- Location-701 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, Florida
- Cuisine-Italian
The Gagits return to this hot Pinecrest eatery of yesteryear 2002,to see if it is still the hot , new, innovative, and creative restaurant that it achieved at its opening in Pinecrest in its South Beach location.We visit the restaurant with the Racecardriver,10 minutes door to door, and the ex Oil Baroness,no more money with $50.a barrel oil. We enter this restaurant at 8:30pm Saturday night and see a basically empty restaurant , not a good sign . The owner greets us and leads us to our table and almost has to wake up the waiters to serve us. We are lucky to get Joe the server,see picture, all personality but no class as will be detailed later.
The guys start off with my favorite Gray Goose straight up, olives and stirred not shaken,in honor of the new James Bond movie.Foodiechic wants some red wine in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Argentina.I order a rare Dolium 2002 Malbec at $66.00 a real good buy.The wine is opened by Joe , needs time to breath but is right on to want to hasten our trip to Mendoza for more of the same.
We order starters from Joe after he repeats the many specials, no prices of course , this is not his style to really think we are the customer who is paying. The girls and Racecardriver order the home made mozzarella, tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, and arugula ,Caprese Sorrento, shown above . The mozzerella was beyond good for freshness and taste but a little expensive for Washington Street.$13.00.,no wonder no one else has entered the restaurant since we have entered. I have an appetizer with peppers and sausage , looks good but with a tasteless red sauce, see also above.
The mains now, the girls have the Veal Francesce, again looks good and shown, but the veal was tough and dry especially for $25.00, if it was good the price would have been reasonable. The Racecardriver had a creative special Pollo Saltinbucca, shown above and looking a lot better than the dry chicken that was served. I was really afraid to order anything special here after seeing the empty restaurant but the appetizer meatball interested me ,with Ricotta, a la Marterano ,lol.I order it on a bed of Pasta with Bolonegse sauce. This is the dish that not only looked bad,see picture, but tasted even worse, the meatball dry,the sauce flavorless, and the pasta overcooked, a perfect zero.
We must try a dessert to complete the review,apple tartin with vanilla ice cream, shown above and not bad , I wonder where they got the dessert. Joe, has no problem now bring the check $362.oo including a 20 % service charge and a line on the charge for a tip,what did Joe do to deserve more than 20 %? As we lined out the tip line and totaled the check and started our walk out the door onto Washington, Joe and a waiter friend came out to thank us scarcasticaly of course for his tip.This is the first time Gagit has seen so little thanks for a 20 % tip.I guess since the restaurant was empty ,he wanted us to support what he would have earned that night,if the restaurant was full.
Let the Truth be Told, this is not the Grazie of Pinecrest. This is the Grazie of SouthBeach, were high prices, poor food, and bad service will insure that Grazie will not be in business next season.See you in another restaurant Joe, and try to get a 20% tip again.
[rating:1.0]for the wine