Caffe Riace — Restaurant in Palo Alto

If I could give this Zero stars I would. The place was very disappointing. I took my wife there for Valentines day expecting the same good food I had a number of months ago when I went to the place for a company luncheon. Come to find they are under new management. There's nothing Italian about the food which we were really looking forward to. When we got there we were seated right away. We were asked if we wanted some wine. (No menu showing what kind of wine they had or what the cost was etc.) we told the person (I say person) as he was definitely not a waiter. Looked like some family member just came in to help out. The service was quite adhoc as they would serve one table that just came in while other tables that have been seated like my wife and I for over 50 minutes haven't even been asked to take our order. Back to the wine. When we were asked what kind of wine we wanted, we said we would like a cabernet. When we asked what kind of cab they had, he said a really good one and pulled an open bottle from three that he had in his hand and poured it for us to taste. We accepted the wine and gave him the ok to pour it. No idea what kind it was what year it was or how much it was. We proceeded to order after waiting there 50 minutes or so and seeing a couple of tables getting up and leaving w/o ordering due to the frustration of their lack of professionalism. We decided to try 1 appetizer and 1 salad to share just to play it safe as we had not idea what to expect of the main dishes. We got both plates within 10 min from our placing the order. The stuffed eggplant with ricotta cheese and spinach was ok however my wife got heart burn from the tomato sauce as it was somewhat acidic. The salad looked like the butter leaf lettuce from Costco cut in half and sprinkled with slivers of dry fig , roasted pine nuts and chopped up hard boiled egg with a little ranch dressing over the top. As I ate this I could feel the grit between my teeth from the dirt that was not washed off the lettuce before it was put on the plate. We decided that's it. We finished our two appetizers and asked for the bill. When we got the bill, we were charged for two appetizers, two main dishes and no wine. We told the waiter that they must have given us someone else's bill as we didn't have any main dishes. The waiter apologized and brought us the correct bill. We noticed that the charge for the wine turned out to be $28 for a total of 2 glasses of wine. I was quite surprised at this and complained about it. I asked the host, (a woman who appeared to be the owner) how much they normally charge for a glass of this no name cabernet wine since they show no wines on their menu. The woman asked us why and when we told her what we were charged, she said she didn't know anything about the wine and would check into it. 15 minutes later, the waiter came to our table and asked what the problem was. We explained that the $14 per glass of wine was ridiculous for what we got. We had no idea what it was, and I felt is was something equivalent to cheap table wine in my opinion. Then the waiter said he'd take the charge off for one glass even though he'd have to take money out of his pay to make up the difference. Trying to make us feel guilty was quite comical. Frankly it wasn't his fault but when he came back and tried to make us feel bad that he'd have to pay for the wine, we lost total respect for this establishment. We paid the bill and swore we'd never dine there again. We should have taken the hint that something was off about this place when the owner, (the same woman who didn't know anything about the wine that her brother served us) asked if we had reservations and seated us without asking our names or reservation time . I can't see how this place could possibly survive very long and expect they will be closing business...

I and my wife went for a weekday anniversary lunch. It was easy to find street side parking on the neighboring street. There were enough empty tables available and we were promptly seated. The inside was quite quaint and charming. We ordered the Melenzane al'aceto as our appetizer with the Linguine Tutto Mare and Ceppe Riace as our main course of pasta. The eggplant item was a slight letdown for us mainlu because we weren't really expecting a sweet sauce on the eggplant, but that's how the dish is traditionally made, I suppose, so nothing against the food/restaurant. However, the pasta dishes were exquisite. All of the seafood chunks in the Linguine were succulent, fresh and delicious. The same goes for the sausages in the other pasta. The sauce and cheese were perfectly portioned and made a great pasta dish. Overall, this is a great place to try out Italian dishes. Last but not the least the owner made our anniversary special by providing complementary tiramisu and cheesecake slice - much...

The outdoor setting is lovely, but unfortunately was the best aspect of our dinner here. After asking for suggestions from the wine menu, we chose something recommended. When we didn't like it, we were told that we probably didn't like it for the same reason the man who recommended it didn't! Why on earth would you recommend a wine that you dislike? The wine list is ridiculously large and overwhelming. In my opinion, a good restaurant would offer fewer options, but of better and more consistent quality. Overall, the food was reasonable, but nothing out of the ordinary. Service was unimpressive. The bills were brought before offering either dessert or coffee after the meal. Also, we asked for bills to be split and the choice as to how the orders were split up appeared completely random and did not correspond at all with what each person ordered, so we ended up asking for the bill to be put back together into one and figured it out ourselves. I won't be returning to this restaurant after...