Baci | Cafe & Wine Bar — Restaurant in Healdsburg

Let me start by saying that the food at Baci is EXCELLENT. That said, we had probably our most ungracious and disturbing restaurant experience ever here on a Thursday night (June 6). My husband and I had each ordered a $40+ entree and a glass of wine. As I said, the food was excellent. Our waitress, an older woman, commented on our "small check" and asked if we'd like to see the dessert menu. We looked at it but decided to forego being at the restaurant any longer than we had to be.

The restaurant was pretty full and seated next to us was a father and his 8 year old son. The son was dressed like Michael Jackson in a cute bedazzled black shirt & pants (in case the restaurant might recognize the patron, who seemed to be a regular.) The son had apparently just arrived to spend some vacation time with his dad for who was separated or divorced from the boy's mother. The father verbally intimidated the boy throughout dinner, verbally abused the boy's mother during a call to let her know the boy had arrived by calling her every name imaginable and dropping f-bombs while the waiter continued to bring him more glasses of wine seemingly unbidden.

When we declined to order dessert and asked the waitress for our check, she again made a comment about our small check and didn't return with it for so long that I left the restaurant because I thought that might expedite it and because I couldn't bear to witness a moment more of what was going on at the next table. This child will probably in therapy for years at some point. When the waitress finally returned, she presented our "tiny" check to my husband. I guess to her, 2 higher end entrees plus 2 glasses of wine weren't enough. My husband left her a "tiny" tip of about 12-15% - much larger than she deserved. But, in these days of pooled tips he didn't want to stiff other staff who might get a share of the tip, but he did want to leave some...

We have vacationed in Healdsburg multiple times and had never visited Baci, so we made a point to dine there this trip. This restaurant is very clearly a place where locals go to get a decently priced meal (as evidenced by 85% of the people walking in warmly greeting the owner at the door), which is fine but if you are on vacation looking for a stellar dinner worthy of your time I'd look elsewhere. We started the meal with the Burrata, which was not pleasant...the leek mixture (which was very much under seasoned) was warm & gave the cheese a very odd lukewarm, undesirable texture. My husband had the tagliatelle carbonara, which was the best thing we were served honestly...but the sauce was very thin & the side of chicken he added to it was very dry. I ordered the tagliatelle with pan seared scallops & sauteed mushrooms. As evidenced by my photo, these poor scallops never saw any salt, butter or a pan. Neither had the mushrooms. It's as if they threw everything raw in with a sauce and cooked it like a quick stew. Totally disappointing to see such nice ingredients treated this way. Service was fine but honestly you probably have better food at a local Italian joint wherever you are from. There are many other restaurants in Healdsburg & the surrounding area that are more worthy...

I really hate writing this review and only giving Baci 3 stars. We have been here on several occasions and always had a good experience with excellent food. This past Thursday was a far less pleasant experience. The food was still very good and I have very little complaint there. The service was uneven at best. Our waiter was certainly pleasant but one of our party had to ask for more water 4 times before it came. Another member of our party had to wait 10-15 minutes for their meal after everyone else had been served. While these things were certainly frustrating the worst part of the experience may have been the never ending parade of people visiting with the table behind us. People continued to bump into members of our group while we were trying to enjoy our meal. I understand you have regular customers that you want to take great care of but please don’t do this at the expense of other diners. I’ll give Baci one more try as I have always had a good meal when there but if the experience is the same as this week we will take them off our list when in Healdsburg. There are far too many...