Great trendy menu for the area. Staff was welcoming and fast. Came here for valentines dinner, girls night, and a quick bite after a trip to Home Depot and never disappointed! Wish this place was in Chesterton. read more

The owner is rude and service was terrible. Too many good restaurants in Valpo and surrounding areas to deal with this place and their below average owner. read more

Been there twice. Once in the restaurant and once in the bar area. Food was good. Service was great. A little pricy. Nice atmosphere. Comfortable seating. Overall a great experience. read more

We started with the calamari with cocktail sauce. The calamari was a sickly pale color and had no crunch. Lacked seasoning of any kind. They brought a small container of cocktail sauce that was barely half full. Then we shared the fish and chips. They were nicely cooked--crunchy coating, but once again had no flavor. It has been years since we were here last, and it will be years before we come again--probably not. Do need to say that the clam chowder was wonderful!! read more

Food wasn't good. Expensive. OK service. Didn't like it. Go spend your money somewhere else.

I've been here several times. The real magic happens in the kitchen. The food is always hot and fresh. The perfect melding of flavor combinations can only be mastered by a passionate and talented kitchen crew. You don't have to be a culinary guru to appreciate the palate tickles served here. read more

Terrible Service and Mediocre Food! Don't Go Here! Plenty of great choices right in Valparaiso. My wife and I had a rare night out without the kids and were excited to give Parea a 2nd try. (1st impression was not great, but it had been a while) First of all, it took 30 minutes to get our drinks, after waiting 15 minutes to have a waitress address us at all. I ordered a steak, which I specifically asked how their "medium" came out to ensure they got it right the first time. The waitress was very clear about the difference between medium, medium rare and medium well. After a long wait for our entrees, the steak came out completely gray, (medium-well), which the waitress completely agreed with. (I ordered medium after her guidance, that it would still be pink) After waiting another 25 minutes, the 2nd attempt came out. I asked to speak with the manager, who reluctantly, and defensively approached our table. I found out later that this was the owner. This was the worst attempt at customer relations I have seen in a long time! He argued with me about how my first steak was cooked, and rolled his eyes and said "we may be able to offer you a desert or something". Needless to say, my 2nd attempt at enjoying Parea (or every recommending it), will have been my last! How you can stay in business with an pathetic customer service culture is beyond me in today's competitive restaurant business. Go to The Dish, Pikk's, Stack's, Bon Femme, Valley, or many of the other fine Valpo restaurants instead! This place stinks! read more

Great place..food, drinks, service!! Dont have to wait on friday nite either!! Great salmon!! read more

Had reservations for Valentines Day. Tried to order a Mojito and was informed they were all out of mint. My wife loves oysters, this is one of the main reasons I booked here. When I tried to order them for appetizer the waiter said "Oh yeah, we are out of oysters, I probably should have told you that before you spent time looking at the appetizers." This might be acceptable on a normal day. Might. They plainly know how many reservations they have on something like Valentines Day though. read more

Absolutely ridiculous and a joke! My fiancé and I wanted to try this restaurant for about a year and finally got around to it. Showed up before 8 PM on a Saturday night. We didn't make a reservation, so we expected a wait. When I got in - there were 5-6 open tables, but still a 15 minute wait. No big deal, we can sit in the bar and wait. The host said he would come get us when a table was available. Looked down at my watch after a round of drinks and some chatting - it was 8:30 PM. Went to check in on the table situation, still noted the same six tables available PLUS a table has been dirty for about 15 minutes. I was informed by a hostess that the kitchen had closed due to "gas issue." Now naturally - I was upset with the fact I was hungry and been sitting in the bar for 30+ minutes on a "15 minute wait time" with open tables available (same tables as I came in as when I left). The hostess did her best to apologize with "I'm sorry dude" - that is the mark of a real classy establishment! On a positive note, the bar atmosphere was nice and the bartender rocked. She was able to maintain the packed crowd that was in the bar. I wrote an email to the store on Saturday evening - it is now Tuesday and no response. I am only honoring a 24 hour business hour response window. To be honest - I received better service at the bowling alley in town than I did at this "fine, upscale establishment." I hear this is owned by Jimmy's Café and that the son runs the place - perhaps they need to start spending more time getting their act together. This is obviously a sign of bad management - nothing more, nothing less. I went to Valley restaurant up the block, seated immediately, and had some drinks. I would highly recommend the Valley if you are coming into town and want to enjoy your time. I will *NOT* be giving Parea another chance. read more

