#41 of 31 Boone Restaurants

Bella’s Italian Restaurant

Bella's Italian Restaurant - Local Italian Spot Boasting Generous Dinner Proportions
Written by: Brittany Mendez
Local Expert's Rating:
4 / 5
The Bottom Line:

Bella's Italian Restaurant is a wonderful local Italian joint that is known for its family-friendly atmosphere, delicious foods, and generous proportions -- both in terms of food and how they give back to the community. Go here when you're ready for a big Italian meal to fill you up after a long day of adventure exploring Boone, NC.

- The SmokyMountains.com Local Expert Team

Bella’s Italian Restaurant is a popular local restaurant located in southeast Boone, NC. It’s primarily known as a more casual eatery, but that isn’t to say that foods here are cheap! Rather, you’ll find delicious foods in a family-oriented environment.

You’ll find Bella’s Italian Restaurant in the Boone Heights Shopping Center, nestled between an electronics shop and a boutique shop. This shopping center boats red brick walls with a bright green overhang under which you will often find outdoor tables for the restaurant. The entire front of Bella’s Italian Restaurant boasts large windows behind which are rows of high-top interior tables.

The interior at Bella’s Italian Restaurant is cheery with soft green walls and checkered black and white tiling. Near the windows are those aforementioned high-top tables while more standard tables line the center of the restaurant and red-and-cream booths with private lighting along the walls. There’s also a bar line-up along one corner and ready to serve your favorite beers and cocktails.

As their name suggests, Bella’s Italian Restaurant is an Italian joint. A family-owned and operated, local Italian restaurant. The atmosphere, while having a bar, is overall very family-friendly, and you will often find the place full of families during weeknight hours (they do not have any lunch hours).

There are two distinct menus at Bella’s Italian Restaurant. There is a menu available for Pizzas, Calzones, and Strombolis and another more extended Dinner Menu. Delivery orders are very popular for this business thanks to that extensive pizza and more menu.

Popular entrees from the Dinner Menu at Bella’s Italian Restaurant include:

Fettuccini Alfredo
There are a lot of fantastic pasta options at Bella’s Italian Restaurant, but the Fettuccini Alfredo with grilled chicken added is certainly the crowd favorite. This is a massive dish that comes packed with a ton of pasta tossed in their own homemade Alfredo sauce. The dish comes with your choice of soup or salad, and, of course, garlic bread.

Chicken Marsala
This entree comes with succulent chicken breast that is pan-seared and cooked with mushrooms in a marsala wine sauce. This then gets served of your choice of pasta or mashed potatoes and with a choice of soup or salad as a side.

Don’t forget that in addition to these traditional Italian entrees you also have the other menu full of options like pizzas and strombolis. On this menu, you can choose from a list of in-house pizza specialties like the Spicy Hawaiian featuring ham, pepperoni, pineapple, and jalapeno or the Italian Stallion featuring pepperoni, ham, and sliced meatball, garlic, and extra cheese. Of course, all their pizzas and strombolis come overloaded with cheese, which is part of what makes them so popular. But these items do take time and the restaurant itself cautions that diners should anticipate a 25-minute wait for these menu items.

Want a little sweet thing to finish off the night? Try out their Cannoli dessert item featuring two crisp mini pastry shells stuffed with sweetened ricotta and chocolate chips.

Bella’s Italian Restaurant also takes great pride in its local community, assisting in a variety of local events and causes. A great example of this is their hosting all of the post-event celebrations for The Grandfather Challenge program sponsored by The Jason Project Inc. and geared to engage kids with outdoor excursions. If supporting such local businesses is important to you, then Bella’s Italian Restaurant is a fantastic place to go during your trip to Boone, NC.

Insider Tip:
The portions at Bella’s Italian Restaurant are quite generous and their list of wines is quite long. As such, you might find yourself needing to walk off that dinner meal before driving far off. The good news is you can easily do so just a couple of blocks north of the restaurant at The Greenway Trail where it crosses through the Watauga County Industrial Fields park.