Naunas Bella Casa is perfection.
Naunas Bella Casa has been serving homemade Italian cuisine since 1986. The restaurant used to reside across the street from where it is now, but expanded in it’s current home from the ground up. Tom Moloughney bought the land and built the revamped Naunas, and they are now going on 15 years in the new location.
This restaurant is all about bringing a good meal to families and Naunas does it with good service. Moloughney works alongside his mother, “Ma,” as the restaurant refers to her. Family ties are not necessarily bloodlines because at Naunas, the tight knit group of Tom, Ma, manager Mario Valenzuela, the chefs and the servers showcase the feeling of family that has bound them together for over a decade.
Naunas expansion welcomed a variety of customers who have turned into established clients. While there are two distinguished sides to the restaurant, the seating choice is based on the client’s personal preference on atmosphere. The back room of the restaurant is a more formal setting: to relax, bring your own bottle and settle in for a date night out. However, the front room has a comfortable formal seating area. Here, parents can bring their children and still get that formal restaurant atmosphere that appeals for a dinner out of the home.
Naunas offers a wide array of Italian cooking, appetizers, soups, salads, pastas, sandwiches, veal, chicken and seafood dishes. All reasonably priced, from their recommended fried calamari at $9.99, chicken parmigiana at $14.99 and stuffed rigatoni at $13.99.
But the best deal is the family dinner special offered Monday through Thursday. From an abundance of options, you can choose a salad, pasta and a main course, all for $21.99. It served my family of four plentifully. Choosing the tossed garden salad, broccoli and cavatelli with the eggplant rollatini, the meal was adequately divided amongst my family with no complaints – just regrets for living so far away from this restaurant in north Jersey.
My mom could not believe the price for the abundance of food and only stopped eating to say, “ I need another bite of the cavatelli!” Naunas busiest hours are Friday and Saturday nights, but the restaurant is open seven days a week.
The winter weather is coming, so if you can’t make it in, order out, for pick-up or delivery. However, I do suggest going in; the Italian atmosphere is cooking and Montclairians should be content to find that a parking lot is right out front!
If you have seen Naunas before, it may because they are a large part of the Montclair community. Forming a partnership with the school systems, Naunas holds events by which they donate a percentage of their day’s business to a Montclair school. If you have not seen them before, check out their website at www.naunas.com or go in to the parking lot that hosts the restaurant at 148 Valley Road in Montclair, N.J.
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