I agree with Marc G. that Charlotte lacks simple, good Italian food in an unfussy way. We love Fiamma, but don't feel we could go there in a tshirt and jeans, even though the pricing is the same as Villa Francesca. So the vibe at VF is casual enough to fit the bill, but their pasta dishes are lacking the quality we wanted.\n\nI visited once and was uninspired by the pizza because of canned mushrooms on the pizza and didn't care to go back but we were craving casual italian and Yelp reviews were pretty good so we gave it another shot.  We got 4 pasta dishes - chicken parmesan, fettucine alfredo, lasagna and eggplant parmesan. We were really disappointed with the greasiness of all the dishes. There seemed to be no eggplant in the eggplant parm- just disgusting fried breading layered and layered over again.  The fettuccine alfredo was rich yet unsatisfying.  The lasagna had a lot of sausage in it so the spiciness was nice but the ricotta and mozz in it just made it seem slimy. Despite the large portions we left hungry and irritated.  \n\nOn the plus side, the service was very friendly and attentive! The search goes on...