February 14, 2010
Cafe Grazie
Dad was back in Taiwan for Chinese New Year and we decided to take him and the baby out to the Shihlin Official Residence on a nice day to enjoy the gardens. Good thing we got there early enough to have some space for ourselves before the busfuls of mainland-Chinese tourists arrived. During the tranquil morning it's no problem to feed the baby from the bottle and let him take a nap, but as it got past noon-time us adults would like something to eat, too. Thankfully there are a number of chain restaurants around the tourist site that are already open after the CNY holiday and this one had seats open.
Cafe Grazie is a mid-scale Japanese-influenced (you can tell by the mintaiko dishes) Italian restaurant with branches all over Taipei. The colorful picture-menu offers a large variety of pizzas and pastas, with numerous up-sell combos to add side-dishes, appetizers, desserts, and drinks. As we usually do, we ordered a pizza a la carte, and got a couple of combo meals to share the side dishes. Typically wife takes the soup and I take the salad from the combo meal. But this time we chose a grilled vegetable side instead since wife and dad prefers their veggies cooked. The grill marks on the zucchini were cute, and made it seemed like more of an upgrade over the usual insipid iceberg lettuce salad.
Pesto-pasta is wife's default choice whenever we visit a new Italian place. The linguine is softer than al-dente for Chinese tastes, but otherwise the flavor is good and there was a fair amount of seafood. My paella is about as Spanish as I am, but there's a generous amount of goodies in the the sizzling skillet. The rice was plenty yellow, but I'm guessing that was more turmeric than saffron. Probably best to think of it as an innovative Chinese fried-rice dish rather than as an European creation. The pizza was a bit different without being over-the-top weird, except for the green peas. The hard-boiled eggs worked surprisingly well and adds a nice color contrast. It's cute that they cut the fresh-baked pie at your table, and the medium-sized pie is perfect for three to share.
The stark black & white decor with tiled floors was like an Asian take on a New York style Italian restaurant. Despite the crowd and the hard surfaces, baby was able to sleep peacefully through most of it and we could have a pleasant meal. Drank up the honey-lemon Italian soda quickly though, once he woke up and wanted attention. So Cafe Grazie isn't quite up to authentic foodie Italian standards, but it's a step up from the overly Asian-ized corner spaghetti shops, although it remains to be seen how well the different restaurants in the chain maintain consistency.
Cafe Grazie
義式屋 古拉爵
士林中正店
台北市士林區中正路122號1樓
02-2835-9890