Sette Osteria — Restaurant in Washington

My family and I went to to this restaurant because it was described as vegetarian friendly, but I would be very cautious if you have any allergies, are vegetarian/vegan, or have any dietary restrictions of any kind.

When we first went in, we saw guests around us being served regular bread, the kind that you would expect from an Italian restaurant, but when the waiter brought the bread to our table, it was pita bread. We also noticed that one of us was missing his plate, while two of us were missing our utensils. Not a big deal, we just had to ask for them. The real problem arose when we ordered our dishes, which we had specifically asked and made sure were vegetarian.

While my mother and sister went to the bathroom. The waiter brought us our first dish, eggplant Parmesan that my father had ordered. He and I started picking at the dish, dipping our bread in the sauce, when our waiter came over, looked at the dish for a moment and left. He came back moments later, saying he initially wasn't sure if he had mixed up our dish with a beef lasagna, but said he had checked and that we did indeed have our vegetarian dish that we had ordered. At this point, we became suspicious, as it did taste a little off, and decided to check the dish ourselves. Sure enough, underneath the top layer of pasta was unmistakably ground beef.

We called over the waiter, and he exchanged our dish. I'm a vegetarian largely because of my religious beliefs and this sickened me. I excused myself to the bathroom to wash my mouth, and found myself throwing up into the sink. I cleaned up, and went back to our table, where my mom and sister had returned. At this point I had no desire to stay in the restaurant, but I stayed because we were there to celebrate my mom and sister's birthdays. My dad and I explain the situation to them, and this lady, I'm unsure of who she was, possibly the head waiter, came over to the table, and my mom explained the severity of the situation. She apologized and offered to compensate the eggplant Parmesan. When I explained that the waiter had doubled down on his mistake, she offered to give us a free dessert.

Later on, when we were eating our meal, which we had now triple checked each dish to make sure there was no meat in them (ruining my calzone, but I didn't really care at that point), the manager comes over to our table and asks if we were enjoying our night. It seems like a slightly insensitive question to ask; surely he would have been informed about our situation? It turns out he had no idea what had happened, and we explained what had happened, and when we explained the part where the waiter had doubled down on his mistake, and how we were being comped the one dish along with a dessert, he told us that we would not have to pay for any of our meal, and would give us two desserts.

We continued with our meal, and at one point my sister brought up this coupon for a free dessert to our waiter, he started to complain, saying we were already getting two free desserts, so we put the coupon away. When dessert arrived, we found ourselves with the two free desserts, along with the dessert from the coupon, which was a pleasant surprise.

After our meal, the waiter came along and gave us the bill, where we were charged for three meals (mine, my mom's, and my sisters, but not my father's eggplant). We sat there confused for a few moments, because while we didn't mind paying the bill, we were told it would be comped as part of the apology for serving us meat. The manager came by, grabbed the bill, and told us not to worry about it, which led me to continue to believe there was still no communication between the waiters and the manager.

So overall, I'm upset, because we could have easily had a very good experience. It was not the waiters mistake that made our experience bad, it was his intentional decision to double down on his mistake that made it bad, along with his dismissive attitude the rest of the night. The manager's attitude and kindness is what leads me to give a mediocre review, as he made a bad night into...

Came in here for a nice dinner date, we decided to sit at the bar to enjoy happy hour items as well as regular menu items. Overall, the experience was just okay. The restaurant is nice and open. The bartender took care of us and accommodated all of our requests. There is a certain classiness to the ambience here that makes you feel like you can expect good food & service. Unfortunately, the food was the weakest part of our evening.

We tried the calamari off the happy hour menu first, which was just average. Not much seasoning into the breading or marinara sauce. It was a nice snack but not something I would crave again.

We then tried the mussels and ended up sending them back because they just weren’t something we felt like filling up on. I’m not one to waste food or send dishes back but the mussels came in such a large portion with very little to desire for. Not much flavor to them and the quality didn’t taste as fresh as they could’ve.

After that we gave 2 more happy hour items a chance, the burger sliders and the tuna tartare. Seafood is clearly not a strong suit at this restaurant, as the tuna tartare came out in a darker ruby reddish color (we thought it was from being seasoned) but still tasted bland overall. There was an odd under-toned taste to it that made it feel like it barely passed for being edible. We didn’t send it back this time as to not come across as annoying pretentious guests, but we ate less than half of it before we just let it sit there.

The sliders were probably the best thing I had in general that night, but you can have higher quality burgers in other places in the city. Had we’d known how the rest of our food was going to taste, we most likely would’ve cut the night right there afterwards to end it on somewhat of a high note.

Instead, we decided to try some pasta off the regular menu. We got the caccio e pepe & the beef bolognese thinking these would be the highlights of the evening to make up for the mostly mediocre food we had before. Sadly these also fell flat. Just very bland food overall that felt like very little love was given into the preparation. We asked for parmesan cheese & red pepper flakes in an attempt to doctor it up ourselves a bit, which did end up helping but still felt like the best tasting ingredient in the pasta was the cheese itself (neither dishes were served with cheese as a garnish, which isn’t a critique but you would think the pasta would speak for itself enough if that’s the creative choice the chefs decided to make for these dishes)

With all this being said, I definitely want to commend the bartender for being attentive with our requests. We began to feel bad for not enjoying most of what we were served and didn’t want him to think we faulted him in anyway, so we still ended up leaving a 20% tip for taking care of us.

I will also say I work in the restaurant industry myself and also have a passion for cooking so my expectations are a bit higher whenever I dine out. For the price, it’s not terrible food but it’s probably not something you’d recommend to others. You can get full on a decent budget here. The portions were generous as well. But I will probably not return here if I had to choose. I would advise the chefs to take a closer look at their menu and fine tune their flavors a bit more as I could taste where they cut corners on most...

This restaurant ruined my birthday and was the absolute worst experience I've ever had with a restaurant. But it could have been prevented with a single phone call from them. I made a reservation for 8 people 3 weeks in advance and included that it was my birthday in the notes. I got a confirmation of my reservation the day before and everything. We all arrived at the restaurant and were shocked to find that the restaurant was completely closed. I received absolutely no notice that my reservation was cancelled or that they would be closed. I tried to call and the voicemail didn't say anything about the unscheduled closure, there was nothing on the website, not Instagram not Facebook, there was absolutely no way for me to know this before I arrived with my 7 guests who had all travelled up to 2hrs to celebrate with me. You would think that if the management had a full day of notice before my reservation time for 8 people they might take a second to call me to let me know that they had an unplanned closure. You would think that a manager or someone might be at the restaurant to at least greet guests and apologize to them. We parked in the garage that was supposed to be validated and ended up having to pay $20 even though we couldn't even eat there. On my birthday I was left to attempt to find a restaurant anywhere nearby that could seat 8 with no notice....the only place was a restaurant where I was allergic to everything on the menu. This is an absolutely unacceptable way to manage a restaurant I can only imagine how bad the service must be if you actually make it...