of weird was that the dinner portions were almost the same size as the appetizer portions (aka the appetizers were big enough to share, but the dinner portions were maybe a tiny bit small). I would recommend two people getting and appetizer to share, their own individual pasta dishes, and then they should still have room for coffee or dessert.
In our case, we didn’t opt for dessert, but they had several choices we may try when we go back– cannolis, tiramisu, a lemon polenta cake, etc.