Valentinos Pizzeria - Alexandria, VA

This was the second time that I had gone to this establishment. Unfortunately, I didn't save the photos I took the first time around and this gave me a wonderful excuse to have to patron this fine establishment once more. Let me just say this: Valentino's is awesome. It's one of the best pizza shops that I've ever been in. Not only is the food good, but it has an old-school italian pizza shop vibe that left long ago. The pizza's are humongous and they're not your standard fair. They offer a Chicken-alla-Vodka pizza that's just wonderful. But, my job is to review the calzones so that's what we'll do.

I like their calzone's a lot. I did more so the first time I went there, because the true test of a restaurant is if they an consistently duplicate the good results they produced the first time a person ever went there. In this case, they didn't quite reach that mark. The first time I went, I ordered the deluxe calzone which runs at a fair $9.75. This calzone, as it is shown in the windowed area of the prepared stuff, to which you can just point and say "I want one of those", is made as a traditional half-moon pocket. However, during the baking process, they slice the pocket open, place all of the extra ingredients you desired on top, and then cook the thing open-faced. This method gives the calzone a very unique and enticing look once it is served to you, and the ingredients are cooked up like a pizza. None of the flavors have been meshed together because a closed pocket didn't force the flavors to stew together. Neither does the cheese carry much of the flavor of any of the ingredient, and nor is there very much of it in the first place. The calzone is served with some marinara sauce, and it's pretty good, but nothing to write home about.


Their calzones are very traditionally "doughy" being made up mostly of the bread. The open-faced style of cooking this calzone causes the bread to be very dry and brittle when it comes out to the table. Despite these criticisms, the calzone is still very good. The ingredients are top quality, and the artisan nature of the calzone gives it a personality all of its own. However, after having tasted some of my friend's pizza while I was there, I most certainly will be returning for that instead. I readjust my previous score to a C+ because they didn't replicate the results I got on the first visit, the bread was very dry, and to cook a calzone open-faced sort of destroys the whole point of a calzone for me.