Bombo Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in Seattle

Update to my review- 2/16/2025

"This was my fifth time dining here, and unfortunately, only two of those experiences have been great. Scroll all the way down to see my excitement from my 1st dining experience. ..

Yesterday, we dined before Hamilton, and the other four times were after a show. The restaurant knows it will be busy before a performance, yet the service didn’t reflect that preparedness.

Our reservation was at 5:15 for a 7:00 PM show—literally across the street. Our waitress was inattentive, and we had to flag her down just to place drink orders. She then disappeared, and we ended up having to send a friend to the bar to order appetizers, which actually arrived before our drinks.

When the drinks finally came, my friend’s wine was incorrect—not once, but twice. Throughout all of this, I kept trying to get our server’s attention, and when I finally did, her attitude was dismissive and unprofessional. She clearly didn’t care.

Thankfully, a male staff member stepped in to help—twice. When I asked if he was the manager, he confirmed that he was. It was obvious that he understood the service was falling short, and he genuinely tried to fix the situation.

My experiences dining here after a show have been better but still slow. Ethan Stowell seems to be expanding too quickly, and the service is suffering—at this point, it’s on par with JCPenney’s customer service. After what was possibly my worst dining experience at Ballard Pizza Kitchen in Woodinville, I hoped for better here.

Ethan, your saving grace last night was your fantastic manager, who truly worked to salvage the experience. But please, let go of the waitress with the half-shaved head—she clearly doesn’t care about her job."

1st review below- I am born raised and worked downtown for many years. Although I am grateful, I live away from the city now. I was shocked to find it difficult to find a spot to eat dinner AFTER a show in Seattle. We came across BOMBO, which ironically, we'd eaten at Ballard Pizza Co in Woodinville a month prior and had 1 of our worst dining experiences EVER. We have always loved Ethans formula in cooking but thought maybe he's growing way to fast and can't keep up with the high standards, we were used to. If there were other options that I could eat at, after dining at his Woodinville spot, I would have gone anywhere else. Luckily for his wallet, there wasn't on OpenTable. Immediately, loved the place with the open NANO doors and the decor, LOVE that it's across the street from the Paramount which will be HUGELY beneficial to us in the future. Our waiter was fabulous, although he kept apologizing. I ordered the mushroom pizza, and he was so great about telling us it was rich. I NEVER say pizza or desserts are rich, so I thought no biggie. He was spot on! However, I loved it, and my hub and I both agreed it was the best mushroom pizza we have ever had. Although, very freaking rich! Our salad was great too, we didn't check out the wine list as we had already indulged. All in all, 150% different then Ballard Pizza Co in Woodinville and we will definitely be back when we see multiple upcoming comedy shows at...

Buyer be ware avoid at all costs. Service is a joke. There is no one server we had 5 people helping and every time they had to ask where we were in our process. 4 times we were asked if we ordered yet. We ordered 2 pizza and a salad. After we were almost done with the pizza I had to run down any one I could find to cancel the order. They did not cut the pizza they gave us sizzors. My wife just got out of surgery and was embarrassed she could not cut her own peice. We asked the manager for a box for the pizza and the bill. We got the box and after 10 minutes I had to go find some one to pay our tab. My tab needed a review, remember we canceled the salad. She just ran my card and told me I would get a detail after I paid. By the way both pizza were burt and the quality of toppings were low grade and there was barly anything on it. Mostly burnt crust. We had a show to go to so we just worked around the burnt parts. Coffee drinks were served cold. I asked for the cider and they said they were changing the keg. Then came back and said they had no back stock. Drinks were ridiculously priced high and horrible. I went to complain while they figured out how to get me a detail. The same manager that failed to get us the bill lied to us. He only talked to us at the end. When I questioned the 20- 25% gratuity that was added with out my permission told me he told us about that. He lied to my face and he did not tell us that ever. He only talked to us at the end and was the 5th server to help us. 1,2,3,4 never said a word and most places I go to stopped doing the automatic tip a while ago. So the worst service in seattle and mandatory tip on over priced burnt low quality food and drinks. Never go to this place ever. You will get better service and higher quality product at McDonald's! No mater what they say in response will not make up for this and I assume any excuse or explanation will be lies. Because they lied to...

We were seated for our reservation at 6pm. It is 721pm as I write this and only 1 out of 8 of us have food and she has been eating alone for 10 minutes. It took 20 minutes to get our first drink, 40 minutes to get our second. No one bussed our table.

At first the manager said we were the ones who were socializing instead of placing our order and there is no need to rush to wait in line at the Paramount. Customer service is dead apparently at this establishment. He also said with larger groups (we had 8 women) we should have been informed by our server that meals should be ordered “family style”. I’ve been to plenty of Italian restaurants that are known for family style. Bombo’s servings are not big enough to share unless you are sharing with one other person because you can’t or don’t want to eat an entire meal. Nothing we ordered was shareable by a table of 3 or more. They served a pizza we ordered with a pair of scissors that were very used looking and fell apart, half fell in one of the ladies lap, kind of dangerous. If you’re going to make it cool to cut your own pizza, give patrons nice scissors or a pizza slicer.

Thankfully he turned it around somewhat and didn’t charge us for anything. At that point we still didn’t have two of our meals and 2 people who ordered the crab pasta couldn’t stomach the smell or taste as it was very fishy which usually indicates that the seafood is not fresh.

We ran to the Paramount, got stuck in a huge line to get in and to buy drinks and missed the first few minutes of the opening comedian.

Don’t come here unless you give yourselves 4...