Trattoria Toscana

This a nice cozy romantic Italian restaurant. With that said you can expect a quiet and small area to dine or have a glass of wine at the bar. Make a reservation because seating is limited. Our server Justin was very pleasant and knew the menu. What I like about his service was how happy and proud of the establishment he was. Understand that this is a not fast food restaurant.
The menu had a modest wine list but what they have is very good. The menu was varied as well offering veal, lamb, steak, pasta, and seafood. There are also many vegan items if that’s your lifestyle.
We had grilled eggplant, roasted peppers that was a delicious chilled appetizer. Shared a bottle of Le Fonti Chianti from Tuscany, and enjoyed Chilean sea bass and lobster ravioli. We capped off the meal with desert. Fantastic food that was not heavy and well prepared.
A little pricey but this isn’t Pizza Hut. This is an authentic well prepared high quality Italian restaurant where you can relax and enjoy a nice quiet romantic meal.

Justin was very helpful at making suggestions and very accommodating and friendly ! Good was great, all three of us loved our dishes … Veggies were amazing !! They even stayed open for us which I found out as we were leaving … Highly recommend

If there was more stars, I would give this establishment infinite stars! The service was perfecto! Our waiter Justin was kind, attentive and so knowledgeable about the menu. The chef came out to chat with us several times. I imagine Italy to be just like this.
Ok now the FOOD. I would have to say this is the BEST Italian food in the Inland Valley. The level of freshness and flavor was over the top!!! I can’t remember what our dishes were called but I will tell you what they were:
A grilled vegetable salad (eggplant, peppers, zucchini). I had s version of this salad at The Ivy in Beverly Hills and this one was BETTER!
My hubby had the sea bass and it tasted like it just came out of the sea. Freshness at its best!!!
My daughter had ricotta/​spinach stuffed homemade ravioli with pesto-​YUMMY!
We can hardly wait to go back to taste the 2 lb. T-​bone that was recommended.
If you are looking for a «fast food sit down» restaurant this isn’t the place to go. Try it when you aren’t in a hurry, order a glass of wine, dip your bread while listening to a little Italian music and maybe chit chat with the neighboring table!

Great food and great service… this place is a hidden gem.
Authentic and great wine service

For a small roadside mall location this place was very good. The food was very good — I had the gnocchi. The waiter was remarkably attentive, courteous, appreciative, and had a very positive friendly attitude. I highly recommend this place for a mid-​priced meal.

Wow! AMAZING experience. My husband and I rarely get to have date nights, and this place definitely made our experience memorable. First, the place was packed on Saturday night and we were still able to find a seat. Second, our server, Justin, was truly AWESOME! Justin was very attentive and being that this was our first time, he was very helpful, made us feel welcome and knew exactly what we were looking for. My husband describes the type of wine he liked, and Justin knew exactly what to give us. Third, the ambiance was perfect. It was small, intimate and even the chef, Pietro, came out to say hello. The food was absolutely authentic Italian food. Pietro and his staff were extremely friendly, humble and very genuine.
If you are looking for fast, pre-​made food that has been sitting in heat lamps for hours, then dont come here. But if you want authentic, fresh and made on the spot Italian food, this is the place. Delicious food that has explosive tastes take time. Grab a glass or two of wine, enjoy the ambiance and experience some of the best Italian food in Temecula.

Chef Pietro is amazing! The gnocchi actually melts in your mouth! All pastas are made in house and all ingredients couldn’t be any fresher. Wonderful mix of Sardinian and Tuscan cuisine.
Our server, Justin obviously enjoys his job and is very knowledgeable about both the food and the wine pairings. My husband, a self-​proclaimed wine snob, let Justin do all the pairings and he never failed!
Great date night with wonderful ambience. Highly recommended. Will return & look forward to their special events!

Phenomenal service!
Love how small this restaurant is, very inviting and comforting. The wooden tables, the decorations, everything about this place.
They have an interesting menu. If you are used to spaghetti and meatballs, you are out of luck here. Lot of their pastas don’t come with meat. You can order it in their sauce as a meat sauce. My two year old LOVES the pasta here. I ordered seafood and my husband ordered ravioli. This place really is a «taste of Italy». Compliments to the chef!
It is a bit pricey in here however, worth your money. I highly, highly recommend this fin restaurant!

