DeFazio’s Italian Restaurant Review

When discussing Italian restaurants in Wichita, there’s one you’ll always hear in the discussion. It’s DeFazio’s Italian Restaurant.

Around since 1982, DeFazio’s has been proud of the fact that they grind their own sausage, bake their bread fresh daily, and make all their sauces from scratch.

DeFazio’s was a restaurant I went to quite often in college but since then, those visits dropped significantly for no real reason. My friends and I made it a point to go there soon and now we are proud to bring you our latest review.

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2706 N Amidon Ave
Wichita, KS 67204
316-838-0709

Monday – Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday – Saturday: 11am – 10pm
Sunday: 11am – 9pm

Facebook
Website – Menu online but no prices included
Menu pictures with prices at the bottom of this blog

Cash/Card Accepted
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We had a group of 8 of us for our visit to DeFazio’s. On a busy Friday evening, it took roughly 40 minutes to be seated.

Drinks and appetizers were ordered immediately upon being seated. After waiting that long and having food and its aroma all around us was a sure way to get us to the level of starving.

Aside from the complimentary bread, we ordered Antipasta salad, breaded calamari rings, stuffed eggplant rolls, and stuffed mushrooms.

The stuffed mushrooms were one of the first appetizers ordered and arrived at our table well after our other appetizers. They didn’t give us any notice; we had to ask on the status of the mushrooms when our other starters were dropped off.

The big favorite of all the appetizers was the stuffed eggplant rolls. It was a first for everyone and one of those big pleasant surprises for all. They were evenly cooked and topped with a delicious marinara sauce.

The stuffed mushrooms were good but a little expensive for five mushrooms ($6.50).

Everyone loved the garlic bread. It truly was great and fresh as advertised.

Many people ordered the house salad with eggplant and let’s face the facts. It’s one of the best house salads you’ll find in town; extremely refreshing as one friend put it. The Italian dressing and the eggplant made for a wonderful combination that was as good as any other salad I’ve ever had.

For dinner we went with a pizza, a calzone, spaghetti, lasagna, and an assortment of different manicotti.

Similar to the appetizers, one of the entrees arrived extremely late compared to the other dinners. We weren’t sure why exactly and wasn’t told the reasoning behind another one of our orders coming out late. Once the final meal was delivered, we were off to the races.

My friend who ordered the lasagna really liked hers. It had layers of meatball in it that was very delicious. The child’s pizza was well received by her son and a good value off of the kid’s meal.

The calzone was also liked by one of my friends. Her only comment was she wished they could have offered more choices in regards to toppings/stuffing.

One of my friends, I consider to be the spaghetti connoisseur in town. Anytime I go to dinner with her and spaghetti is on the menu, I already know what she’s ordering. She loved her spaghetti at DeFzio’s and said it was one of the best.

A bunch of us, including myself, ordered the maniccoti. The portion size was good. One of my friend’s considered the sausage manicotti as one of his favorite meals in town. If you like manicotti, this is one of the few places in town you can get delicious sausage manicotti. One of the four of us who ordered the manicotti wasn’t too impressed by it and felt the manicotti was average.

The Tiramisu was great with just the right amount of coffee taste making it perfect whether you like coffee or not. The cream puff was gone as soon as it arrived so that must have been a good thing.

To start things off with how our whole experience of DeFazio’s went, the mom and pop feel was definitely evident. There were a lot of regulars that you could tell have been there for years.

There were more hits than misses for our dinner. While one person in the group said the meal was average others said it was some of the best in town. One person mentioned the consistency in how good DeFazio’s prepared their food.

The biggest gripe among all those in attendance was the service. Between the long wait times to be seated to the wait times to get our food and wait even longer for missed meals, it was certainly lacking. Our servers weren’t too mindful of it and could have done better had they acknowledged it and gave us an update that it was going to be late. The other complaint was having to pay for your meal at the register…… First World Problems, I know. But for a sit down restaurant, it’d be nice to be able to pay from your table. The line at the register did get a little long. The area by the register is also where people stand to wait for their tables so it gets very crowded there.

Seven of eight people said they would go again. So that’s 87.5% which is better than any test score I received my senior year in college. One person said they would go back specifically for the appetizers because Italian food is just so heavy.

In reviewing so many different Italian restaurants around town and hearing opinions from friends, Italian food is one of the least agreed upon debates on where is the best. Two people mentioned DeFazio’s as their favorite in town so it all comes down to what your taste buds are telling you. Personally, I enjoyed DeFazio’s quite a bit outside of the service and would certainly go again in the future.

Happy Dining,
Eddy