Monjunis of Portico

I love eating here. It’s right across from my house and always has my favorites! The good thing about this restaurant is it’s location. It’s quiet and small and had excellent service.
No matter when I go the service is excellent and the waitress is on point. There pasta is amazing and the food is so authentic. They have a decent selection of drinks and all their prices are very appropriate.

Monjuni’s is a classic Shreveport staple that serves Americanized Italian food. Admittedly, not everyone likes their sauce as it is a sweeter tomato sauce, but I love it. Monjuni’s excels at all the classics like spaghetti and meatballs and lasagna. I know many people who only ever get either of those 2 dishes because they are so good.
I also highly recommend any of their salads. They come with shredded lettuce and piled high with toppings. For example, if you get the Italian house salad, it will come with their amazing olive mix (reminiscent of a muffuletta spread) with mozzarella, tomatoes, and dressing. So good. Their other salads like the shrimp salad and chicken salad are also very good.
Don’t forget to order their signature mint sweet tea. You may want to get half sweet half unsweet because the sweet tea is pretty potent.

I came here on a recommendation, but discovered that my friend has different tastes. If you like authentic Italian food —don’t come here, you won’t find any. If you like sauce as sweet as soda pop and generic Americanized dishes– this may be your place.
The restaurant is staffed by chatty high school kids who may or may not remember what you ordered.
BTW, if the menu says «grilled» it means fried.

I always enjoy the salad, bread, meatballs, and muffys. This location has been established for decades and continues to satisfy its customers. I also like their to-​go ordering option.

I eat lunch here fairly often. The service is always excellent and I have never had a bad meal. I highly recommend the porky’s poboy and the spaghetti and meatballs.

We were seated rather quickly by a nice waitress who promptly took our drink orders. I ordered Coke and my girlfriend wanted sweet tea. The soda was good, but the tea was really bland and not very sweet. We tried to doctor it up with sugar at the table, but it didn’t taste right. The waitress was more than happy to let her switch it for a coke, which we appreciated.
We ordered the cheese bread as an appetizer, and for an entrée I ordered chicken parmesean while she ordered the chicken alfredo. Very simple simple sounding dishes.
The waitress first brought bread and sauce to the table. The bread was a bit hard, but nice with the sauce. Reminded me of a crunchy light cracker. The cheese bread came next with a basil sauce. So,…here we go folks…
The bread was very mushy,…almost like it wasnt fully cooked. The cheese looked like a handfull of it was thrown on the bread and placed straight into the oven with no care. As we cut into it, a basil sauce was brought to us to dip with. I wouldn’t really call it a sauce persay. It was very wattery and almost none of it stuck with the bread. But we kept going,…and then the entrees showed up…
Before I go forward… i have to say… their chicken is definitely not the best. I have never seen chicken that looked like this,…as if it was old and hard out of the fridge and someone took a hammer to it, microwaved it, and served it with sauce. The pictures i posted were from today,…and i have to say my dish, the red sloppy mess, was disgusting. After two bites,…i felt like if i went any further, i was going to not be able to hold it.
The sauce looked somewhat like chili. The cheese looked like a combo between a big slice and a handfull of shredded cheese melted on top of an ocean of sauce. The portion sizes here are HUGE but it made no sense to be a sensible size. Beneath the sauce was pasta sitting in a seperate, watery red sauce. It was like a sauce within a sauce. I had to search for the chicken, but when i did, it looked disgusting. It didn’t look or smell like a chicken breast. It was also a strange color,…like darker than normal. I took my fork and tried a piece of this red mess,…and could not truly describe to you what i had eaten. It was red sloppy mess with rubbery meat. I let my girl try a bite and she felt the same. The sauce was overly sweet, and i honestly felt like there was sugar in it. I tried one more bite and cut off a piece of meat with it,…and at that moment as i chewed it like bubble gum,…i realized, I couldn’t eat this. I said it in my mind and then said it to my girl across the table. I felt embarrassed for coming here, for the restaurant, and for waisting our time before leaving to go home to Texas.
My girlfriend’s dish was not really that different. It wasn’t seasoned very well, which is to say it tasted very bland. The pasta, the cheese and chicken did not come together as creamy, but the dish seemed to fall apart as it was a greasy mess, so the cheese wasn’t staying with the pasta or chicken,…it was falling off. The chicken was cut, but when I cut a piece with my fork,…it was rubbery, bland, and honestly… looked like one of the noodles on the plate. I was expecting pasta with alfredo sauce and a grilled chicken breast on top with fresh grill marks and a side of extra parmesean cheese,…not this big white mess. She tried to eat more, but stopped after a few bites.
Im giving this level of detail because as someone who loves to cook at home, i was very dissapointed. The portion size was almost as big as the rediculous prices on the menu, but the quality was non existent. I have made better alfredo in my kitchen with 10 dollars worth of ingredients and a faulty stove.
I told the waitress that i couldnt finish my meal. I felt so bad that i actually apologized to her for having to do this. I didnt blame her, but rather whoever was in the kitchen. She looked concerned, but not too shocked when i gave her the description of why, as if this wasn’t her first time hearing this. She took the plate to the back and talked to a man in a short sleeved shirt in the corner of the restaurant. I’m guessing he was a manager. He talked to her and then stared at me for quite some time from across the room before leaving to go outside.
They took off my meal from the ticket, but we paid for drinks, bread and the alfredo as we did box that up. I regretted doing that, but I’ve honestly never eanted to leave a restaurant so badly. It came to roughly 27 dollars for this, which is minus the red monster i was served. We ended up throwing the alfredo away at a gas station before leaving town as she began to feel a bit sick from it when we left and the smell was now in the car.
Honestly, I’m doing this to save you time and money. If this place was ever acceptable,…it was definately not today. This place should feel ashamed. I felt like I was on Kitchen Nightmares and Gordon Ramsey hadn’t shown up yet. People deserve better than this.

