Grezzo

North End, Boston
Location

After recently returning from San Francisco, a city abundant with delicious, high end vegetarian food, we were excited to try a raw, vegan upscale restaurant in right here in Boston. Grezzo's website suggests an incredibly creative, healthy, gourmet experience complete with upscale ambiance. While this was true, the timing, price and food were not.

We wanted to start out our dining experience with a nice bottle of red wine, but after viewing the wine list and discovering that a bottle started at about $38, (the prices are not included on the website menu) we decided to have drinks instead. Our waitress suggested the Grezzo bloody mary, a "juiced garden vegetables drink with sake." It did not contain a lot of alcohol and was very watery and unsatisfying. The house special, sangria was ok but the fruit was not very fresh for a restaurant raw restaurant. After the bloody mary, David decided to order an expensive glass of organic red wine that also was not very good (at least we knew it would be alcoholic) and we shared it to save money. With drinks and wine priced from $10 to $15 and bottled beers at $8, we felt it the drinks were over priced knowing we could get the same beer elsewhere for $5.

For the meal, we ordered one 'Chef's Tasting' and additionally, one appetizer and entree. The two soups on the menu were included in the tasting. The first was a mushroom tea soup with baby portabella mushrooms, dulse (a kind of seaweed), and pineapple— it was watery, but the texture of the ingredients complemented one another-- not bad. The second soup was a curry melon soup— the touch of curry with the fruit tastes nice at first, but the flavor was too light and the soup had too much melon in the end. The soups were interesting, but we would not reorder them again.

The appetizers were the best part of the meal. One of the specials was a pepper trio stuffed with three types of "cheese." This particular dish was very good because of the unique flavor combinations and the crunchy texture balanced by the creamy "cheese". It was one of the highlights. The other two appetizers were also delicious, but mainly because they tasted like falafel. The sliders are a falafel like patty in between tomato slices and a few pickles served with 'pomme frites,' which were basically dehydrated potatoes that tasted like salty cardboard. The gnocci carbonara is described as dumplings but it is little falafel like balls with a decadent creamy parmesan like sauce with fresh peas and crispy eggplant— the sauce was so good that we pretty much licked the plate. In the end, we could have gone to Rami's in Brookline for falafel at a more reasonable price.

Next, we had the Seaweed salad, "kelp noodles, sea beans and nori with spicy Japanese horseradish vinaigrette. House pickled ginger, lotus root, and edamame. It was ok. It was good when you tasted one of the few pieces of thinly sliced raw garlic in a bite, but overall, the dish was bland and disappointing for such a flavorful description.

For entrees we tried the lobster mushroom fettuccine and the land and sea. The fettuccine was raw zucchini strips with crimini and lobster mushrooms served with a a creamy saffron flavored sauce. Overall, the dish was pretty bland and occasionally there was a bite with some stronger saffron flavor that was good. The land and Sea was three types of mushrooms, “ricotta” and more of the dulse that was in the mushroom soup and some kelp from Maine. Although this dish was more flavorful, it overpowered with mushrooms with “cheese". The olive oil combined with some pesto at the base of the plate was very delicious though and helped the give the dish more flavor.

Finally, for dessert, we decided to get something traditional— the Rich Brownie sundae-- a tiny chocolate brownie with chocolate chip gelato, chocolate truffle sauce, and brazil nut crumble. This was pretty good as It tasted similar to a chocolate macaroon with some dates ground into it. The house made gelato was simple, but it did not have a lot of flavor aside from the chocolate chips.

The service was good and attentive, but the timing of the kitchen was terrible. We had to wait thirty minutes between our appetizers and our entrees. During that wait, our waitress came over and said, "thank you for waiting, it takes a long time to cook our food." What?! Shortly after leaving we both had stomach issues and headaches.

We spent $160 before tip on the meal and were disappointed with the food for the price. Plus the chefs seem to have difficulty with flavor consistency throughout each dish. At $24 or $25 per entree, could have found a better meal elsewhere and will next time.