I've been coming here since they opened and have always had wonderful things to say, but sadly my experiences have been getting worse and worse of late to the point where it is now difficult for me to recommend this place to my friends unless this place gets its act together. They have a wonderful dining area, large outdoor seating, nice upstairs banquet room, and the best bar in the area. They have wonderful food...if you can get it! The main reason as to why it is difficult to get this wonderful food is due to the servers who seem to be much too busy updating their social media status, or talking about customers to each other. Then there's the male waiter who is more than willing to provide attitude and cutting remarks towards his coworkers, we get it, you are better than everyone else, can you please bring our order. Nice teamwork, sorry to be a bother to you. And for all this they expect a tip? Forget about complaining or mentioning this to the Owner/Manager about any of this, it falls on deaf ears and annoys him. They have the best bar in the area, large, clean, with numerous large tv's, and it also has large sliding windows that open up the whole side overlooking the outdoor seating area. But the drawback here are the trainwreck of bartenders who would rather play with their phones, or gossip with the servers about customers, instead of getting you your drink. Or just plain ignoring you while they are busy flirting - making women wait for service because of this is really classy. On a positive note, we popped in there one Sunday and sat in the bar and had a wonderful experience! The male bartender was very friendly, attentive, and professional (he makes great martinis!), and the server was also very friendly. We now go back there just on Sundays - No drama, just great, professional service from this male bartender & female server!. **Note to Owner/Manager: This is what paying customers expect, build with them, please** I do hope it gets better soon. read more

Saturday night in busy downtown Valpo and this place was empty. That should have been a big red flag. 8 of us are seated. One person orders a glass of wine and it arrives promptly. 4 order a bottle and it doesn't arrive until after we are done with our apps. Entrees were so salty they were not enjoyable. One after another someone in our group said "my food is too salty". We each thought it was only OUR entree, but it turned out to be every entree. Pork and steaks so full of fat they could barely be cut with a knife. Very tough. We definitely will not be returning to Parea. read more

5 star for Valpo for sure! Ok, I am going to be honest. I was not so excited to go here. I kept hearing "It's the new Greek place that also runs the other Greek place". When I think Greek, I think Diner, or Greektown (Parthenon etc) . Both absolutely delicious! But I was going to meet 3 other girlfriends on a gorgeous summer evening and really wanted a.) a fantastic cocktail b.) to sit outside c.) some really fun, delicious appetizers to share d.) a menu that made me want to order an entree even though I was only looking for apps and a drink with the girls. I am so glad we took our friends suggestion. Ok, so here is the thing: instead of it being another "Greek place" it is actually a fabulous upscale restaurant that also has the good fortune of having really well made authentic Greek items on its menu. I am a picky cocktail girl. My personal test is to order a Bourbon Collins. Super easy old school drink, but boy can some places really mess it up using simple syrup, too much soda, not enough lemon etc. My drink was A-ok here, and they had a great liquor stock so they had the exact Bourbon I wanted. Nice. We sat outside on the patio, taking in the street sights/sounds of bustling Valpo. Was great! Nice big patio, not narrow and claustrophobic like some on the main street. We were able to talk, laugh, enjoy ourselves without upsetting others. It was difficult to order because so much looked so good. I couldn't decide! I had shrimp cocktail ( sauce is a little too thick to dip-had to use knife to spread it on shrimp, and prefer more horseradish. But nice sized shrimp), the pork/shrimp potstickers were awesome, the crabcakes were wonderful. I ended up ordering a meal since there were so many great options. I had the fish special, a sea bass with a tomato/olive sauce, broccolini, and linguini with a light lemon sauce. The fish was perfectly cooked, the sauce was seasoned perfectly for my taste against the mild sea bass. The broccolini was cooked well, and simply (so glad there was not some rich sauce or drowned in butter). The pasta side was a great accompaniment, simple and well prepared. Both really let the fish and sauce shine! And the portions were really large. I am a small-ish woman and rarely eat a full plate. But there was no way I was going to be able to eat even 1/3 of what they served. I had plenty to take home and enjoy for supper the next day. Oh! and!... I love a GOOD Greek salad. So they were more than happy to sub a small Greek salad instead of the side salad with my dinner. It was perfect. My friend had the 1/2 roasted herb chicken and said it did not disappoint, super tender and flavorful. Other girls had crab cakes and a large salad and were very pleased. The other girls were very happy with thier martinis too. Just goes to show that you should take a chance and try something new, and leave your preconceptions at home : ) I am glad I did. I will be back, next time with hubby for a sexy date night. Cheers! read more

Had a reservation for a group of 8. We were on time and seated immediately. After over an hour and a half and still no food. We left!