My boyfriend and I were in town for the Spartan race, and stumbled on this place searching for an Italian place to get some carbs prior to his race. It was a lovely find. We had a relatively new waitress and she did a great job with describing the menu, and her service. She did forget our wine, however she took ownership of the slip and immediately corrected. My boyfriend had the lasagna and I had the gnocchi. The lasagna was delicious and the gnocchi was amazing. Would definitely suggest this place to someone! Cheers!

After reading several reviews, I was so excited to try this place. Unfortunately, we won’t be going back.
My husband and I took our first trip to Italy a few months ago and after reading several reviews, I had hoped this would be a new favorite place in Temecula. The place is decorated cute and their menu does tell you to expect a long, leisurely dinner. The waiter took our orders without writing anything down. I explained that I was on a very strict diet and I asked for a special order. (Their menu says they have gluten free and vegan options so I did not think it would be a problem). The food took quite a long time just as they said it would but then my order was wrong and he forgot half of it. When I sent the wrong order back, he asked, «well, what do you want exactly?» I reminded him that I had asked for some vegetables on the side, which he obviously forgot because everyone else in my party was done by the time I received them. The vegetables were delicious though.
When he brought the check, he also brought my original order boxed up to go. Still not sure if they simply boxed the wrong order or if they remade it correctly but I told him it was too late. He had charged me for the incorrectly made dish. When my husband explained that we were charged, he said that he was not the owner but that the owner told him he had to charge us. Unacceptable! I very clearly explained what I wanted when I ordered and he didn’t write it down. Then he basically argued with me about it. After quite a bit of back & forth, we ended up paying and leaving. It wasn’t until we told him that we would be telling everyone we knew about our experience at his restaurant, that he finally said he wanted to make it right. Too late!
My husband and father both had the spaghetti & meatballs which they said was good but not special. My mom had the bruschetta with cheese which she said was very good.
So disappointed that the experience was so bad that we will not give it another try.

A caterer fell through last minute for a family function where 20 people were present. Trattoria Toscana came to the rescue! From working with us last minute on a custom tailored delicious meal, to personal touches, we felt like we were part of their family!
Thanks so much for saving our holiday!

Very disappointed in Trattoria Toscana. After doing my research on their website, Unilocal,as well as
, my mom and I were very excited to visit for lunch. Their website (as well as the restaurant month website) advertises lunch specials that come with soup/​salad and a dessert for a reasonable price. When we were seated (by the lone waiter, I may add), we asked about lunch specials to which he responded that there were none. We were set on trying their gnocchi that we had read about, so we stayed. Big mistake. Bread was burnt and cold, and we had to request oil and vinegar. The poor waiter was uneducated about just about everything on be menu. Food came out quickly but was less than average. After eating, we showed the waiter the restaurant month page that lists their lunch specials to which he responded «we don’t have our menus for that yet.» Overall disappointed as whole and we will not be returning.
After receiving a message from Pietro (the owner) apologizing and asking us to return, I came in for lunch with my boyfriend. Our server Gino, who had just been hired, was very knowledgable and accommodating. They finally had their lunch specials printed and added to the menu, and the food was very good.

Food here wasn’t very good with the heavy cream they used on our linguine pastas it just tasted creamy with very little flavor. One pasta tasted like cream of mushroom soup out of a can with added veggies. My pasta just tasted like broccoli with pasta and cream mixed together. If these 2 pastas really were Italian I don’t think it would have tasted like there wasn’t much thought put in the ingredients. We shared a Italian salad that appeared to be fresh then it wasn’t good at all or fresh. The Tiramisu we had was very rich and creamy tasting very heavy.
I didn’t find anything special about this little restaurant with it being small like almost a café just decorated in a way to appear more Italian. The food didn’t taste very fresh here especially when we paid close to $ 50 with tip you would expect the food would at least taste fresh and good to be passable. I don’t think the price of food here are worthy of their quality and skills in Italian cooking when it taste more like café food.

