Grazie Ristorante Italiano — Restaurant in Bothell

I’ll start with the parking where ne’er a spot can be found. We parked in the Taco Bell lot and walked through a dimly lit lot separated by sketchy hedges. As we approached the entrance my attention was captivated by the gross clutter accumulating in the window sills. This perked my curiosity hoping perhaps the small hoard littering what could otherwise be a beautiful (but terribly outdated) first impression was a forgotten closet. Alas, when we opened the doors to enter I am horrified to find that window is actually apart of the kitchen where all the food is being prepared. Against my better judgment, we proceeded to check in.

The house was PACKED. Did everyone Uber here tonight? Where did you all park? Despite these intrusive questions, I was excited to think in this relatively small town, a full restaurant is an excellent sign of hope.

We were a party of 3 and were welcomed by a delightful hostess and what I assume was a lead (?) that appeared quite bothered. It was a strange encounter and not very welcoming. Again, small town, I think to myself while gritting my teeth and smiling as we waited for the staff to find a high chair (that was previously requested via online reservation). We were seated quickly by the upbeat and very cheerful hostess and handed us several sticky, laminated menus the size of small encyclopedia with difficult to read font. The high chair was missing the safety straps which was concerning to me the toddler in our company is an escape artist. The table was adorned with a cute electronic tea-light candle in an adorable votive holder (which I was grateful for in place of actual fire) and nice linen napkins that housed flatware with remnants of diners past. After navigating our way through the plastic Brittanica, we inquired about classic dishes such as caccio y pepe, gnocchi, burrata but they do not prepare these dishes. It was explained these are deemed seasonal, which frankly still greatly confuses me. Is there a season for burrata? I digress.

Food- The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. Starting on a positive note- the Good. Water:I ordered Pellegrini and it was served in a wine glass with a lime garnish. While I didn’t ask for the lime I love that this is how it’s served. Refreshing and palate cleansing. Bread: Delicious, or as my daughter would say “It’s so Bus!”. I am told this is a culinary compliment of epic proportions. I’m taking her word for it. It was served with a small accompaniment of oil and what appeared to be a sort of pesto-inspired mixture. It was delicious and all at the table were sad when it was gone. Dino nuggies and curly fries: in hindsight we should have all ordered this.

The Bad: Caprese salad: the mozzarella wasn’t anything to write home about. Wish it were fresh as I’d expected by looking at the prices. The tomatoes were lacking in ripeness and flavor however the leaves of basil were fresh and truly carried the dish. Tortellini with an Alfredo sauce substitute in lieu of the gorgonzola sauce: I suspect both pasta and sauce are commercially available products, not made in house (which is rather unfortunate and frankly surprising, again, given the price point.

The Ugly: Pollo with a mystery Gorgonzola sauce and something labeled Parmesan risotto but unlike any other. The chicken was thin although lightly breaded then pan fried. It needed more flavor but wasn’t awful. The “risotto” I received in appearance looked more like a stale tapioca. While hints of Parmesan did exist, the flavor was lacking depth, it was terribly overstated, the texture made me wonder how long it was sitting in a warmer for as it was not made to order.

I do want to take a moment to recognize our waiter who was knowledgeable, interested, attentive, while balancing patience and kindness with the borderline unruly toddler. We were grateful and was our saving grace. I’d have rated 5 stars for service If not for the hostess lead that greeted us with unpleasant facial expressions and judgement in her eyes.

I would not eat here again. Lacks authenticity and is...

I went there with a friend of mine, who I used to work with in the area until just a few weeks ago and we thought we'd have lunch there. So we walk in and we're standing there by the entrance waiting to be seated when this older gentleman, who had already walked passed us several times finally stopped to acknowledge us by saying rather abruptly like he was annoyed to see us there and says "can I help you with something" no good afternoon, would you like to be seated or anything halfway considered pleasant. My friend and I just looked at each other, like wondering did we come at a bad time? He finally sat us down at a table, offered to take our drink order and left. He didn't seem to want to be there or was just having a bad day in which if that was the case he should've called out - the ONLY option when you're in the customer service field and you don't feel or want to be pleasant or courteous. He brought us both our waters and went about his business, setting all the tables for we're guessing a dinner rush mind you it was only 1:30 in the afternoon. Once again we were left there to wait and wait some more, worked at the menus, decided what we wanted, closed both menus in front of us and even made eye contact with him as he walked past the table and he couldn't have cared less. After about a ten to fifteen minute wait, we decided to leave! It was hell of embarrassing to sit there waiting to be waited on and served by someone who didn't want to be bother while the ladies at the other table across from us watched and mumbled something to each other while they ate. I wasn't actually surprised by any of this because like I said earlier, I was employed by another very popular business in that area considered to be #1 at what they do in the state of Washington and after eight months of turning myself inside out and being stressed out almost every day needlessly, because of where I come from, how I speak or just because of the color of my skin I was finally pushed to the point where I just had to hold my head up high, said "Enough Us Enough" and made the decision to walk out the door one day and decided I wasn't coming back. Life is too short to get caught up in other people's ignorance, and its really sad that after all the progress we as a nation have supposedly made that we're being pushed to the brink of the good old coral days where everybody who thought they were better than were walking around with their heads square up their ass as they walked into their very own "Whites Only" restaurants, restrooms through their Lily White World. Really sad to see nothing's changed, you can't teach an old dog new tricks and if you're raised as a child to have a closed mind and be ignorant CHANCES are you may even get the privilege to grow old and gray and maybe even live to be a hundred and still continue to live blissfully in your...

Racism by the server — stay away from this place. We had been fans of Grazie and it was our go to place for celebrations big or small. Whenever we had family or friends visiting, we raved about the food and always brought them here. But our last experience at Grazie was bitter and we would never return. Our family had picked Grazie for a birthday celebration. The server for our table was visibly annoyed when we arrived and asked for a table. We had two toddlers with us, who were hungry but also super excited to be out and about. The server gave us a table in the furthest corner of the restaurant, which we would not have minded given that we had young kids. But we realized that we were the only other family of color in that area. Our kids started making sounds, giggling loudly and playing with crayons that we got from home to keep them busy. The waitress who had showed us our table, came back with a scorn on her face and asked us “Is there a problem here? I can hear the noise all the way up to the front.” Her attitude had already put a damper on our mood, but we decided to carry on with dinner. We took one of the kids outside, so that until the food arrived they could stay quieter. But the server kept looking over at us from behind the counter and giving us dirty looks. The behavior was so bad, that we decided to leave. When we went up to her to say that we will leave, she said “yes that would be good”. We were shocked at that and asked if that is how they treated customers and her reply was that we were bad at tackling our children and that she would never allow her children to behave that way. We were appalled and asked for her name to complain to the management, but she said that she will have to ask us to leave - which we were going to do anyway. She ran over to the manager herself, we shared our experience and disappointment- but all we got was an insincere apology and we just left.

As parents of toddlers, we know that they can be loud but never have we ever faced this kind of discrimination at any restaurant ever. It was evident that she had a bias against us. For a family restaurant, the judgement and misbehavior was shocking.

We instead had a wonderful experience at Vons in woodinville. They greeted us with a happy face, provided crayons for kids and every server was interacting with the kids which was a heart warming after what we had...