Awesome food great environment friendly staff couldnt ask for more. Cajun penne for all wow

I have eaten at Parea on several occasions, but have never had a dining experience better than just okay. I really want to like the place, but the food is nothing great. My final (yes, final--I will not be back) visit was last week. I ordered the swordfish special at $35 and the fish was awful. It tasted overly salty and as if it had been microwaved. For the price, I expected fresh fish, not frozen. Valpo has better restaurants. Patronize them. read more

first time there..and the last. crappy service. overpriced. $23 for a tiny glass of Scotch! we didn't ask as the most it has ever cost is around $12 maximum. downtown Chicago is not this expensive. yet another place in downtown Valpo that I go to and leave fuming because of the price, and the service. loud, crappy music playing. PRETENTIOUS will NEVER be back. in fact, I am avoiding downtown Valpo establishments for now on. the only place I have went and not left p*ssed off is the designer desserts store. OVERRATED RUBBISH read more

Best service! Great food! Wonderful experience! Husband and i decided to dine here before going to our show at the Memorial Opera House tonight. Husband ordered the Cajun Shrimp Po'Boy with steak fries and I ordered the Scallops from the appetizer menu for my entree. We did order the crab cakes for our appetizer. Everything was hot and tasty when it was served! Our server was very attentive and we had a glass of wine after the meal. It was a good experience from beginning to end. We will return! read more

A disgrace to witness how a family with a young child was treated. I understand children do not belong in a fine dining environment after 7 o'clock on Friday or Saturday evening but certainly a family should be seated on Saturday afternoon. you need to retrain your employees so they know how to treat all patrons. read more

I'm being generous by giving this restaurant 1 star. My boyfriend and I went there on 7/27/14 for our first visit. First impression is it's clean, and very nice inside. There was only us plus one other table of 2 people when we sat down. That good impression lasted all of 10 minutes until our waitress came with our drinks and soup/salad. The drinks were warm, my salad was horrible (how do you mess up a salad?) it was warm, and honestly just very poor in taste...what little taste there was. My boyfriend's lemon rice soup had such an overpowering lemon taste that it honestly made my eyes water when I tasted it. We informed our waitress (politely) that our soup & salad was bad and asked her to just go ahead and cancel our entree's because after 25 minutes and a lot of huffing and puffing from our waitress for not liking our soup/salad, we were not about to wait around to find out if the expensive (my entree was $25, my boyfriend's was $39) was just ok and possibly not worth it to us. We told her that we would gladly pay for our drinks (even though they were terribly warm) and that would be all. She brought our bill with the soup/salad on there. We brought this to her attention since we each had maybe 2 bites of them seeing as they were so horrible tasting). She said she would get her manager. As we are standing up front waiting for the manager (our waitress, who at that point I was still going to give a tip to...hey, she didn't cook the food) was cursing to one of the bartender's about how us (she was unaware that we were only 3 feet behind her and could hear her every word) "f'ing idiots should've looked at the motherf'ing menu". Wow! The manager finally came, we informed him of his waitress and her poor manners towards us the customers, and then told him that we returned our soup/salad because of them being bad and would gladly pay for our drinks. He told us since we had taken at least one bite that we had to pay for them. Very rarely do I return food, but on the rare occasions that I have...it's been taken off the bill or substituted out for a different appetizer. All in all, we paid our bill, told the manager we would never be back. He said he didn't want us back due to us upsetting his waitress. Again. WOW! We POLITELY asked her to cancel our entrees because we didn't like the food and to please bring us our bill, she then went on to curse us to the bartender. Needless to say we went to Kelsey's Steak House where we know the food is great! We just thought we would try something new, but due to poor service and food, we will NEVER eat at Parea again. One of the worst experiences I've had at a restaurant. That waitress needs some charm school read more

My husband and I have eaten at Parea several times over the past year and we've always enjoyed the atmosphere and the service has been very good. The food has been wonderful! We'd go there again in a heartbeat! read more

Had the rib eye steak. It was perfectly prepared. Good food, friendly staff.

When walking through town I sometimes peak through the windows just to check out Parea's beautiful interior. It really is that smooth inside and I love their bar. read more

I called to make a reservation with my groupon offer and it was accepted without any problem. The manager changed the policy that I complained about previously. Our food and service were very good. We will definitely go back. read more

After waiting for well over 30 minutes (I did not time them exactly) for 2 hamburgers my wife and I simply gave up and left.

Parea Restaurant seemed a bit pricey in my opinion. Our bill was close to $200.00. Two of us split our entrees and between the five of us we had three glasses of wine and five Jack and cokes. My Mom had the lamb which she said was very tough. It was one of the most expensive entrees on the menu. Lemon rice soup was awesome. Our waitress was very good. She checked on us frequently to make sure we had everything we needed. The establishment was clean and the wait staff was courteous. Prices are high for what you receive. Biggest disappointment was walking out into a tunnel of smoke. It was 35 degrees so the smokers were all hovering around the entrance. Probably won't go back. read more

On Friday 4/29/2016, I was here and ordered the Cajun Shrimp PoBoy sandwich. At every place I have ordered a PoBoy- it is served on a large fresh hoagie roll and loaded with large fresh shrimp. At Parea- it is served on a hotdog bun, not fresh, with about 6 of those tiny shrimp you would be served at a mom&pop hotdog shop that served a shrimp dinner. These were also over-cooked and brown. These were combined with a slaw and tartar sauce concoction that way to heavy in tartar sauce. It was pitiful. read more

