Il Giardino

So I have mixed feelings about this place. I really like the house /​restaurant idea, I think it makes the dining experience more intimate.
However it was very dark and we had to borrow a flashlight to read the menu, and we weren’t alone, there was one other table that had to do the same thing — I know, I am getting old and need to update my glasses, but…
The food was pretty good, if not somewhat forgettable. The pricing seems off kilter for what you get. The serving sizes are on the small side and the price is on the high side. For 4 of us to go out and have a glass of wine and dinner and maybe a dessert, it is not worth the price tag.
Pasta bella has great food and is much cheaper. In fact there are many other places to eat Italian in ballard that are cheaper and if you really want a nice Itialian dinner go to Volterra.

Good, basic Italian food. Excellent service. A quaint atmosphere with great outdoor seating (albeit withva quirky street ambiance including a view of the Goodwill parking lot).
This restaurant is in our neighborhood and I’ve been meaning to try it for some time but the exterior and décor is not exactly ‘hip’ so other restaurants always won out.
If you want a simple Italian meal and want to support a local business, it’s a good bet. The food is MUCH better than Lombardi’s. My 5 year old son and I had a great night out. Sat out on the patio and people watched in the fantastic Seattle summer weather.
The gnocchi was very good. My Capellini Pomodoro was good but not extraordinary.
I would go again.

I’ve been back twice now since writing my original 3-​star review, but haven’t been impressed with the quality of the food or the overall ambience (the décor seems kind of chintzy for a place that esteems itself as vaguely upscale Italian).
I will say that I’ve taken advantage of a very reasonably-​priced happy hour food menu … but not even cheap (ish) prices on a limited number of dishes could entice me back for an ultimately lackluster experience.
Ciao, Il Giardino.

I just got a glass of Sangiovese, shared the Bruschetta, had my own small salad, and the bread on the table — and then my pasta came covering a plate-​sized bowl. Or maybe a bowl-​deep plate? Anyway, too much food for me. I ate half and then demanded to split cannoli for dessert. That was the richest cannoli I’ve had since leaving the East Coast. All in all delicious. It does take a bit of time for everything, so don’t go here if you have to run to the theater after. But if you want a lovely lingering dinner, check it out.

Well, my friend and I were in the area one Sunday and decided to check out the brunch. I wish we hadn’t gone. I knew we shouldn’t have gone in considering the place was empty with the exception of 1 other person. But, we mustered through it. The food wasn’t bad, it was just standard breakfast food. The service was o.k. The restaurant is more of a dinner place, they probably shouldn’t even be open for breakfast considering. I might check the place out for dinner some time since I live in the neighborhood, but I won’t be going back for brunch. Oh, and their coffee was disgusting. It was weak and lukewarm. Folgers?

Let me just put it on record that Il Giardino has the best money to great Italian food ratio in all of Seattle. The quality of the food is amazing, it has beautiful atmosphere, the service is awesome — for all of that I would expect to pay much more than the $ 55 I put down.
We were with a group of friends so we split some appetizers, I had a great glass of the house chianti, my wife had a simple pomodoro pasta, and I had a great clam linguini with wine sauce. My pasta had a ton of perfectly sized clams (not the annoying tiny kind or the fill your entire mouth large kind that explode in your mouth) and had just the right amount of wine flavor without being too overpowering.
When you dine there you feel like you’re eating in Italy in someone’s beautifully decorated home — it’s a great experience and I highly recommend Il Giardino.

I thought I had seen somewhere that Tuesday night was half price wine night at Il Giardino, and lo and behold when we sat down the first thing out of our cute waitress’ mouth was, «welcome. Tonight is our half price wine night.» Hurray! Come to mama.
Il Giardino is an old-​house-​turned-​restaurant, with the whole place completely updated. The tiny little bar would be a great place for dinner for one or a glass of vino. There’s a tiny upstairs, too, which I want to see next time, and one of the tables overlooks the front door and first floor. There’s a juliet balcony on the west side with one table you can see from outside, too. Hello, romantic sunset dinner.
I’m indecisive, so I like that the menu is fairly abbreviated. Our wine came, a Montepulciano, and it was really good. The bread is awesome — clearly house-​made fresh that day. They also make their own mozzarella, which Mr Betsey S guessed with his first bite of caprese salad.
His scampi and linguine special was very good, a little too wine’y, he said, but my linguine di mare was full of shellfish and awesome. I ate the whole thing, I couldn’t stop and ask for a to go box! We asked lots of questions about the menu, and the waitress told us what she liked best, having been sat down by the chef and apparently fed all the specials earlier that day. They are totally open to subsitutions and altering any dish to your taste, so even though there aren’t a lot of vegetarian options I am sure the chef would welcome the challenge of a request!
For dolce we had a frozen lemon filled with lemon gelato (also house made) and some prosecco. So refreshing and light! She insisted on bringing us strawberries to go with the prosecco just because, «they’re perfect with prosecco!»
This is the closest I have come to actual Italian cuisine in Seattle. They even have vin santo on the menu and said they are adding cantucci to go with it soon, after I asked for it. I love Il Giardino, I’m going to get fat for all my return visits but I don’t even care. And maybe I won’t get fat, because as the beautiful Sophia Loren once said, «everything you see, I owe to spaghetti.»

