Gratzzi Italian Grille — Restaurant in Saint Petersburg

I want to start out by saying the food was amazing! I ordered the Rigatonacci Alla Vodka and my boyfriend ordered the Cedar Plank Salmon. We both shared a creme brulee for dessert. Both dishes are very flavorful and reminded me of the authentic Italian restaurants I grew up with in Orlando. I would say its even better!

However... I will be giving 2 stars for the service we received. I'm a server at another restaurant and have been a server for a couple of years. I know the industry and how hard it is sometimes to give perfect service... however, there was no excuse for the lack of service tonight. Our server, an older woman (I don't recall her name), served us tonight. She had a large table section and was serving us, a couple tables behind us and couple of tables in front of us. My boyfriend and I were a lot younger than the people dining around us. I know from some servers' point of view, it's harder to serve younger people because they typically don't order alcohol or a lot of food, and most importantly... stereotypically don't tip well. It's wrong to assume and I myself reframe from giving less service when it comes to a younger crowd because I know how it feels. It was unacceptable to see our server give the tables around us perfect service and we felt ignored throughout our whole meal. Our drinks were nearly empty from the moment we received our salads and we didn't get asked about a refill until the middle to near the end of our dinner. Her check-ins about the food were rushed and didn't seem very genuine compared to her check-ins with other tables (which BTW had their drinks refilled throughout their whole meal). I also felt her demeanor change when we didn't order bar drinks and ordered fountain drinks instead. I don't know, it just felt like other tables that ordered a bottle of wine seemed to get more personal service from her than us. We saw a three-person party who sat shortly after we received our entrée get a coke refill right away (before his dinner) when our drinks stayed empty throughout our whole dining experience. She even had the audacity to apologize for "leaving us dry" AFTER we just finished our dinner. Additionally, our empty plates didn't get bussed for a while after we finished the dish. I was so thirsty for another drink that I started drinking from my boyfriend's glass of water and this all went completely over her head because she simply seemed to not want to deal with us.

I did voice my complaints to the manager/owner shortly after we received our bill. Everything I wrote here is what I told him as well. He was very pleasant to talk to and very genuine and I'm glad I got to voice my opinions to him and we know he did talk to the server right after talking to us. I wasn't looking for a discount or comp off the bill, but we wish we had a better apology from the server herself who just said "sorry about the service, it wasn't intentional." I get it, after the whole meal, not a lot could be done anyway but the sincerity was not there.

We're in the restaurant industry, we know its hard, but don't give other tables perfect service and ignore just one table you probably have assumptions about from the beginning just because we are not the usual clientele. We don't go out often, but when we do, we tip very generously to show our appreciation for people in the industry just like us. Tonight though, 15% gratuity is what our server deserved and we even think that was too much. To our server, we hope you don't do this to other young people who might stop in to have a...

Today, my family and I visited your restaurant, primarily for the Cavatelli Bada Bing. The evening began well, we ordered the Cavatelli Bada Bing and a Margherita pizza opting to skip on an appetizer because we weren’t sure how filling the pasta would be. The waiter happily took our order and then asked for drinks. We then asked for the wine list, the waiter said, its 4:50 and we still have our happy hour, would you like to try something off that, so we agreed and ordered a glass of White Zinfandel and Pinot Grigio.

We had the Cavatelli Bada Bing and a second serving of wine each. Prior to the arrival of the pizza, I again asked for the wine list, the waiter quickly pointed out that the wines we weren’t drinking weren’t on the menu and just stood there. At this point my wife encouraged me to tell him why I wanted the list since it seemed like he was hesitant to bring the list. At this point I proceeded to explain that we probably will have a couple more glasses so I wanted to see what options they had for bottles. He again politely insisted on the house wine. I was slightly thrown off but didn’t want to make it an issue so agreed to another round.

