Cantinetta — Restaurant in Seattle

Pretentious wait staff, flaky management, tiny portions, overpriced, and sub-par Italian food. I dined here with 7 girlfriends who are all new moms over a month ago. This was a very special outing for us because it was the first time we had a girls night to ourselves without our babies since they were born, and we made a careful selection when we landed on Cantinetta, as we had many other options on where to take our business. I mentioned this to the hostess when I made our reservation and in the email to reserve our table. When we were sat and our server came out, she didn't even introduce herself, didn't say any congratulations, nothing. We didn't feel welcomed at all. She also failed to mention that an automatic gratuity would be added to our party's bill, and none of us saw this mentioned on the menu, so we were put off when we saw an automatic 20% added to the bill at the end of the night for cold, lackluster service with zero effort. At one point we asked our server if she could please take a photo of us, and she said yes and proceeded to just walk away. We had to ask the bus boy to take it, and he was much friendlier than the server.

I am not normally one to leave a one-star review, so I first contacted management via email to let them know about our experience. Katie responded and apologized and offered to mail me a gift certificate to give them another try. That was one month ago and I still have not received anything in the mail. I followed up several days ago and still have not heard anything. I was really hoping to give them another chance, but this restaurant is not worth it. It just shows that they don't care about their patrons or upholding any level of acceptable service. Add it to the list of pretentious overpriced Seattle restaurants. Take your business somewhere else - perhaps a restaurant owned and run by an actual Italian - the service will be much nicer and the food...

Note: I came for seattle restaurant week so my experience might be skewed. That said though the special menu was barely discounted.

Overall we were fairly disappointed. While nothing was bad, the experience was pretty disappointing for the price.

First of all all the portions were tiny. This is fine if the food is very memorable but sadly none of the food was.

For appetizers we had the Burrata and the Roasted Beets. The burratta was fairly underwhelming while the roasted beets had the opposite effect. The roasted beets had too much salt and too big of peppercorns. This made the dish taste very uneven with bites randomly turning very overwhelming.

For the main course we had the Risotto and the Pappardelle alla Bolagnese. The Risotto was maybe the best dish we had, having a nice balance with the truffles. The Pappardelle had very nice home made pasta, however it was mixed with a sauce that frankly tasted very cheap. The majority of the taste in the sauce came from salt, lacking almost any depth.

For desserts we had the Tiramisu and the Vanilla Affogatto dessert. The Affogatto dessert was fairly good with the ice cream mixing fairly well with the espresso shot. The tiramisu was again underwhelming though with nothing special about it.

The atmosphere itself was ok but very crowded. It was a very very loud space without any feel for privacy. It didn't help that we were sat on a corner table where both of us were facing out at the other tables.

The very attentive and kind staff was the most redeeming part of the experience. While nothing was explicitly bad, there are much more enticing options around seattle for this...

Good Italian food, incredible vibe. It's built into what used to be a residential house so it's very homey and welcoming. The little touches of decor and excellent lighting make this a perfect spot for a date or reunion with good friends. Now, onto the food.

I was a little bit disappointed by the focaccia. I'm not sure if I just got a bad batch, but the texture was just not what you'd expect from a focaccia—lacking any real chew or crunch, this was more like a cornbread or a pound cake. It still tasted good, but I wouldn't order it again.

The burrata is nice, though it mostly feels like a collection of ingredients on a plate rather than a thoughtfully prepared dish. The chef could do a little more to elevate it and bring it all together.

Both of my mains were excellent. The pappardelle alla bolognese has perfect house-made pasta and rich, meaty sauce. That one is not to be missed. The filetto di manzo (beef filet) was cooked perfectly rare, as I requested. The hearty polenta has an incredible texture and the mushroom shavings give a huge umami boost, all making for a simply great bite.

I also tried a selection of desserts, some dining in and some to go. The zeppole was easily the highlight and should not be missed. It's enough to split for 2 (though you may want a whole one to yourself after the first bite). The other desserts were decent, but nowhere near as good as the zeppole.

Overall, there are a few small aspects that could use improvement, but I really enjoyed sitting in that lovely space, visiting with the friendly staff, and having a few...