Vittorio's Trattoria

Forest Glade is a residential pocket on Windsor's east side, an address better known for takeout than for a sit-down Italian kitchen. Vittorio's reads against type. The dining room is styled after a Tuscan table, and the menu runs the length of a classic Italian repertoire — antipasto, pasta, veal, Napoletana pizza — with the house signature pressed into it at almost every turn. The main most diners learn first is Chicken di Vittorio: chicken breast layered with asparagus, prosciutto, and gnocchi under an asiago cream sauce, a plate the kitchen named after itself rather than borrowing from anyone else's menu.

The pizza program is where that personalizing instinct shows most. Twenty-five Napoletana-style pies run from the orthodox to the inventive. The Margherita keeps to form — bocconcini, basil, a twelve-inch round — while La Vespa, the bee sting, stacks spicy salami, banana peppers, and sausage under a thread of hot honey. The Glade builds a house super out of pepperoni, mushroom, bacon, and green peppers; the Peach & Prosciutto runs ricotta, balsamic glaze, and honey across summer fruit; the Fiorentina finishes with arugula and prosciutto over bocconcini, and the Calabrese leans hot with spicy salami, chili flakes, and a finish of spicy oil. For dessert the same oven turns out a full Nutella pizza, soft dough under a sheet of warm hazelnut spread.

Behind the pizzas sits a full kitchen. Spaghetti Carbonara is built the traditional way, with smoked Italian bacon, panna, egg, and parmesan rather than a shortcut cream sauce. Fettuccine comes tangled with mushrooms and black truffle in a blush sauce; Spaghetti Tuscana turns shrimp, spinach, and sundried tomatoes through garlic and white wine; the butternut squash ravioli leans sweet under sage butter. The mains hold their own — Veal Piccata with capers in a garlic white-wine sauce, a citrus and brown-sugar salmon laid over aglio e olio. To start, there are arancini stuffed with cheese and peas, mussels in white wine and tomato, and an antipasto board of prosciutto, spicy salami, provolone, and grilled vegetables meant for two or three to share.

For all the composed plates, Vittorio's keeps an everyday register too. Lunch runs Thursday and Friday, eleven-thirty to three, on a short panini list: veal cutlet with prosciutto and basil aioli on the Vittorio, sliced tomato and fresh mozzarella on the caprese, house meatballs on a third, each served with a side salad. On Fridays a beverage gets an appetizer at half price during those hours. The kitchen also keeps the family-table standards in reach — chicken or veal parmigiana over penne, a meatless spaghetti primavera, arancini and a caprese salad for the vegetarians at the table — so a group rarely struggles to find its plate.

The dinner week is programmed night by night. Tuesday brings twelve-dollar Margheritas alongside discounted domestic bottles and well drinks; Wednesday pours house wine by the glass; Thursday takes twenty dollars off bottles for the table that wants to linger over a longer meal. It is a deliberate bit of structure — a different reason to come on a Tuesday than on a Saturday — and part of how a trattoria only open since 2022 has settled into its corner of Forest Glade.

The throughline is a familiar format cooked with some personality. The trattoria everyone recognizes is all here — the carbonara, the veal parmigiana, a proper tiramisu to finish — but the parts regulars return for are the ones the house made its own: a main with its own name, a pizza built around hot honey, an oven that treats dessert as one more pie. At the end of a group dinner that last pizza comes out spread edge to edge with Nutella, soft enough to fold and meant to be torn apart by everyone still at the table.