VENTUNO Restaurant NANTUCKET Reviewed

We went once last year and were not impressed.  We went once this year, last night and this is my experience.  We started off with some red wine since the motif was Italian and the menu was laid out like a high-end Italian restaurant.  There were some wines by the glass but since there were 5 of us, we ordered a bottle.  It was a bottle of La Mailina Gertrude that they sold for $14 dollars a glass.  The waiter told us that the bottle price would be 5 times the individual glass price or  $70.  We agreed and when it was brought out, we tasted it, it was "fine" and he poured most of the bottle into our 5 glasses.  Since this is the 21st Century and we are all iPhone users at the table, we searched for the retail price of the wine by scanning the barcode on the back...an easy thing if you have the APP.  It was $11 a bottle.  It must have been considerably less wholesale, the price the restaurant paid for this $70 bottle of wine.  It could have been $7 which would make the MARK UP 10 X ( Ten Times) the wholesale cost.  Not a good start value-wise.

We ordered salads which were typical restaurant salads at typical Nantucket (New York-ish) prices.  They were tasty.  Everyone got a different main course.  They were all rated as delicious by the individual diners at our table including mine except I did not actually see any eggplant.  Not the best ever eaten but tasty.  My choice was a macaroni with eggplant, cheese, and something else.  The picture above was what I got for $34.  Essentially the same entre' at my favorite local restaurant in Sarasota Florida would have been $7 and it would have included a salad and a soft drink with unlimited refills.  We chose to be in Nantucket and at this restaurant and know the prices up here are steep. We can afford to pay the prices and I am not complaining about the quality of the food.  The owner and chef have a perfect right to price their meals any way they wish.  Cuisine is like art.

The dessert was yummy.  A Ricotta cake individually cooked in an iron skillet in the oven.  Retrospectively I should have had a couple of them for dinner.

Overall I give the restaurant a 6/10 on service, 8/10 on ambiance, 8/10 on food deliciousness, and a "typical" on price, except for the wine.  Based on more than one of us doing a quick check on the bottle we ordered using different scanning APPs,  if one could buy a bottle of TWO BUCK CHUCK from Trader Joe's at VENTUNO, it would cost $21 there.  I don't know what they call that where you come from but in my other island in Florida, it is a RIP-OFF.  The table cloths were covered with white freezer paper with the ends folded in.  The owner (I believe) was not apparently a graduate of the Dale Carnegie  School.  Either that or when he asked "how was the wine" and I answered "Usurious" he did not know what that meant.