Restaurant Review: The Venetian Court

Last week my husband and I were perusing www.restaurant.com to see which Rancho Cordova restaurants were offering special dining certificates. I’m pretty sure I shared this site with you before, but if you haven’t checked it out yet, you simply must. This is the go-to place for purchasing dining certificates valued at $25.00 or more at a much lower price (we bought ours for only $3.00).

We found one for Venetian Court Restaurant & Lounge which is inside the Holiday Inn, and were curious because we didn’t know there was a restaurant in the hotel. After reviewing their profile on Restaurant.com, we decided to give them a visit.

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who didn’t know there was a full restaurant inside; the restaurant was empty, yet still had a warm appeal to it because of the nice décor. Our waiter Giovanni, who also doubled as manager of the Starbucks kiosk inside the restaurant, was very friendly and seated us right away. He told us that people are often surprised to come in and learn that they have a restaurant; most people don’t know unless they are staying there. With Giovanni’s double duty, we had to wait a bit for him to take our order, as he was quite busy doing barista duty for hotel patrons.

With the restrictions of use of the $25 Gift Certificate, we had to order at least $35.00 in food, which was hard to do because everything was so affordable. For appetizers, I ordered a cup of chicken gumbo soup and my husband had a dinner salad. The soup was surprisingly nice and spicy thanks to jalapeno slices – but not too spicy. We also ordered mozzarella sticks, which we were presented well, but seemed like heated up frozen mozzarella sticks.

For our main entrees, my husband ordered the Texas Style ribs, and while they were a good portion and tasty, he felt they were a bit drier than true what true Texas Style is supposed to be. I had the patty melt with French fries, and it was very good. The grilled bread was a bit oily and messy, but the flavor was really good.

To our surprise, the Executive Chef, David came out to check on us and make sure that we were happy with our food. He was very friendly and not intrusive.

We also ordered desserts to take for the road, and the Venetian Court offers a nice selection of pre-packaged desserts from Cheesecake Factory.

Our determination of the overall experience was this: if you were to order this food through room service, you would be very surprised and pleased by the quality of the food, since ‘room service’ food doesn’t always cause for great expectations. Yet, as a stand alone restaurant, it would be up there with regular family style restaurants that aren’t a huge draw based on their food.

The Venetian Court is not open at lunchtime, but is a nice dinner option – good pricing, nice people, good food. Their menu includes sandwiches and burgers and entrees such as salmon, pasta, NY steak, ribs, and fish and chips. I didn’t see a child’s menu, but I did see on their website that kids eat free.

Have you eaten at the Venetian Court restaurant? Please share with us your experience in the comments section.

Barbara’s review rating: 3 out of 5 stars!

Venetian Court Café – inside the Holiday Inn

2827 Zinfandel Drive (near Olson Drive and Zinfandel)

(916) 645-4040

Open for breakfast and dinner

Do you want to know about a local, Rancho Cordova eatery? Tell Barbara where to visit, in the comments section!