Bella's Restaurant

Very good food. All portions are enormous. They serve the food "family style." Also very expensive. Staff was friendly and fun. Good place to go for a family.

The portions are HUUUUUGE. When they say family style dining they mean it. Everything we ate was delicious from the dressing in the house salad to the garlic bread and the spaghetti and meatballs and chicken alfredo. Will be coming back!!!

Best Italian I've ever had. From the starter of the house salad and bread knot with goat cheese to the main course of fetticuine Alfredo and chicken, best in town. A must stop in cville

Best Italian restaurant in Charlottesville! Great food, wine, and service. You will not go home hungry. Make sure you call or go online to make reservations in advance because I am definitely not the only person in town with these opinions.

Eggplant Parmesan, is outstanding. This is my go-to place if I want to wine and dine people. Best sit down Italian in Cville. Great atmosphere, very cozy, reasonably priced. Have catered with them several times, and people have always been blown away. This is a secret gem of Charlottesville.

Family style, but visited solo with a big appetite. The Ragu Bolognese with pappardelle was extraordinary...a true valance of Neapolitan and Bolognese styles...not heave but Roch and delicious. Excellent wine selection. Great, relaxing ambiance and music. Enjoyed every minute.

We met some new friends here and enjoyed the appetizers and entrees for either 2 or 4. We ordered as a group and shared. The food is delicious and the service is great.

cozy, family style Italian restaurant within comfortable walking distance of all of Main Street. good service and excellent food! food is served for 2 or 4 people per plate, so plan to have leftovers.

Great family style Italian restaurant! Servings are large, so we ended up splitting an order between 3 people and having some food leftover. Also, love the bellinis!

PERFECTION! Ten stars. My first ever restaurant review, and I dine out frequently. Best lunch in many years. Impeccable, professional and very friendly service by Maddie and Aliyah. Artichoke poppers inventive and delicious. Broccoli Rabe the best I have ever had, and I order this every time I see it on a menu. This is the first time anywhere it was prepared exactly as it should be, artfully done. All ingredients very fresh and of highest quality. Lovely atmosphere, sparkling clean, great music. Looking forward to future visits with glee!

Great food and very reasonable prices, especially for the amount of food that you get! The family style dinners are great for sharing a few dishes with a large group of friends and family. Bella's never disappoints, whether we attend for a dinner date, get take out or order several dishes to cater for an event. The staff is always very nice and accommodating. This is my favorite Italian restaurant in Charlottesville and one of my top pick restaurants overall.

Our party of 5 went here to celebrate our friend's birthday and it was wonderful. The food was both excellent and affordable, the wine delicious, and the desert to die for. Our waitress (Cindy) was wonderful as well and only added to the already immaculate and cozy aesthetic with her cheesiness. Would definately recommend to friends, and I'll be coming back soon!

My Fiance took me here for my birthday. It was very intimate and simple (I'm not too hard to please). He surprised me and I tried the spaghetti and meatballs, which was the best decision I made. I regret only getting a one person portion instead of two, because I wanted more for later. The meatballs were huge and had great flavor, good was served hot and the waitress was great. They had a great selection of wine and deserts as well. It was a great romantic night spent at a local restaurant. I will definitely return.

My husband and I stopped in here on a whim looking for some good Italian food while staying in Charlottesville. We were beyond pleasantly surprised by everything. It’s a really cute, cozy spot and is family owned. The portions are “family sized” but they give you triple what you would normally get at any restaurant and the prices are really really for the amount of food you get. We have enough left overs for 2 more days. Everything tasted delicious and service was great too. Highly recommend eating here. If we come back to the area we will definitely be back!

Simply stated, Bella's is "fantastic". Service was great (Charles was a wonderful server). Food is served family style, and although Charles properly explained things, we purposely ordered too much food for four people: too many choices that we wanted to taste. And what we gluttonly devoured was utterly delicious. In looking around us, it appears that others were enjoying their food choices as well. You are not rushed at Bella's, and the pacing of the courses was very good. The restaurant is aestheticly pleasing. This was our first trip to Bella's, and it will be the first of many. A wonderful place for family and friends to meet, relax, and enjoy a delicious meal.

This was our first time visiting this restaurant, and we were thoroughly impressed! Service was phenomenal, our waiter knew the menu so we’ll, and made excellent recommendation. Each course was wonderful, but my absolute favorite was dessert. The tiramisu is the absolute best I have ever had! We will absolutely be back!