But as I sat and processed what had just occurred. It grew glaringly apparent that the table next to me now on their third bottle of wine, was not facing the same challenges that I was in obtaining this coveted wine list. This led me to wonder what about me made it unattainable? Noticing the demographic of the table next to me and the majority of the restaurant (over 50 and white), I couldn’t help but wonder, was it my age, the fact that we had a 7 month old in our party or was it my race? Adding insult to injury, it was at this very moment, the table next to us where 3 Caucasian couples who were moments ago talking about a new villa in their 55+ community, were deep in conversation with their server about a red wine that they were really enjoying. At this point in the meal I was no longer interested in the food or being there, we hurriedly finish our pizza and drinks and left to go to another establishment for dessert.

I write this not to accuse the waiter of any act of malice, I truly believe he thought he was looking out for us. But I can't help but feel that something about our appearance said, “this family cant handle what’s on our wine list." And this, to me, is unacceptable. I hope that management reads this and evaluates their staff's practices so that another individual or family, never has to leave their establishment feeling belittled, even if it was unintended.  Have travelled throughout the US, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin American and never once been denied a reasonable basic request, it is sad that as a Floridian, we had to experience this in St. Pete, FL.

As a professional couple in our early 30s with two young children, our schedules don’t often allow for us to have many sit down dinners. So it is regretful that instead of spending the remainder of the evening with full stomachs and pleasant memories, we have heavy hearts and deeply regret visiting your establishment. I truly hope that this is addressed so no one else is left with...

I haven't been here in years, since they were at Baywalk. I always loved the place, so i was excited to get back. My expectations are high, so i might be unfairly judging the restaurant with 4 stars. It certainly wasn't a bad experience.

The service was fair, we sat in a booth in the bar area, the server was new, so that played into it i'm sure. We got what we ordered, and while he was a bit inattentive at times, we were never abandoned. He didn't seem to know much about the menu, but would go to find out things of we pushed him.

We had the beef carpaccio for an appetizer, add it used to be the best i'd ever had. Flavors were still good, though the portion is smaller and it's essentially over garnished. If you don't push half of the arugula off of it you have no chance at tasting the beef. But all in all it was good.

I ordered the Pappardelle Giuliana. This dish split my opinions... -It's supposed to have pappardelle pasta. What i recieved was much closer to linguini, it wasn't even wide ot flat enough to call fettuccine. On the upside, it was perfectly cooked al dente, to the extent that you could've used it in a class as an example of what that actually means. When we got home i googled the dish, their Facebook page has a picture, and that is definitely not the pasta i recieved. The scallops were supposed to be seared. They had no color ot caramelization, nor any discernable seasoning. They actually looked like they'd been streamed. I had to grab a salt shaker, which is rare for me, my wife even said something, lol. Again, on the upside, they were perfectly cooked in regards to temperature. Just cooked enough to not be spongy, but still moist and full of flavor and texture. -The sauce was described as a roasted red pepper and garlic madeira sauce. I love Madeira wine, to drink and to cook with. I didn't taste even a trace of that flavor. Maybe they take the cheap route and use the Taylor style New York "Madeiras", in which case in glad my wife avoided the Marsala, lol. And really not much garlic. It would better just be described as a red pepper cream sauce. Again, on the upside, the sauce was delicious, plenty of the advertised veggies, & the 9 perfect amount of sauce to coat everything without being soupy. -Overall the dish was delicious, so i didn't want to complain. It just wasn't what i wanted. i was expecting seasoned, seared scallops with at least a touch of a caramelized crust with a Madeira flavored sauce, and i got nothing even resembling that.

My wife got the half duck, which was delicious. A little sweet for my taste, but was exactly as described. It wasn't very Italian, lol, so they dropped this completely out of place but of polenta on the corner of the plate.

All in all, good food. They just need to work on describing their dishes correctly, or communicating to the customer of they're out of specific ingredients (i.e. pappardelle, Madeira, etc) Maybe that comes back to sitting in the bar area with a new server. He was to nervous to tell me they didn't have a pan capable of getting hot enough to sear a scallop and were out of...