Tazza Kitchen Short Pump — Restaurant in Short Pump

I'll start by saying that this was our first visit and I was really looking forward to the meal. On the whole it is a great place with an interesting menu, but I simply could not get past some annoyances. So here we go:

We were seated outside at a wood-top cafe table. It was surprisingly quiet and a welcome escape from the noise of the dinner crowd inside (being crowded on a Friday night is a good thing, I know). But we could speak without yelling and it made our dinner conversation a real pleasure. Our server was attentive and cheerful, and a carafe of water arrived quickly.

We shared the brisket tacos (with simple salad) as an appetizer. We had the crab cakes and shrimp with polenta as our meals.

Out of necessity we ordered the brisket tacos with one of the toppings "on the side". Our server went out of her way to be clear about the change, but the tacos still arrived wrong. This was corrected quickly and the tacos were spectacular! The flavors of the beef and crema were amazing together. And having that yummy, smokey hot sauce on the side allowed us to control the heat. So good.

The salad itself was a great addition with leaf lettuce, frizzled onions and a simple vinaigrette. But the roasted cherry tomatoes were off putting. They were refrigerator temp and had no flavor, so they were cold, squishy tomato balls on a plate. I had the same tomatoes with the shrimp dish and being warmed by the broth made all the difference. They were a delicious addition to that dish. The roasted flavor came through nicely and the tomato water disappeared into the broth as they were cut.

The shrimp with polenta looked so good. The polenta wedges were nicely fried and the broth was delicious. And you already know my feelings about those yummy tomatoes. There were quite a few shrimp and they were nice sized. But the shrimp were soooo overcooked and tough. And one of them had a large piece of shell! Ugh. If it was served as a shell-on dish, fine. But they were clearly peeled shrimp. What a big let down. So many tough shrimp to chew through. And I was guarded, waiting for another piece of shell to be there.

The crab cakes were clearly a combination of lump and claw meat. They were nice sized and had good flavor. But there were so many small pieces of shell throughout the dish. We know that it is difficult to get every piece of shell out of crab meat, but this was ridiculous. This took away from the enjoyment of the meal, with every bite focusing on feeling for shell. Better attention needs to be paid to preparing the crab meat.

On the whole, I really do look forward to returning. The atmosphere and staff were both fine. The menu was interesting and the food was nicely presented. My issue with the cold tomatoes was just that, my issue. But the preparation of the shrimp and crab really needs work. Hopefully they will do a better...

2 friends and I came here for a late lunch. We loved our table on the side of the restaurant next to the wood-burning fireplace. Our server was good at the beginning of our visit. The food descriptions sounded wonderful, but the execution delivered just average-tasting food. Not bad, but just average. One example is the side of roasted beets I ordered which was described as having spicy peanut salsa and black pepper honey. I could not taste these flavors at all. My friends tasted them and also thought they were fine but didn't taste different than other roasted beets. The margaherita pizza my friend ordered had very sparse cheese and very sparse sauce on it. Large areas of plain crust were visible on the top of the pizza where you would expect to see mostly sauce and cheese. She did ask for more cheese and sauce on the side and with some delay, more was brought to her. My other friend ordered Baja bowl with carnitas and thought it was on par with other bowls she has had although the tomatillo sauce was sparse. I had an order of the cast iron goat cheese which was excellent. One kind of weird thing that happened: we had come into the restaurant after 2 in the afternoon and planned on a leisurely lunch. We didn't realize that the brunch hours end at 2:30 and the dinner hour starts back up at 4:30. Around 3 o'clock we noticed that our area was now empty except for our table, but we had been the last party seated in that area so we didn't think a lot of it. At around 3:15 I went to restroom and walking through the rest of the palce, I saw that we were the only customers remaining. We quickly left. It would have been nice if when we were seated already after 2 pm the hostess or server had told us that they would be closing soon. We probalby would have stayed, but would have adjusted our expectations and adjusted our food...

I wouldn't have written this, but when my shy soft spoken wife, who doesn't complain about anything (yes, I'm a lucky guy) speaks up about, it's bad. The food was good but our waitress was not. We arrived 10 minutes before they opened, but they let us in. The gentleman at the hosts desk is a great host (guessing he saw we had a baby and a 3 year old and was gracious enough to let us in). We were the first group to arrive, they set up and sat us down, but for 20+ minutes, we didn't have any menu's nor were we greeted by the waitress until we started looking around. We finally got the menus, and she was great at explaining everything but was never even offered anything to drink and we drank water for the whole meal thinking that it was a normal thing here. After we received and ate the food is where it really was unpleasant. We sat there for a long time after we were done waiting for her to return. Never checked on us when we got the food nor really paid attention to us until she saw an empty plate and just took it without a word. I mean we were already done when she took the plate, but we waited another 15 to 20 minutes and I had to ask another waiter to get the check. So when we finally got it, she stood there behind me, waiting for us to give her the payment and that's the most attention she gave us the entire time. Felt like we weren't worth her time or maybe she thought we were poor tippers...or maybe she was just busy. However, being the first group there, I don't think it's the latter. Anyway, I hope that if you do go there, you will have a better experience than...