Ristorante Machiavelli — Restaurant in Seattle

I really want to give this place a high rating, but I just can't. I'll start with some of the things not entirely in their control and end with things they can do better.

When I went, it was during Pax and Nintendo Live. It was probably packed beyond their usual expectations. Partly because of this, we ended up sitting at the bar section where we were next to the windows. It was nice to feel the breeze until people started smoking right next to the window. I have asthma, so that really was unpleasant. I did close the window and solve the issue, but it got very hot very fast. Either way, only partly or not much their fault, unless they enforce a no smoking outside doors policy.

Their service was fine, not great, but ok. My low rating comes from the experience I had, and the Pax/nintendo live crowd probably effected that strongly. That being said, it took a while to get seating and over 1 hour to get food after ordering. They also ran out of several menu items fairly early into the evening, including the prawns one of our group wanted to eat.

Ordering was also a pain at the bar because they had the bartender take all orders at the bar, while she was also tasked with making all the drinks for the restaurant. Because of that, it took 15 minutes to take the orders of a 2 person line. They also didnt know they were out of our prawns when we ordered because the bartender was pulling double duty and didn't have time to be informed by the kitchen.

Atmosphere was decent. A little loud, but I overall didnt have big issues with the atmosphere.

The food is where my biggest gripes comes in. The quality is pretty good, but the portion to cost ratio is nearly criminal. 14 dollars for 8 thin slices of cured meat as an appetizer and maybe 10 grams of cheese. 26 dollars for 9 raviolies. 19 bucks for a medium sized plate of carbonara that was made with bacon instead of Guancile, and the sauce for it was very thin.

Overall all it's hard to justify the cost for the slow service and the frankly insultingly low amount of food served. Like first mentioned, part of it is outside of their control. The biggest issue was entirely in their...

We were excited to try the newest restaurant in Edmonds. We live nearby and frequent the restaurants and bars weekly. My daughter went ahead to the restaurant at 4:55 to get a table and was told she could not be seated until our whole party arrived which happened 10 minutes later due to parking issues. The ambience for an Italian restaurant was not my liking. I expected dimmer lighting and perhaps some candlelight at each table. We ordered 2 glasses of wine, a chianti and sangeovese. Both arrived in small wine glasses filled to the brim which does not look like a 4 oz pour at $9. For appetizers we ordered the bresaola alla valtinelesse and tuna carpaccio. The bresaola was okay. The tuna carpaccio was good. For our entrées, we ordered the linguine alle vongole, fettuccine carbonara, handmade gnocchi al sugo, tortellini with bolognese sauce, and the sausage with Mama lil's chili pizza to share during our meal. The pizza was lightly brown at the edges, pale and soggy bottom and warm, not hot, served in a pasta bowl, not a plate. Our entrées were luke warm and the pasta plates were cold. The vongole description says "clams in marinara with plenty of garlic" and was told the clams in the vongole are chopped. However, what I got were very small clams and no garlic flavor or pieces in the thin tomato sauce. The sauce had no body to it and pooled at one end of the plate. The linguini was overcooked, not al dente. The carbonara was the worse tasted by our guest. The gnocchi were too soft, almost pasty and sauce was average. The bolognese sauce was salty. The serving size and price point ($19-21) were not congruent. We waited for our entrées for 45 minutes for which our server apologized for several times. With several staff helping serve our meal and drinks, we were not asked how our meal was. We were even served the wrong food at one point. Although we were still hungry and wanted dessert, we did not stay. Instead, we went to Epulo for drinks and dessert. Very disappointing experience in a community where we are used to receiving good food...

I would give the food a 10/10 I had the GF Alfredo and my partner had the carbonara. Both dishes were the highlight of our visit.

The customer service, however, was honestly a 0/10. First, we got there at 7:45 and were told it was about a 30 minute wait, no big deal! But, we were then told to “be back by 8:15” which made us feel like we couldn’t wait inside the restaurant and we needed to leave.(Their system is very antiquated and all they do is write your name on a paper.) So we walked 5 minutes down the street and got a drink and waited. We arrived back at 8:15 and were told we were second on the list of “twos” to be seated. We were also informed that since we left they just go down the list and give the table away. We would have stayed if the hostess didn’t make us feel like we had to leave and come back at the designated time. We assumed they had a better system to keep up with tables.

But fine, he said it would about 15-20 minutes. So we waited inside right in the bar area. We watched two people be sat and so at 8:30 my partner walked up and asked the hostess where we were on the list. The hostess proceeded to say he had called our name and we didn’t say anything. The place is TINY there is no chance that we didn’t hear him. So I walked up and politely said we had been sitting inside the whole time since we showed up at 8:15 so there was no way we missed being called. Then, another waitress/women walked up and said “we are not going to argue with you about this” I proceeded to try to explain to her the situation and she cut me off and said “if you continue to argue we will not serve you at all” I was appalled at how rude she was and the lack of any customer service. At that very moment a table happen to come available and they offered to seat us. If we hadn’t waited about an hour to eat, I would have walked out, because in no way were either of us rude to anyone and were treated so poorly.

I do not recommend this place because unfortunately the poor customer service outweighed the...