This is a place that I will not be visiting again. The restaurant is not terrible but seems to me to have lost it’s way. There seem to be two sides to this restaurant — one half would like to be family-​friendly-​if-​not-​kitschy, the other wants to be a casual date location.
I am new to the area and have no knowledge of the histories or emotional attachments that are associated with this establishment (it seems to be a local favorite) but can only judge it on my dining experience.
I will begin with the décor — think «Vinyard-​themed Highschool Prom» — plastic grapes hanging everywhere. Additionally there are random, quirky items stuck to the walls and adorning the rest of the building not covered by grapes. There is nothing particularly wrong with this theme (eclectic, perhaps?), However that leads into my next point (we’re building a case, we’ll get to it).
The menu is quite limited, and what is on the menu is relatively expensive (think $ 12 – 15 for most items with a few select items around $ 10). Again, nothing wrong with having a limited menu with some middling prices, but the problem here is that the overall experience and the quality of food (my chicken parmesean sandwich was fine but I wouldn’t order it again) don’t justify the total cost or limited menu selections.
Long story short: the restaurant is not cheap enough and does not offer enough variety to please families who want a decent way to feed the whole gang on a Tuesdsay night, but the atmosphere and quality of food/​service aren’t adequate to create a great spot for a casual date. I think that if they dropped their price by a few bucks and added some diversity they would increase their appeal to the family crowd, or if they upped the quality and made the restaurant have a more professional atmosphere they could appeal to the date/​middle-​of-​the-​road crowd. However in their current state, as far as I can tell, they don’t appeal to any real target audience.

Just ask remembered. It’s been at least three years since I’ve been here and I’m glad nothing has changed. The toast and basil sauce are still great. I ordered my usual Italian house salad and its huge and well worst the price. The hubby got baked ravioli and said it was awesome. The service was good for a Sunday afternoon. This was a good experience.

Hand to God, if you’re ever in the area, you HAVE to stop at Monjuni’s for a pasta dish. This renowned restaurant was going strong back when I lived here. I loved it so much, that I would order sauce online and have it shipped to me in L.A. If pasta isn’t your jam, try one of their muffulettas. This is a crazy good sandwich stuffed with meat and other goodies. It’s like having antipasto on a delicious doughy, crusty, warm focaccia.

The food was great. The sauce is sweet and the Lasagna is fantastic. Get the sauce to go and take it home. I don’t come to Shreveport for Italian but I often end up here.

We were very disappointed! My Italian sandwich was filled with rotten meat. It was spoiled! We told the waitress and she asked the manager to come and talk with us. We told him it was spoiled and he told us «it’s supposed to smell bad». We were speechless!

Shreveport, Louisiana
Classic Shreveport Italian Institution. Always one of my favorites. This is not really classic Italian but it is very good. Baked Lasagna, Chicken Parm — Excellent. Big portions, perfect to share.
Mint sweet tea — gotta love it

I have now officially visited all local locations and am still perplexed that this place is a hit with locals.
While the meatballs are great, the rest of the food is avg at best.
Staff is mostly clueless, as they seem to hire young servers with minimal training.
During this visit, I tried to remedy previous issues by ordering the sauce on the side. While this allowed me to have control over proper ratio of gravy to pasta, etc; it did not improve the overall taste of the meal.

