Esca Restaurant & Wine Bar - Middletown

I have visited this restaurant multiple times. I absolutely adore their Sunday brunch! The upscale and authentic Italian cuisine, along with their excellent wine selection, is truly delicious. I highly recommend this place, especially for special occasions. The decor is a perfect mix of sophistication and a calming atmosphere. They even have a separate level for hosting events!

The food was fantastic and the staff went above and beyond to make our birthday celebration special.

I don’t like leaving bad reviews. The menu looks awesome. We had great drinks and appetizers. But we waited 3 hours for our entrees to come out (after our server went to the kitchen multiple times), before we had to find an alternative. Our waiter was fantastic but honestly something in the kitchen was seriously wrong. It was a busy Saturday night sure. But if you can’t seat a full house you need to reduce your seating or increase your kitchen staff.

This was our second time here. Once for dinner a few months ago, wonderful experience. Today for lunch was underwhelming. We were one of three tables around noon. We ordered the lunch special which included half sandwich, soup salad/fries. Soup was lobster bisque. It wasn't bad, but way too salty. Sandwiches took quite a long time to come out. At least the waitress apologized for the wait several times. More concerning was the fact that my girlfriends sandwich (the roasted turkey sandwich) was very small. Smaller than a McDonald's egg Mcmuffin. The top slice of bread was the small butt end of an Italian loaf and hard as a rock, Inedible (see photo). It was supposed to have coppa on it, which it did not. It also had mushrooms on it which it wasn't supposed too. (Thank God she didn't have a mushroom allergy). I was going to leave feed back with the waitress if asked how everything was, but she just cleared out plates and took our check. I'm assuming the slow food service is due to an understaffed kitchen, common these days. But there's no excuse for the food. I will try dinner again but, solid pass for lunch.

Great atmosphere and decor, very good northern Italian food and other diverse selections, excellent appetizers and charcuterie, surprisingly large well prepared portions, amazing bread, responsive service, but, sadly a self inflicted wound on the wine by a restaurant that calls itself a wine bar. Wine should be stored and served at 55 to 65 degrees. This is challenging for many restaurants who will hover around room temperature. Unfortunately, the bottle we ordered, a well selected unusual norther Italian gem, was nowhere near even that. It was every bit of 80 degrees. Literally warm to the touch as if it were close to bright lights or the kitchen. We had to put it in the water bottle chiller. At this temperature, for any length of time, wine “cooks”, a trade term indicating spoilage. Unfortunately, ours was close to “cooked” indicating long term poor hot storage. This is sad because Esca has a smartly selected list with some delightful options. It makes no sense why they would invest in very nice wines and then undermine them. We thought maybe it was our bottle alone but we saw other reviews complaining about the warm wine. The average customer might not notice but anyone with any wine expertise will. Please Esca, fix this.We would like to come back for your delightful food but frankly, we would be hesitant to order another bottle.What an unnecessary loss…