Italia Trattoria — Restaurant in Spokane

After dining here several times, we will not be returning after our date night last night was ruined.

Although the food is always great, it is not worth the humiliating service we had last night. We were seated by the hostess and brought water, but our waitress took very long to greet us and take our order. In fact, she greeted two parties before us when they were seated after us.

I did not have my ID on me but didn't think much of it since I am 31 years old and have dined here several times without ever being carded. The waitress carded us when we ordered our wine and refused to serve me even though I am 10 years over the drinking age, I showed her a picture of my ID, and my partner provided his ID showing that he is also 31.

The food took too long to come out and the waitress asked if we wanted more focaccia bread, to which we said yes, but she never brought it to our table.

To add insult to injury, the waitress brought out our check and when she came back to take the card, she said she was so sorry but forgot to add my partner's last glass of wine and gave us a new check. That should have NEVER happened. Anyone in the restaurant industry knows that is so extremely uncouth and bad customer service. We have dined at Michelin Star restaurants and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and this would not have happened at either. Many places have forgotten to add an item to our check and every single time they let us know, "Hey, I'm sorry we forgot to add _ to the check, so that's on us tonight."

You absolutely do not reject someone's payment of a $100+ check and bring them a replacement check to add a $10 glass of wine because YOU made a mistake. It was absolutely shocking and offensive. Good customer service would be to eat the cost, especially after embarrassing me by refusing to serve me wine while serving my partner.

The table next to us was whispering and smirking at us after these humiliating interactions with our waitress. She made us feel so uncomfortable. I don't know if we were victims of racial discrimination/bias or it was just bad service, but either way the experience was so off-putting that we have no...

I came in with my girlfriend for her birthday and her parents who traveled up here from Florida. Called and made a reservation. Got seated and took a good 15 minutes before anyone came over to us. And when they did we had a long dark haired ponytail waitress who was extremely rude right off the bat. My girlfriend had a question about their spaghetti and meatballs since their menu says all pasta is made in house, but the spaghetti isn’t, so she asked if she could have it substituted, and the waitress gave a very snarky answer. So my girlfriend decided to just split my fish of the day of which we didn’t want to pay the $3 charge just to have it put on two plates, and she rolled her eyes took our menus and walked away. She comes back five minutes later and proceeded to remove all of the bread plates we already had on the table and put my silverware directly on the table. Of which my girlfriends mother who works in the health industry said that’s not ok and asked her to bring me new silverware since she placed it directly on a table, since I had my napkin in my lap. She then comes back with major attitude and sets a new silverware in front of me very aggressively and brought us out bread plates again. Like you took our plates away and then gave us them back a few minutes later? This undoubtedly made my girlfriend, her parents, and myself very uncomfortable to the point we decided to just leave after we had already ordered. We left with my girlfriend crying on her birthday thanks to their waitress who clearly had a stick up her you know what. We have been here once before but we will never be back after this experience. We left and went to sorella and instantly had a better experience with a much kinder waiter. That long dark haired ponytail waitress should not be working in service if such a minimal question ruined her day that much she treats her customers like crap. Did we not order enough food or drinks for you lady so we weren’t worth you time since our tip wouldn’t be high enough? Now you get nothing and will never get anything, WE WILL NEVER BE BACK! THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY GIRLFRIEND CRY ON HER...

We had tried Italia Trattoria's takeout options during the height of the pandemic, but last night was our first time dining in. Overall, it was a pleasant dining experience.

Service was kind and attentive during our meal (5/5 stars). The atmosphere could use some reworking (3/5 stars). Namely, the tables are a bit small and far too close together. That made it hard for us to feel like we were on a date.

For food and beverage, I think Italia is currently operating at a 3.5/4 stars. We'll definitely skip the cocktails next time, they were quite overpriced for the quality and balance of flavors. The appetizers are where we think Italia Trattoria shines. The ricotta & spinach dumplings and agnolotti del plin are excellent. We'd recommend dunking the house bread in the brown butter sauce that both of these apps leave at the bottom of their dishes. The white salad is so perfectly balanced and provides some bright notes to cleanse the palate of the richness from the dumplings and agnolotti.

Our mains were good, but not as good as previous take out meals we'd had from Italia and we felt were overpriced for the quality. The sauce on the wild boar dish was quite nice, but I was not as impressed with the cavatelli pasta as in previous years. It did not taste as robust or homemade as I'd recalled. The tiramisu is nice, but not well balanced. Specifically, I felt there was a disproportionate amount of mascarpone/cream layer relative to ladyfingers. The flavor profile and portion were good.

At the end of the night, our bill for 2 was about $175, which stung a bit for the quality of the meal. I do appreciate, though, that Italia seems to care deeply about ensuring their staff are fairly...