Parizade — Restaurant in Durham

Parizade was the perfect venue for our wedding! Some of our top priorities when choosing a venue included that our guests would enjoy a delicious meal and be able to safely get back to where they were staying after the wedding. We LOVE the food Parizade, and it is conveniently across the street from a Hilton hotel, so it checked both boxes.

Costs: The venue rental for our Sunday wedding was $500, plus a $5k food and drink minimum. Super reasonable.

Atmosphere: I would say the vibe of the restaurant is eclectic-Mediterranean-meets-NYC. It was very well suited for our very eclectic wedding celebration! We rented out the whole restaurant for our Sunday wedding, so we had access to all the rooms in Parizade, which each have a unique feel, but those same eclectic-Mediterranean tones.

More detail on the various rooms: The rooms include the main dining room, the board room (blue room with a bunch of gold framed photographs), the courtyard, and an additional smaller dining room (black and white checkered floors). We held our ceremony in the main dining room, cocktail hour in the back & white room, and reception in the back & white room. The board room was used for the groom crew to hangout in for a few hours while the bridal party got ready off site. This was our rainy day plan – our original plan was to have the ceremony outside in the courtyard with the very beautiful fountain.

Event coordinator: The event coordinator, Jennifer, was extremely professional and organized. She provided us with paper copies of the menu options that we could select from and gave us the run down on the price points and food & drink minimums, and ideas from what people have done in the past for events. She was very responsive to email. She also provided a list of recommended wedding planners/coordinators to work with (the venue requires that you work with one)! Jennifer, if you’re reading this – thank you so much!!

Staff: I was overwhelmed by our guests responses to the venue and the servers after the wedding. Numerous people texted me after the wedding, commenting on how amazing the food was and how taken care of they felt at the wedding! Parizade, thank you for taking such good care of our loved ones and ensuring they had such a lovely experience and meal!! My husband and I were taken care of by Misel, who was excellent- he even would find me to give me plates of food throughout the evening to ensure I wasn’t too busy to eat! The manager, Igor, was also a key person who ensured the success of the night. Thank you so much!

Food: AMAZING. This is one of our favorite restaurants in Durham (and my #1 favorite!). We have had everything on the menu, and knew our guests were in for a treat, even those with dietary restrictions. They accommodate food restrictions and sensitivities (3 guests have gluten sensitivities, multiple are vegetarian) and mark these easily on the menus. Parizade offers tiered menus with a range of price points that you select and then can offer those menu options for your guests to order from a server during the reception. We liked that option because it gave our guests a more personal experience and gave them the chance to order food they were interested in on that day, rather than having to pick a meal a month out like other...

Off night for an upscale restaurant with an excellent rating...

Our experience recently eating here is a curious one. I would give the cumulative experience one star.

Four of us dined here on a Saturday night. ...A 7pm reservation and the restaurant didn’t seem overly busy. Of the 4 of us, 2 of us ordered mixed drinks. We each sampled the featured cocktails and none of us found them good enough to serve.

Three of us ordered iceberg wedges. Plenty of creamy feta dressing, but it was bland.

One of us might have been “okay” with his entree, but the other three of us were not. The pasta entree was overcooked, the chicken dish was dry, and my salmon entree arrived to the table with the marinade topping served skin side up. Temperature wise my salmon was not warm enough. I remarked (to the table) that I thought it strange that it was served skin side up. One of my mates said something about having seen something on a cooking show that suggested it might be a new trend, so I didn’t say anything further. I didn’t want to eat the skin, so I raked the marinade topping off and flipped it over. It seemed illogical that I wasn’t asked my preference (cooked or plated). Most all of the liquid topping/marinade ended up on the plate.

I thought the service was slow. Although our waitress asked how we liked the mixed drinks, I cannot recall her asking anything about our entrees.

Days after our experience I happened upon Greg Cox’s (N&O food critic) review of Parizade where he’d given an excellent rating. I emailed him our experience and specifically asked about serving salmon skin side up. About our overall experience, he said “maybe they had an off night”. Regarding the salmon he said, “I believe skin side up is more common in upscale restaurants” and that the skin is reliably fresh enough “that the skin is edible, and they’re showcasing that fact”. After receiving the email from Mr. Cox, I called Parizade and spoke with Caroline. I told her I had a simple question about how the salmon was plated and served. Her answer: skin side down. When I asked whether she was sure, she replied: “I’ve been working here 22 years, I’m pretty sure”. ...Strange… She said she was busy and her tone coveyed that right away. She asked for my contact information and said she’d have a manager follow up with me. I never received a call (or voice message).

It’s puzzling that an upscale restaurant can have such an off night. It’s hard to comprehend. Prior to submitting this review, I did see that they affix a 25% gratuity on certain holidays/occasions and persuant to the logic of the restaurant, this guarantees a better...

I'll never eat here again! I just finished dining at Parizade with my monthly brunch group for their Eater Brunch. My monthly brunch group is comprised of professional women, and we have been meeting for over a year now. We often have 3-hour dining sessions so that we can reconnect, as we all lead busy lives. To date, Parizade is the only restaurant in which we felt rushed and received rude service. Also, for the price point of $44, which included automatic 20% gratuity and taxes, it was not a great value. No drink other than water was included with the meal. For example, one of our favorite Sunday brunches at a Brazilian restaurant was priced at $22 and one mimosa was included.

We had an 11:30 a.m. reservation and looked forward to catching up for a few hours this month per our usual experience. However, after around 90 minutes we all felt as if our waiter was rushing us along. She finally came right out and asked, "ladies are you waiting on an additional person or something?" I told her that we were simply still eating. We were all still tasting the desserts that were laid out, and she literally saw us all still eating when she asked the question. She waited to ask until after we had paid our bills, of course. It was quite rude and unexpected.

If there was a time limit in which diners could enjoy brunch, that should have been shared with us so that we could determine if Parizade would meet our needs. As we walked out the door and passed our waiter on the way out, we also were not thanked for our patronage. Outside of the brunch group, we are all frequent diners, and none of us have ever experienced such bad service - especially at such a respected restaurant.

I don't plan to dine here again.

UPDATE: I mentioned this experience to a coworker and apparently she had a negative experience by one of the other restaurants that is part of the Parizade family: City Kitchen. She had to take her daughter to the emergency room after eating there. Apparently, the menu item she ordered indicated it was made with basil, but was really made with pesto. Her daughter is allergic to pesto. She contact the company and did not hear back from them, which is what has...