Elian Eduardo D.
Yelp
The Summary:
Oh, we start the Yelp Year really really bad... I've been quite a few times over the years to the Coral Gables Graziano's (both the supermarket and the restaurant), and I remember once the Graziano's pizzería no longer around Bird Road. None of them has never disappointed. This one, though, striked out on the first visit. Warm beer and cold food, are the highlights.
The Experience
My aunt and her husband are on vacation around Weston, so my mom and I took them to lunch. I know Graziano's here in Miami, and I've always loved it, so it seemed like a slam dunk to take them there for a meal.
The restaurant/market was very busy and loud, but the initial service was fast and attentive: we went to the cashier, ordered our stuff, paid (yeah: check, taxes, and gratuity), got the table "gps thing" and our drinks and went on to find our own table.
The ambiance of the restaurant is nice. Loud, but nice. So far, so good...
Then we sat down and took a sip of the drinks: two beers, both warm... one coke in can, also warm. bottle of water? You guessed it! You can put ice on the water and on a coke, though... not the beer.
As I said, the restaurant was busy, so we did expect the food to take a little while, but at least try to bring most of it together, right?
To be clear, the waiter did all he could to do a good job, this is not a diss on the service. There's only so much he can do if the orders aren't ready.
My aunt and her husband had ordered a Parrillada De Carnes Y Achuras with a side of fries, and then an additional salad; my mother ordered a lasagna, and I ordered a milanesa.
The first thing the waiter brings is the grill without the fries, and the salad... the salad was good but the grill was cold.
Now, a reminder: we do not send back perfectly good food on principle. There is enough waste of food in the world to be throwing away a perfectly good meat plate only because it's cold... Plus, the flavor was good, but chinchurria, chorizo and blood sausage cold? also... with the time it's taking to bring everything, we were sort of afraid to ask them to heat it up (plus: who goes to a restaurant to order reheated dishes?)
For those taking note: we were still missing 1) the side of fries that were ordered with the grill, and 2) the rest of the food orders.
The red-sauce lasagna arrived fairly shortly after, it was not exactly cold, but not hot either. The sauce was a perfectly good sauce, a bit acidic for my personal taste, but that's ok... the cooking of the lasagna, though... I would have sent it back (but my mother is even more strict with the "no food wasting"): the pasta was undercooked, even though the top was overtoasted (it wasn't burnt, but close).
After a while with no news, I approached the waiter and told him we were still waiting for the milanesa with mashed potatoes and mistakenly said we were still missing another side of mashed potatoes (my mistake: we were missing my aunt's fries).
A while later, I finally get my milanesa with mashed potatoes...
Cold, cold milanesa with really really hot mashed potatoes. And the flavor was good, but if you've ever seen a milanesa in an Argentinean restaurant and look at the attached picture of my milanesa, you'll notice these look more like big beef nuggets than like a proper Argentinian restaurant milanesa... however, flavor and texture were good, regardless of temperature.
Do you want to know how good the service was?
Well, in that very same trip to the tablee, the waiter also brought the side-dish of mashed potatoes I mistakenly asked for instead of the fries. My aunt, who'd been waiting for her fries all this time, went halfway-Karen. She didn't go full-explosive, but it was definitely not the way to address a waiter doing his job. The guy handled the situation perfectly, took back the untouched mashed potatoes he had barely placed on the table, apologized (even though I made clear I had made the mistake, not him), and went to, presumably, get the fries. it's a pity I didn't get his name, because that way of keeping it professional should be acknowledged.
We finished our meal... no fries in sight. So my aunt, still on a bit of a Karen mode went to the cashier to ask them to put the fries to go... I don't now if she asked to see the manager OR if she was just lucky to be overheard by her, but my aunt came back with her to-go fries box and just seconds behind her came the manager, Vicky, who was very kind and apologized profusely (which had apparently also done previously to my aunt back at the register). She made it clear that if at any point anything goes wrong she would have made sure it's fixed; she offered my aunt another grill, since the original one was cold; but my aunt said she had already eaten so, thanks, but no, thanks, so Vicky offered few empanadas-to take home.
In all, the staff is good, but the warm beer, the cold food and, yes, the delay in getting the rest of the order spoiled the experience a lot.