Via Mare Restaurant

Great Family owned BYOB spot in Avalon with good food where the Chefs Mother comes out to greet you and ask how did you enjoy the food! Hard working people who do a fine job with everything. I'd say it's now $$$$ post Covid however but you get what you pay for.

My favorite Italian style restaurant at the Jersey shore. They offer a great selection of wonderfully prepared and plentiful classic Italian-American dishes. The veal parmigiana was perfectly fried and crispy on the outside but tender on the inside. It was served over al dente pasta with a light but flavorful sauce. The soft shell crab special was glorious and loaded with a fresh seafood flavor. The salmon was cooked exactly as we like it, a nice opaque pink in the center. It was super tender and flavorful. As are most Jersey family owned restaurants this restaurant is BYOB. Reservations are highly recommended since it is very busy even in the off-season. This is our go to Italian restaurant every visit to the Jersey shore.

This was our favorite restaurant for many years. Unfortunately the last time we dined in, which was last year, we left without eating after waiting 60+ minutes and not being served any food. Tonight we got takeout. Very disappointed. Ordered garlic bread with melted cheese. No cheese and slice of bread was like a stale paper weight. I was unable to even bite into it. Regular bread accompany meal was also hard as a rock. Icing on the cake was that 2 entrées were $90 and my teen daughter was pressured to tip.

We have always had great meals here! I think it's pretty family friendly too. Relaxed atmosphere.

We've been eating at Via Mare for nearly 20 years. It's consistent, the staff is for the most part friendly, but the only reason 4 instead of 5 stars are the prices. 22 bucks for some ravioli is a little off the mark. Otherwise, we've never had a bad meal here. The shrimp dishes are wonderful, the chicken saltimbocca is terrific, and the appetizers are all top-notch. Given the number of ice cream shops in the area, we usually skip dessert, but what we've seen looks pretty good!

This place was such a disappointment. We have heard amazing things and decided to try. First off the for such basic Italian dishes it was a little pricey. I had no problem with the service or overall aesthetic of the place it was just the food was bland and did not seem fresh at all.
Being Italian I love my pasta and especially linguine and clams (that's what I got). It was flavorless and even my moms meal which was shrimp that was supposed to be in a garlic butter sauce was more like water sauce.. The amount of cheese we both added to our meals was ridiculous too. We just needed more flavor. Garlic, parsley, butter, something! Also, my clams seemed like they were from a can besides 3 "fresh" ones in a shell.
Unfortunately I don't think I can come back and give this place another try. Especially for what we paid for. There are a lot of other great Italian places along the shore that I rather go to.

I don't expect great food or service at the beach. But this was awful.

The decor is so bad. Lace curtains. Water colors. So unbelievably dated. The waiting area has a Casio keyboard but no hostess. We waited for 5-10 min before anyone sat us. It looks like nothing has been renovated in 30 years. There's some old family wedding photos, a funeral announcement. Middle of June in the summer on a Friday and there are maybe 3 other tables.

starter salad was actually really good. Loved the dressing. Clams casino app came and it was ok, at best. Smothered in onions. Not crispy like I'm used to. Didn't taste bad, but nothing special.

I ordered the shrimp scampi It was supposed to be in lemon garlic wine butter sauce. It was in a lemon garlic wine butter broth. So we asked for parm to add a little flavor. They didn't have any fresh parm. Never heard of an Italian place that didn't have fresh parm. It was so watery that it didn't stick to the pasta and it had ZERO flavor. I took a bite and put some salt in. Took another bite and dumped a ton of parm in to thicken the sauce. Every other bite I put in either more salt or parm. And I still couldn't get it to be be good. The 3 people I was with had the same experience.

What happened here, this place used to be great?????

Disappointing take out meal. Chicken tortellini with Rosa sauce had no chicken. Veal Saltimbocca was tough and overly salty. The accompanying pasta was overcooked. And, they are not giving anything away with their prices.

So disappointing. Had a 6:45 reservation. No one even came to acknowledge our checking in. At 7 PM I asked a server who was very snippy. She said we are short staffed and very busy. Half of the tables were empty!!!!!!! We left. They don't want our business. Screw them.

Bad, overpriced food that we waited 2+ hours for. We completely understood that the restaurant was severely understaffed, but the amount of time we waited was unacceptable. Our mussels appetizers arrived after an hour of us sitting down, and they were decently good. We waited a whole extra hour for our entrees, which were incredibly disappointing. The linguini and clams (my all-time favorite dish) were bland, watery, and sandy. The clams were canned and pasta was not fresh. The special, which was soft-shell crab over pasta, cost $40 for several bites of pasta and the crab was mediocre at best. The veal saltimbocca was decent. When we mentioned to the hostess/owner that we had waited for hours, she told us "we should have expected that." The waitress was very nice, however, and comped the mussels from the bill.