This is better than the average Italian restaurant, but not among the best I’ve been to.
Trattoria Toscana is nice, but not formal, allowing for many people to come half-​hazardously in t-​shirts and jeans. There’s a bar where a lot of single men seemed to be eating and drinking.
The complimentary bread came with olive oil and vinegar, but the olive oil was so thick that we couldn’t get to the vinegar! When we needed more bread, our server also brought another small plate of the oil and vinegar, but we had not even finished half of the first! Unheard of.
The calamari was thick, lightly breaded, and extremely chewy. I’m used to calamari in the thin ringlets, where the meat isn’t difficult to chew, so I have a feeling this calamari was overcooked.
I ordered the spaghetti, which comes in a tomato and basil sauce with pancetta. It was very creamy, and the smoked pancetta was a nice touch that I’ve never tried before.
Both my boyfriend and my father ordered the gnocchi, which I didn’t like because of the eggplant, which I think takes away from the other flavors. My mom ordered something else which I forgot the name of, and I was too full to try it, but she said she enjoyed it.
We finished up by sharing a tiramisu, which was good, but not what I am used to in a tiramisu. There was not as much cake as I would have liked, and was mostly cream.
Probably won’t come back because of their limited menu, but I would recommend it to anyone who loves Italian food!

The Temecula area needs a privately owned restaurant of distinction, but sorry to report that Trattoria Toscana isn’t it. I truly hoped to have been able to provide a more favorable review.
Let me begin by stating that the food served was quality and fresh. The waiter was very nice but the shortfalls were competence and execution for service and food.
My family of four visited on a Monday night to celebrate my wife’s birthday. We arrived at our reserved time of 7p and stood at the entrance for five minutes before anyone on the staff acknowledged our presence. The waiter called out from the bar across the room to ask if I had a reservation and what my name was. I needed to walk across the room to meet him rather than shout across the dining area. He informed that he didn’t have any tables and we could sit at the bar. No advice that he was clearing a table and it would be a few minutes or something to that affect.
After being seated at our table, a glass of water required a twenty minute wait and while we had the waiter in attendance we placed our order and requested bread. The waiter informed that they had run out of bread and was preparing more. Twenty-​five minutes later a basket of cold bread arrived. (Apparently ‘preparing’ meant cutting the bread).
It took our single course pasta dinners one hour and twenty minutes to arrive at the table. The most successful dish was the Pappardelle Con Funghi that was properly cooked, balanced and flavorful. The other dishes were red tomato sauce based and less successful. Although the sauce was properly incorporated with the pasta (rather than ladled on top American-​style), sauce should be flavorful and just coat the pasta. Trattoria Toscana’s sauce was not tasteful and too thick leaving the dishes sauce-​heavy which is an unfortunate way to treat homemade pasta. My speculation is they did not reserve the pasta water to add back to the pan to properly incorporate the flavors and create the proper texture.
Another oddity was that the pasta (other than the Pappardelle) was broken into three inch pieces that constituted barbarous abuse of good pasta. Who does that other than Chef Boyardee? Sorry to have to report that Trattoria Toscana has promise but it’s currently amateur hour.
We were seated adjacent to the desert display counter where we watched a server knock over a slice of cake before retrieving it with his fingers, plating it and serving it to a guest at an adjacent table. Did you save space for desert? No thank you!
Understand that you need to commit two hours for dinner here and I can’t imagine what that would have been had we ordered a multi-​course meal. Aside from client logistical considerations, it’s hard to imagine how the owner makes money with so few table turns. Service is awkward and slow but friendly.
The question for me is how Trattoria Toscana can prosper in this marketplace given their core attributes. In my view they either need to step up their culinary fundamentals, take the restaurant upscale and hire a professional wait staff which would be very difficult in this location in the Temecula market, or fire themselves to bring in a professional manager to oversee the kitchen and dining room to have it run efficiently.

My wife and I came for lunch. There was only one other family there, so it was very quite and relaxing. There was Italian music playing softly in the background and the dining area is small, but well decorated. The small restaurant even has a little bar area.
My wife and I both had pasta and ragu meat sauce. We initially asked for meat balls on our pasta, but they normally only have homemade meatballs during the week. However, when our meals came out, to our surprise, they made us some homemade meatballs. They were excellent. Their pasta, pappardelle and spaghetti, were homemade and tasted outstanding. They also had homemade bread. Whoever said this place tasted like Olive Garden, I would completely disagree. Not sure what Olive Garden they have been to, but this place is far more original tasting.
Justin served us and was a great host/​waiter. Thank you for the excellent food and service. We will definitely be back. Maybe even for the pig/​lamb roast they will begin doing on Sunday’s.