Went here on a weekday to check out the food and support a local business owner that was having some bad press. WOW !! I loved everything about this place - we took our 3rd year and our 1st year with us. The only complaint we had - is why did we NOT find this place sooner !! The service was outstanding, the food was delicious and the atmosphere was intriguing and pleasant. We are now notating this as one of our top spots to dine when in town to visit our children. Way to go Bella's - nothing I would even improve, it was outstanding from soup to nuts !! Can't wait to come again. What an absolute delight.

Delightful traditional Italian family-style meal. We knew that a small portion was designed for at least two (thought the menu says 1-2 people), and were very glad we shared it Two of us could not finish the main course (Sausage & Tomato Rigatoni) after our appetizer of bruschetta, and we still tried to squeeze in a shared serving of tiramisu! Everything we tried was excellent, and the service was top-notch. We highly recommend it.

Great food (all good especially the pasta - all cooked to perfection - we had six dishes), Great People (bent over backwards to help with the menu with some of our very picky eaters), Excellent Management (very helpful when there was a problem with one of the meals). Skip the 1 star reviews by hateful leftists who want to shut down free speech. Come enjoy a great family place!!!!!!!

This place offers family style portions. The risotto rice balls appetizer was beautiful for those who love lemony flavor. The ambiance was good. The server was polite. We ordered a caprese chicken special. It was good.

This is a cozy and romantic place to get a tasty meal at a fair price. The atmosphere is perfect for a night out with friends or with wife/husband. The only reason I don't give this five stars is because when I went, we were the only ones dining on a Wednesday evening. They had an abundance of individuals working, all of which were gossiping so loudly I could hear their entire conversation.

Definitely pricey. My friend and I both bought drinks and sent both drinks back bc they were very gross. Don't get the limoncello martini or bellicini. Service was good. Garlic bread was yummy, and the food was good. Cost $100 for 3 of us for two entrees (small 2 person entrees bc they only serve family size portions), a salad, and 3 sodas, so even though the food and service were good, I don't know If the price made it worthwhile.

Family style Italian. The building has a good atmosphere and sits right on main Street. We started with the calamari then had spaghetti and lasagna. All were good meals and came out fairly quickly. The lemoncello cake is delicious for dessert.

Really enjoyed the food and the service was good to, however they underestimate the serving sizes. They do two sizes of everything one is supposed to be for two people and the bigger size for four people. We had a party of six and could have gotten by with just ordering one entree after splitting two appetizers.

Food and service was great. Caesar salad seem to need a bit more salt or something. Very nice decor. This place would have got a 5 star but found a piece of hair in the food, so that was a turnoff.

If nothing else, you have to try the gorgonzola salad, it was really good.

Food was cold and the noodles were stuck together. The chicken was good, but the lasagna wasn't thanks for being open Christmas eve, but it was lackluster all around.

If they ask you if you wanst a bread basket say no tasted like carsboard thats been sitting in storage at your aunt Glorias in her attic for the past 30yrs an you found the box when she died and you an the rest of the family were cleaning her house out. Other than that food was ok price was ok for the portion size. Owner was a dick to people wanting to sit and eat saying they could only stay there an hour.

Great food, raspberry martini was terrible...seemed like straight vodka...the biggest issue was when I paid cash, the waiter said "sorry we dont have change." I gave 2 $100 bills for a $119 meal and he had the ba##s to ask if I needed change?? No dude I always give an $80 tip for a $119 dinner....this is obviously a sleaze tactic they use to get more $ thinking that people who pay cash dont have a cc and will just have to leave without change...uh not happening...our waiter pulled this on the table next to us and they were very upset....so I left him a 4% tip....lol thats what happens when you try and pull bs on me...be warned if your paying cash!!

The eggplant panini was somewhat reminiscint of dog food, flat texture and taste. The greens that accompanied the dish had no flavor, oil, vinegar, or anything at all. However, the romaine lettuce salad had good flavor but was a bit overwhelming. The lettuce itself was almost dead. Nice atmosphere at least.

Very appealing decor. I went in when my Amtrak train was delayed by an hour. It's right across from the station parking lot. I was alone and sat at the bar. I had bruscetta as an appetizer & chicken piccata as an entree. The bartender & only server explained that the building went up in 1919 and the exposed brick and front window frames were original to the building. I liked the look of it very much - a lot like restaurants in Boston's North End (the measure by which all others are judged). There was dark wood and crisp white napkins. The bruscetta was good. The piccata had the right taste, but the chicken seemed dry and the flavors hadn't "sunk in". The fettuccine was perfect. I would definitely go again & give it another try because so many other things went well. Also, the ladies room was very clean. It was not busy when I was there around 2pm on a Sunday. If the chicken is a one time thing (and such things do happen), I will amend this review. The service was very good.

