By Nicholas Chambers

Coming from an Italian family and background, I have spent countless Friday and Saturday nights devouring local Italian cuisine at my favorite restaurants in my area. I can count on my parents to make an outstanding home-cooked Italian meal every Sunday, and even when we go on vacation, my dad makes it a point to find great Italian restaurants that serve the most authentic Italian food, even away from home. 

If you have any familiarity with Richmond, you might know that the area is rich with hole-in-the-wall dynamite grub of the Italian variety. More and more joints pop up each year, and the demand for new Italian restaurants is always on the rise. As a food connoisseur myself, I am always on the lookout for that staple restaurant that sets itself apart from the competition. Enter Vinny’s Italian Grill and Pizzeria in Glen Allen, serving the greater Short Pump area for over a decade, and one of 13 Vinny’s locations in Virginia and North Carolina. 

When I walked into the small entrance of Vinny’s with my parents on a recent visit, we were greeted by two usual things: a packed dining room and a crammed foyer. Many see this as a downside to a restaurant’s ambiance, but I see it as great business. Pizza boxes stack up on the left side entrance wall, and a takeout counter faces you, as you experience shoulder-to-shoulder traffic before even fetching a seat. Having been a regular at Vinny’s for most of my childhood, I can say with certainty to any new customer that contending with a potential 20-minute wait is worth it. 

Vinny’s Italian wings. Photo credit: Michael Chambers.

As a regular at Vinny’s, upon being handed a menu, I almost immediately know what I am going to order. But that doesn’t stop me from browsing the over 40 menu items every time I go. Vinny’s has a boatload of Italian variety, from pizzas to calzones, antipasto to pasta dishes, and even subs. But my favorite menu item classifies as an appetizer: the mild Italian wings. Doused in the most succulent wing sauce and cooked to perfection every time, these drums and flats are perfect for sharing and are sure to satisfy your hunger upon consumption. In anticipation of my feast, I decided to share these golden delights with parents to start. 

After downing the best wings in Virginia in about five minutes, we decided that it was time to order our main entrees. My dad Michael Chambers, who commonly struggles between two dishes at nearly every restaurant we ever go to, made the attentive decision to order the Vinny’s calzone this time, my mom’s usual order, which is more than large enough to share for two people. My mom, Collegiate Lower School teacher Jamie Chambers, chose the antipasto salad, the Italian spin on the ancient Roman masterpiece, commonly shared by my family, as her main meal. 

Vinny’s large pepperoni pizza. Photo credit: Michael Chambers.

When it came to my turn to choose my dinner, I selected the Vinny’s Club sandwich with chips on the side. However, that wasn’t all for us. It wouldn’t be an Italian outing for us at Vinny’s without ordering a large pie. The image of eating leftovers for the next week guided us to choosing the pepperoni pizza for the table. 

As my parents and I patiently awaited greatness, I scanned the packed house. Vinny’s has always been a place where my parents took me and my brother when we didn’t have time to cook and didn’t have clothes to dress up. I looked to the table to my right and saw a little boy, around eight years old, in a Tuckahoe Little League baseball uniform. This sight of him and his family digging into a large pizza gave me flashbacks to when I was an eight-year-old kid, on the way home from dominating in my machine-pitch game and craving an Italian slice. I thought about the countless times I bonded with the locals of Vinny’s, who reminded me of young Nicholas over the years.

As I got older, I took great pride in approaching TLL All-Stars and their families, as I sparked conversations about my time as an All-Star. Crouching down to the seated level of these shy ballplayers, I commonly pointed to my custom Tuckahoe National slides from my time playing Little League, which I regularly wore to the restaurant, as an ice breaker. Watching their eyes light up upon recognition as they began to speak in excitement was always my favorite part of the encounter. Being able to stumble into Vinny’s unplanned and unannounced is one of the best parts about the restaurant. 

Vinny’s ham and cheese calzone. Photo credit: Michael Chambers.

Our food arrived 30 minutes after our appetizer, and I was ecstatic. I took a bite into the hot slice of pizza and was in love. Between the pizza’s fluffy crust and the perfect cheese-to-sauce ratio, I would classify a Vinny’s pizza as a flawless cross between a New York style pizza and a brick oven pizza. The addition of pepperoni enhanced the taste even more. My dad’s calzone was more of the same. It was filled with ham, mozzarella, and ricotta, and he described it as “restaurant quality Italian food. As a New York native with Italian roots, it was the best I’ve ever had. The portion was huge and made for great leftovers.” Mind you, he is the harshest critic of any type of cuisine in my family.

My mom claimed that her antipasto “was amazing and hit the spot.” Filled with lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, ham, provolone, salami, and bocconcini, this dish was way more loaded than your traditional salad. An Italian take on the classical BLT, my club sandwich added a ham, cheese, and a toasted white bread component to an already spectacular dish. The added homemade chips on the side gave it a nice crunch, and for the $9.50 price point, it is hard to beat.

Vinny’s club sandwich. Photo credit: Nicholas Chambers.

We treated our server with grace as she apologized for her lack of presence that night. Seeing Vinny’s go from a popular local dive to a dormant hideaway in the midst of COVID-19 was a challenging thing for my family to witness. There were many times when we worried if Vinny’s would truly survive quarantine, with its lack of regular customers for over a year and a half. Thankfully, in large part to its booming take-out business, it did, and there is nothing better than seeing a packed dining hall, two years removed from those scary times.

Feeling like bank robbers, we left the restaurant with half a calzone, over half a pizza pie, and half a sandwich. For everything, the bill totaled only 89 dollars before tip. My dad commonly calls this “the best deal in America.”

Overall, I would describe my experience at Vinny’s Italian Grill and Pizzeria as nostalgic and outstanding. Entering a packed restaurant to see mask-less faces and the regular hostess was a refreshing adventure. The food, as always, was to die for, and I will definitely be returning when my cravings for wings and pizza arise.