Came in with my husband tonight– glad we did! What an excellent place for a date night. Romantic, Italian, small atmosphere.
We ordered the burrata bruschetta which melted in your mouth, and I’ve never had such a variety of bruschetta! It came with the typical tomato topping plus two others mushroom & asparagus.
Our dinner entrees were the amazing carbonara, you could taste the smokiness from the bacon and all the flavors worked so nicely together. My husband got the lobster ravioli which he was also very impressed with!
I would definitely recommend Trattoria Toscana to anyone looking for that perfect date night restaurant. The servers were excellent (forgot her name, but there were two) and they were on top of our needs and we felt very much taken care of despite the busy, full restaurant. We even got a visit from the owner himself, who also prepared our food this evening. A top notch place!

Overrated in Unilocal stars. I wasn’t expecting this to be almost a 2 hour dinner but it was. The place was 90% full when my friend and I arrived at 6:20.
We were asked if we had reservations, we didn’t, but was still able to sit at a small 2 person table after the hostess (?) checked the reservation list (?) Service was slow. One waiter and assistant waiter.
Calamari was good! We had to asked for bread. Menu selection very limited, which is fine. But very limited on protein selection. I got ‘prawn’ pasta which was just shrimp. It was ok. My friend got eggplant pasta something. Her food was ok.
Tiramisu was on the sweeter side served in a supersize wine glass, eh.
Going back to reservations… after the place was 100% full there were no more patrons… Meaning we didn’t see the same table get turned twice… guess not bad for a Monday considering at one point it was 100% occupied.

It was a Friday night around 6pm and it was our first visit here with the family party of 6 including a 5 & 7 year old. I wouldn’t recommend this place for young kids. Although we were seated promptly & got our menus it took a good 15 min. before we even got offered water.
There’s one restroom and it was clean and decently stoked with toilet protective covers, toilet paper, hand soap and paper towels.
The ambience is nice for a date when you have time to kill because service is slow. It took almost half an hour for them to get our order. It took another 15 min. to get us out our Calamari appetizer it was after this that they gave us a basket of their complimentary bread with olive oil & balsamic vinegar and the bread wasn’t even warm. We did notice that other smaller parties who were seated 15 – 20 min after us were served faster and before us.
We sat for another half hour before our entrees came out.
I ordered the rack of lamb $ 28, my husband ordered the veal shank, the kids had the prawns with linguine $ 19 cooked in a tomato and wine sauce. I ordered a glass of moscato for $ 9.
The veal would’ve been good but the middle was still cold. The kids said they liked Buca Di Peppo better.
My lamb was great… but it was drowned in a balsamic vinegar reduction. The asparagus and pasta it came with was good and fresh. The portions were filling enough.
There seemed to be some arguing with the servers and cooks. When my husband complained of the veal being cold they offered to get him something else but it was near 8:30pm already and we couldn’t wait any longer so he kindly refused. They then offered to give us Tiramisu on the house but we had to go so we didn’t get to try it.
Anyway, our total bill didn’t get charged the 18% (parties of 6+ usually) so I left a $ 10 tip instead because the service was Soooo Slow + taxes was $ 126– and it took 1.5 hours from sitting to getting our entrees on the table. I doubt we’ll come back here.
For Really Good Italian food go to Gourmet Italia it’s hands down the best Italian food I’ve had in this valley.

Good Italian food.
Came for a late lunch and had the bruschetta, minestrone, spinach salad, and the pappardelle con funghi. The bruschetta comes with three garlicky toppings: tomato, mushroom, and asparagus. Delicious! Each one was good in a different way but I enjoyed the more traditional tomato the most. The minestrone and spinach salad were okay but the the papardelle was amazing.
The place itself is quaint and seats about 50 people including the eight chairs around the bar area. Nice place to host a party or to have a romantic evening.