Il Terrazzo Carmine — Restaurant in Seattle

We graced this establishment with our presence for my dad's birthday, and he's generally fairly morose and melodramatic on his birthday so the fact that he had a great time says a lot. We arrived to a nice warm welcome, the interior is very beautiful which you can't tell at all from my extremely high quality photographs but just take my word for it.

We started off with some classics, caesar salad and beets, and as someone who's had dare I say too many beet salads in their life I can attest to the fact that in the muddled sea of beet salads this one stands out as one of notably good quality. Then the mushroom with Polenta arrived and knocked everything out of the park. This is why we have restaurants people, this is why we love them, because they can do this. It was just a perfect thing. Just thinking of it now brings a tear to my eye, and when I remember the blue crab risotto I'm brought to my knees. It was a nightly special I shared with my sister and now she and I have been forever blessed by the wonder that was this risotto, probably we're fluent in all languages now and have the power to fly because this dish was some kind of magic, real top of the reef quality in sharktale terms.

My dad had some seafood pasta and he was all warm and happy about it, which for a man who's obsessed with clam quality and 'al dente' the way he is, is basically a michelin level rave. We had cake at home so we passed on dessert (which was not easy. Let me tell you. They have them all on this display tray and they all were like comical levels of beautiful) but! We were gifted a birthday tiramisu which is a top ten dessert in my fathers books and you can see he's all lit up about it. I like tiramisu when it packs a real punch and this one didn't let me down. A delightful experience, we had all had a wonderful time. Head on over people, get the Polenta, get the specials,...

I didn’t hate this place, but I didn’t love it. I was in town on a work trip from NYC and my colleague was in from LA. We got reservations the same day on a Thursday, but it was at 5:30 PM. Once we arrived we asked if we could change the reservation to sit outside since there were only 2-3 occupied tables. They accommodated us and just said the next table would be in at 7…so we were mindful of our time.

We didn’t get drinks, but we did order the eggplant Parmesan to share, and I ordered a risotto which I asked them if they could make vegetarian. They were super accommodating and they made one with asparagus, peas, spinach, mushrooms. My colleague ordered the lamb.

Food arrived in a timely fashion and looked delicious. The eggplant parmesean was nice and rich. The mozzarella was excellent. Flavor was on point. For my risotto, I found the flavor was underwhelming. I really appreciated the vegetarian risotto though. My colleague said the sauce on the lamb was intense and too much and threw off the balance of the dish. He said a light glaze would have been better.

Then there was a long pause between taking our plates and asking if we wanted desserts. I feel bad for our server because the entire outside got packed and he was doing his best. We wanted to really be out by 7 and by the time he came around, it was close to 7. We got our check and left.

The ambiance is nice both inside and outside.

I don’t know if it’s because I lived with someone from northern Italy for 5 years that also owned an Italian restaurant, and made an amazing risotto, but I found the flavor overall bland.

I don’t think I personally would return because the menu only had a few options for vegetarians. The other dishes did look...

I'll lead with my biggest gripe, which was their false advertising/scam regarding parking "validation." On their website they claim "Complementary (4) hour valet parking (with validation/while dining)." BUT NO THEY DON'T! We spent over $125 for two people for lunch (one glass of wine, two entrees) - they "validated" our parking ticket, but when we went to leave the garage were required to pay $15 (for less than two hours) -- on the screen was a line item for "Validation discount -- $1.98." LITERALLY LESS THAN TWO BUCKS - -and you're paying $15 if you want to get out. If a dollar and ninety - eight cents is all you can contribute, how about just NOT lying that you validate, and instead lowering the price of a glass of wine from $20 to $18.02, and save us all the trouble and bad feelings afterwards. It felt really, really greasy for a "nice" "high service" (and expensive) restaurant.

Other than that huge disappointment, it's interesting. Waiter was professional, food was fine (but for $34 I'd expect a bit more "WOW" and less "meh" for the lunch-sized dollop of risotto). Signage (or lack thereof) makes it feel like mystery - they're tucked in the back of the lobby behind a well-signed Winery (which at first seems to occupy the whole space). Just one 18" by 12" sign about 10 feet up on a column outside to betray its location (and no street number on the building if you're looking for that). Pretty cool old-money vibe inside, beautiful rich older people drinking old fashioneds with lunch. I won't go back because it's way too far to walk, and I'm going to be salty forever about the $15 they scammed me out of, but if you're within walking distance and don't expect too much bang for a lot of bucks,...