Pompilio's Restaurant

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OPEN NOW - Closes at 11:00pm

One of the best restaurants in the area. Great service and atmosphere. Acoustics make it a bit loud. Calimari is outstanding... not the typical fried cheap marinara style you get at most other places. Feel good place for dinner with family, friends.

Being new to the area, I was really looking forward to having dinner at Pompilio's! That being said, we went to the location in Independence only to find it had closed. Disappointment #1. So we decided to make the drive to Newport. We figured dining on Wed, the middle of the week, the service and food should be good, and the wait short. The parking was packed! The restaurant wasn't! Good news right? We were seated immediately. Took a bit to get waited on. The appetizer, Ravioli was ok. The white bread brought to the table should have just been left in the kitchen for leftovers. I ordered chicken marsala, and my husband had the rigatoni with Italian sausage. My husband enjoyed his dinner, I didn't really care for mine. Maybe just a bad choice on my part but I would not order it again. The atmosphere was like stepping back in time, kind of nostalgia and enjoyable, but not real updated, and the food was just mediocre. The service was just ok, waitress was busy doing other things without noticing our need for more drinks. Not sure if we'll go back with so many other restaurants to try.

Pompilios is a Newport tradition. You'll soon discover that a scene from Rain Man was filmed there. Unfortunately, the soft sculpture memorializing this moment hasn't been cleaned or dusted since the filming wrapped.



Pompilios offers old school Italian food at very reasonable prices. Smoking is still permitted on the premises - brace yourself for a steely fog of smoke if you sit in the smoking section. Your server may have worked there for 20-30 years.



There are two big problems - generic food and cleanliness. The food quality has slipped over the years. Avoid anything with tomato sauce - I think they simply open a can of Hunts and drown the food. There is nothing tomato based that tastes homemade. It is disappointing to eat the bland food and realize you can easily replicate any dish yourself.



The other problem is cleanliness. The place needs to close for about 3 days and have a professional cleaning. Then they need to keep up with the cleaning. It's kind of scary to see the dust that has solidified to grime everywhere.