Amazing place. The owners are wonderful. So accommodating for groups and for events! Great venue-- there is the huge upstairs, large dining room, bar with tvs, and outside during the nice season. Great food-- love the sweet potato gnocchi!!!! Highly recommend. read more

We went here for an event on their top floor. The catering was just awful! Think, REALLY BAD wedding food. The chicken was completely dry and no flavor at all. No sauces on the side to help save that chicken either. The roast beef was tough and bland. The ONLY thing good that night was the dessert table which CLEARLY they brought in from an outside vendor because half of the desserts were still in the original packing from the outside vendor! Now lets talk about the drinks. The bar service for the event as well as the bar service in the actual bar. They purposely scrimp on the booze in the mixed drinks and the wines have to be the lowest possible alcohol content. When you're paying $8 for a little 6 oz jack and coke, you expect a little booze...for 8 bucks!! We watched every drink they made. It was literally a splash of jack, and the rest large amount of ice and coke. A single is supposed to be 1 oz. We know what 1 oz looks like. So tried ordering a double. Literally 2 splashes. Still could barely taste anything. We asked why this wasn't a double and we were told "it is, there's 1.5 oz in there". Ummm last we checked, a double was 2 oz, but based on our witnessing of how much they were actually putting in there, definitely was not a full 1.5 oz. Sorry. CHEAP owners trying to save a buck, giving you nowhere near what you expect but charging Chicago prices. Will never recommend this place and never go there. I'd rather spend the gas and drive to Chicago for good quality food and drinks! read more

As a nearly 20 year resident of the area, I'm not sure how we missed this gem that has been in Valpo on the square for nearly 5 years. We went for dinner on a Friday night. Service was outstanding. Our waitress was friendly, attentive and knowledgeable about the menu. The food was very good to excellent. There were 3 of us. One had the 20 ounce rib-eye and raved about it. Another had the Amish chicken 2 ways and raved about it. The chicken was tender and moist. I had the Chicken Souvlaki Pita. Also excellent. The red pepper hummus on the pita is a stand out, creamy with a pronounced bell pepper flavor. I chose the truffle fries as my side for $1 extra. They were just average, though a very large portion. The crab cake appetizer was good, though a little small, while the Garlic Chili Popcorn app was amazing, with just a hint of garlic and a nice spicy kick at the end. Baklava dessert was very good, a generous portion with lots of nuts and not too sweet. The banana bread a la mode was a huge portion, easily enough to share and also not too sweet. Prices were reasonable for the great food and excellent service we got. They also have an extensive beer and wine list and cocktails are not overly pricey. The atmosphere is warm and subdued, but not too dark like some steak houses can be. We will absolutely be going back soon. read more

Save your money and go to Bistro 157 down the street or Bon Femme on the square. It's the first time we walked out before we even ordered our meal. The young waitress came to our table in the first 10 minutes we sat down to tell us all the things they were out of. We asked to talk to the manager. We are regular Downtown diners..all 6 of us that were in the party. The manager came to our table and basically, in a very aggressive manner and harsh tone, told us to just order something else basically. A quality establishment/manager would have immediately first apologized and then offered maybe a free round of drinks for the inconvenience or maybe say, "How about we pick up a free dessert"...Right? He didn't. Then we also spoke to the owner on the way out..same response. That was all their choice: to let 6 people leave their table rather than to keep their customers. In this day and economy when there are so many other great places on the square to eat, you have to be a bit more considerate of the customers. It's just common sense. Restaurants like this in small towns only survive through word of mouth and networking. I worked in the hotel industry for many years as a young woman. You don't treat customers this way. A lesson learned by the restaurant...They won't be there very long if this is the way they feel a restaurant should be run...especially when they ask the prices they do...people will make their own decisions. read more

Don't waste your time or money! Upon entering the establishment and reading the menu, I fully expected an unbelievable meal... Surprise Surprise! ! Oysters were so small, the waitress had asked if we were done when there was still 4 on the plate. The calamari was overcooked and rubbery. The lemon soup had good lemon flavor but so watery it couldn't even coat a spoon! My wife had the tuna, ordered it rare, came out more medium and the outside was grey and not even seared.. As for my poor excuse for lamb chops... supposedly medium rare, 2 were fine, one was well and the fourth was beyond well.. and to top it off took 45 minutes to come to the table with only a handful of customers on a Friday evening.. I seriously think the chef is unfamiliar with seasoning since EVERYTHING was bland! Do yourself a favor and save your money.. overpriced and pretentious for the quality of food... Consider yourself warned! read more