The food is delicious but if you're a college student and you not not dressed for the formal atmosphere of this restaurant, then don't expect great and friendly service.

Really amazing food but horrible horrible service. I thought that the bad service the first time I went there was just a fluke but the service experience on my second visit was just as bad. It felt as if the waiter was constantly trying to rush us out of the restaurant while we were just trying to enjoy a nice dinner. He even grabbed my plate to pack it up while i was putting my fork in for another bite. It's such a shame that I've only had horrible experiences here because the food is so good.

I must say that I'm a native Italian and that the only thing that I liked in this restaurant was the staff: friendly enough. Despite this, guys, I am sorry, but ITALIAN CUISINE IS NOT like that! It's 10times better!! Almost all the recipes, if not all of them, are not the real ones: they are modified in a bad way. After having dinner there, I wanted to go talking to the manager and saying "What the hell is this? What a shame, you are spreading an idea of Italy that is wrong! What about the portions? That's right, we usually eat a lot of pasta but not THAT MUCH! I mean, do you really like to waste food,huh? Plus, it was way too much overcooked: what about our tradition of the "al dente" pasta, have y'all forgotten about it? That one seemed glue!" I am sure that Americans like it because, in their opinion, it's kind of a confirmation of the stereotypes about Italy. The manager had a great intuition about it. I was really eager to have a - not made by me - Italian nice dinner after 6 months in the US but what I had really looked and tasted like Americans would cook it. Very disappointing.

Bella's had been one of our favorites since moving to Charlottesville. No more. Food, cleanliness and service have taken a hit. Wondering if there's been a change of ownership or management. Last 2 or 3 visits they've been out if a wine we ordered....and the substitute was far inferior. It seems like they are always training new waitstaff. Tonight's dinner was substandard-the tomatoes in the caprese salad were mealy and flavorless and the meatballs were bready and overcooked. And PLEASE, why can't restaurants bring clean silver rather than asking you if you want to keep it (which means placing it directly on the table)!

Overpriced, average quality food. The owner rubbed me the wrong way when I first met him, and later I found out he publicly posts racist sentiments on Facebook. Do not go here!

Really disappointed !! I called to reserve a table for a party of 16 for my rehearsal dinner, with good notice and was told by Megan that they don't accommodate parties that big on a Friday night ( this was for a reservation at 8pm ). Seriously I would of gladly of given a deposit to hold a table so if we wouldn't show ( we would ) that they would still have something! Sad now the search must go on...

This is the worst service restaurant i have ever been to. I was sitting there for 10 mins without water serving. After I said excuse me. The waitress heard it but chose to continue ignore me. I left immediately. Please do not go there if you are a student who do not dress for the "Upscale" kidding atmosphere.

Monday night the restaurant is more than half empty. We were asked if we had reservation and we did a Anthony Bourdain no reservations. After 5 minutes at playing on the screen we were seated and forgotten in a small restaurant. We walked out after waiting and no one coming to our table. I hope our digital selves got served.

As a UVA alum, Bella's WAS a favorite for a home-style, tasty Italian meal. For my bachelorette dinner, my friends and I went here to celebrate, and it was the worst experience I've had in a restaurant, and I do not say that lightly. My goal is always to give a place the benefit of the doubt, but my experience here, along with my sister's (who called to discuss the incident afterwards as well), led me to write this review. After dinner, we received the check for a meal for 4. The check was reasonable, and we paid in cash because their credit machines were down. We waited, and waited for our change to return (we had paid in large bills), and after about 30 min of waiting, flagged down an employee, requesting our change so that we could give tip and leave. The manager became very defensive, and stated that we had said to "keep the change" when it would've been more than 30% tip. We politely stated that they were mistaken and planned to leave the tip after we received change. The waiter came back to our table, threw our change on the table (which was the wrong amount), and walked away. We then went to the manager again and asked for the correct amount of change. She then threw the remaining change at us over the bar, and when asked if it's standard for them to throw money at customers, responded with "that's how I return money." We then later on called to ask about the owner and the service we received, to which we were given a very defensive, "it must have been your fault" response. Needless to say, I will never go back or take my family/friends to a place that clearly disrespects certain groups of people, nor will I ever recommend a place like this.