Gran Gusto — Restaurant in Cambridge

We brought our 14 year old autistic son to Gran Gusto for the first time and at first glance went into panic. It was definitely a fancier restaurant than what we were used to. Glasses...both wine and water on each beautifully set table. The menu is in Italian with English for the most part. Then as people started to settle in the restaurant went from fancy to cozy...people coming in with families and the atmosphere started to warm up for us. My son who only orders cheese pizza, (Domino's/papa Gino's) chicken nuggets or grilled cheese didn't get a menu because the last thing we needed was for him to be loudly asking for things that weren't there. Now here's where the true test was and our first time we can actually say we had an extremely successful evening and are definitely going back. The cheese pizza we ordered was a margarita pizza...one he has never tried before. And before that were the "dinner rolls" which were beautifully warm slices of bread. We didn't think he was going to for them. He devoured them!! (Oil no butter...yes it's that good) As for our dining experience at that point was better than we had expected. The pizza came and I thought he was going to fuss. He absolutely loved it. Went through two slices and asked to try some of my spaghetti. (Homemade and truly Awesome) He ate his small bread plate of spaghetti. He ate the risotto. (None of which he has ever had before) Oh yeah... it's really that amazingly good. For dessert he had the torta (chocolate cake). It was gone in a second. As for allergies they are completely accommodating. (Just tell them ahead of time and they will be on top of it) The wait staff is very attentive and so kind. So for even the fussiest of eaters for us it's an absolute go to restaurant. You can't go wrong with anything on the menu. And absolutely stay for coffee. You have to have coffee... doesn't matter what time it is. Just try it. (Cappacino and regular) It's a pricey evening out and you are going to want to tip well because the staff is really that nice. But my Goodness...for us it was so worth it!! A very successful evening...

I'm giving this four stars because a three-star review, while more reflective of my feelings about the experience, may have a lot to do with my personal tastes. We found the food there to be nicely prepared and fresh, but quite bland, beginning with the fresh italian bread that had only plain EVOO for dipping, without even salt and pepper available on the table. I should add that we waited 25 minutes for our order to be taken and another five after that before the bread came. My wife had a romaine salad that was like a Caesar but with a plainer dressing. It was crisp, under-dressed and bland. I had a seafood risotto from the primeri menu that was watery rather than creamy with lots of shrimp and a somewhat overwhelming amount of saffron. I like to cook with saffron, but this just showed too heavy a hand for my taste, and there was no other flavor to give the dish depth. Our fish entrees, both served with sauted brussels sprouts, were nicely prepared but ordinary, with just a squeeze of lemon juice in place of a sauce. None of the flavors stood out. It's of course unfair to judge a restaurant by this limited range of dishes, but I don't think we'll be back, especially since the pricing, given the traditional multi-course Italian system, seemed to us to be closer to $$$ than the listed $$. BTW, the room was crowded and loud when there were other rooms not being used on a Sunday evening and we are fogies so, again, take that...

The worst Italian restaurant in whole world. The food was horrible, the service was worst and the space to small. I'm sorry to make this hard judgement but seriously it was super bad.

Let's start. We order a super pretentious appetizer that was a mix of cheeses that tasted like milk with cold cuts. The cuts were the only thing good.

Then we ordered the risotto, the raviolis and a pizza. Everything was super bad, it was flavorless food. The risotto was just ok and the ravioles were an ugly mix of cherry tomatoes with TONS of olive oil and eggplant. Definitely a mess in the plate. Then the pizza, which maybe was the worst was not even flat, when you pick up a slice everything will fall of because the pizza will not keep straight, any frozen pizza would have been much better. Very disappointing for a so called Italian restaurant.

The desert, was just to confirm how bad this was. I order a pistachio panacota that again was tasteless and hard, it took more that 15 minutes to get to the table.

To top it all, the service was bad as well. Everybody looked like chickens without their heads and everything took forever to be served, as an example the bread was severed without butter or oil and there was a short guy who was treating the waiters horrible, humiliating them in public.

In a snap, it's all about the fact that the food was horrible, tasteless, soulless, just blend. Avoid yourself a very disappointing experience...