The last time we were here, we had a good time. This time was even better. Saturday night was hothotHOT, and it was Alex’s birthday Sunday, so I wanted to take him to dinner somewhere, preferably with outdoor dining. We were going to go to Ray’s, and sit in the air conditioned bar and wait for a table, or go upstairs to the café, but there was a line of cars a couple of blocks long waiting in the left turn lane to get into the parking lot. It was ridiculous. We drove by Sambar, another favorite of ours, but the garden looked pretty crowded. Solution? Il Giardino.
There were people seated at the small balcony in the front dining area, and one of the two tables on the larger side patio was taken as well, but we noticed a small table above the patio perched in an open french doorway upstairs. We asked if we could be seated up there, and were accommodated (again) with no hesitation whatsoever, even though it meant that everyone who served us that night would be running up and down those stairs to serve us, and only us.
Admittedly, it’s not like you are looking out on the water up there, but we watched the neighborhood go by, and the sunset, and when it got dark, everything looked prettier from up there. The cool air was what really mattered. And we had complete privacy! And it is super pretty up there, especially after it gets dark, and all the light strings are all aglow.
If anything, dinner this time was better than the last. Our waiter was super nice, and when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to drink, suggested the perfect (if obvious) choice for a hot summer night — mojito. The mojitos there are delicious, fresh and just the right strength.
I had the Caprese appetizer, which was not only nicely sized, but delicious. I’m not all about big portions, but who can complain when it is sliced tomatoes and mozzarella? Alex had the spicy calamari, also good.
He had the Marsala, again, tasty and I had the Linguini di Mara? Linguini with mussels clam and prawns. Yum. Too much to eat.
And again, I emphasize — they ran everything up those stairs to us with smiles on their faces. 3 drinks each, 2 plates of bread, appetizers, dinner, water, etc.
And it was beautiful, I could have sat there all night.
I probably should have paid with my credit card, because I think I gave them all the cash I had, and although the tip was more than 15%, it should have been more. That’s what 3 mojitos will do to you. I’ll make up for it next time!

We also live in the neighborhood. We read reviews on another site and went in with fairly high expectations. Upon arriving we were taken to a strange table in the back and an inch from another couple even though there was only one other table in use. We asked to sit next to the window and after some debate among the staff we were granted permission.
The bread was good. The Caprese even better. Our main dishes however, were less to our liking. I ordered Cappellini Pomodoro. I found the dish to be lifeless and bland. There was a complete lack of seasoning and therefore no flavor. I did at one point resort to taking sauce off my date’s plate to try to spice it up. That was unsuccessful as well. My date ordered the Gnocchi which we had previously read about. He felt the sauce tasted burnt and the sausage just didn’t taste good.
The atmosphere is ok. The place is nice but over produced and perhaps a bit stuffy for our neighborhood. We neither found it comfortable or cozy. Overall we would have preferred to spend our money elsewhere.

We live in the neighborhood and wanted to check out and support one of the latest additions to the food circuit. We went on a Tuesday Night and found the restaurant very comfortable and cozy. Tuesday is also half price night on wine which was nice!
The food was good, but not spectacular. The service was prompt and waiter knowledgeable. I thought the sauces were a little heavy and the seafood on the linguini de mare was frozen not fresh. The caprese salad was quite good as was the quality of the gnocci.
It was more expensive than what I was hoping for, but I’ll go back at some point without the kids. It would be a nice quite place for a romantic meal with the wife.

The food is good, the service is good, the atmosphere is nice but the prices are a bit steep for the location and general ambiance. Yes it is nice inside but not downtown swoon worthy. Good, but not great. I live in the neighborhood and it’s a short walk from my house, so I’m sure I’ll be back. But if it wasn’t in my neighborhood I wouldn’t go out of my way to go here.
$ 18 for an entrée? Hello, you’re across the street from the Goodwill and you have no parking. Perhaps you should re-​think those prices.
Update: They’ve adjusted their prices and the food is still great so I’m changing it from 3 to 4 stars.

Quasi Bella.
The salads came and were incredibly vinegary. I saw some spit takes.
Good place for seafood. Not so good for the vegetarians. I ordered the 1 option, cheese raviolis. $ 16 and so — so. The sauce was like Chef Boy R Dee. It was red and sweet.
The server was nice and funny.
They’ve only been open for 10 days, so maybe we will check back in a couple of years, or when I start eating pork, which ever comes later. There are much better Italian places at better prices with the same ambiance.

Oh, just have the pork belly and pot-​stickers at Tigertail, wash it down with a Rim Job and a Saigon 66, you’ll be happier and have some money left over for extra drinks or the fabulous spicy nuts. But don’t, whatever you do, order the halibut and gnocchi at Il Giardino. Or, just order one and it’ll be as if you’ve had both. We really couldn’t taste or feel much of a difference between the two. Maybe they just aren’t ready for a full house, maybe they lack experience, maybe grandma made it that way so it must be good. Whatever the reason, we don’t have a reason to go back to give them a second chance. So, when you go to try them out, be prepared for a long wait. No, not at the door, once you are stuck in your seat and you have the tasty little bread rolls in front of you. You’ll have placed your order and all will seem well, but then you’ll wait, and wait, and get more bread, and wait some more. I really don’t mind waiting on hearty goodness, but there is none of that to be had at Il Giardino. Sorry.