I was visiting Shreveport and had the good fortune to discover Monjuni’s Italian Café & Grocery on the recommendation of a business colleague. I’m extremely thankful for the recommendation.
Casual interior, good friendly service. Delicious food. Excellent value. A nice place for a relaxed excellent meal.
I’m returning to Shreveport this weekend and am looking forward to another meal here.

Went here for lunch. It’s hard to call this Italian. Sweet/​sugary sauce and bread. Not much Italian here

I don’t know what’s so special about this place. I saw good reviews and went to try out their sandwitches/​poboys and they were nothing special. All I got was a heart attack on a plate. If that’s what you’re looking for then this place is for you. On top of that, the flavor to the food was really not to my liking and I will not be visiting again. I’d much prefer Carrabba over this place.
As for the décor, it reminds me of the show Horders, a series on A&E about people whose inability to part with their belongings.

We walked in at 7pm on a Friday night and we were greeted and seated right away with friendly service and smiles. The waitress was warm and friendly and promped. When I asked her if the veal was any good she was honest and told me she had never had it, however many of her guests had ordered it that night and seemed to enjoy it. Our drinks and salads came out fast and we never had to wait for re-​fills.
The food was excellent, the Veal and the Muffaletta (I don’t know if this is spelled right) were outstanding.
Every staff member we encountered made us feel welcome. We look foward to returning to this location. We will be back. Thank you!

Arrived at 11:05 AM and the place filled quickly after our arrival. We were quickly seated and service was quite good. Very attentive.
I ordered an appetizer of the cheezy breadsticks and a plate of the veal parmesan po’boy. Both had good flavor and were properly cooked (and po’boys get dressed). Jim had the eggplant pirogue. Large portions and wonderful flavor. Piping hot. He took the remainder home for later consumption.
This place is NOT Italian, it is Louisitalian! The marinara is sweet (and not to my taste), and they don’t know the meaning of uppity «bruschetta.» This place has the tastes of grandma’s if grandmama married Thibideaux. The flavors are not upper class Venice. They ARE good well made food with an eye toward the flavors of south Louisiana.
The owner even was familiar with Blatz beer that appears on one of the signs in the kitschy décor.

I regret docking this place at least half a star. My mom and I stopped in for a really late lunch. I was looking forward to a nice plate of spaghetti with a meatball covered in monjuni sauce. We were disappointed to find our order half covered in sauce. I thought maybe if we mix and toss the noodles etc. We then saw watered down sauce at the bottom of plate kind of like reheated spaghetti. Eh. I’d still give them business because it is one of my favorite places when I am in town.

Italian food is Italian food pretty much wherever you go. But in the South, every restaurant has a different spin on the basic dishes.
Would you think of ordering a po-​boy at an Italian restaurant? Probably not, but in the South you do. Or, you could try the cajun shrimp tomato cheese toast slices. I’d never heard of meatball nachos, but they got those here too. I heard someone order them at a nearby table, but never did end up seeing what they were. My uncle and I joked that «That’s what must be considered fusion cuisine.»
But all joking aside, this place is a decent restaurant for good food. However, the best time to get a good deal is lunch because you are getting a whole meal for under $ 10. Otherwise, you’re spending more money than you’d probably want to for dinner because everything here is a la carte. If you order pasta, you have to order the salad separately. If you order a muffaletta, you have to order the fries separately. Same goes with the po-​boy.
We were a pretty large group of people. I think there were at least 15 of us there that night. We all shared the food and got to taste different dishes. I ordered the twice baked ziti. It was good, but not very cheesy. I was a bit disappointed in that.
I had a bite of the sausage pizza. Now that’s where the cheese was at. It literally was stringing from my mouth to the piece of pizza I was eating. The sausage was sliced. It wasn’t ground at all. So this made for a non-​greasy piece of pizza. I was very pleasantly surprised.
The muffaletta was tasty. I wasn’t expecting to bite into sweet tasting bread. Usually muffalettas are prepared with a sourdough or italian loaf. This had a crust on it and a sweet taste. It was unlike anything I’d ever had. It was good, but different.
What made me choose to give them 4 stars was the bread pudding alone. This has to be one of the best bread puddings I have ever had in my entire life. It was a perfect gooeyness and sweetness with the white whiskey sauce drizzled on top. I attempted to get the recipe from my cousin who used to work here. She just gave me a look that pretty much said «No way.» She told me that Miss Irma wouldn’t allow that. Now if that’s not loyalty to a previous place of work I don’t know what is.
The waitress did an excellent job in making sure we were taken care of. She was able to keep track of what we ordered with no trouble at all.
I would probably come here again if visiting, but I would most likely come for lunch. That seems to be the better time deal-​wise. Several of the menu options are available with a side during the lunch service. Just be prepared to spend a little more on your food here than at other Italian restaurants.