Lunch at Grappa's

Had lunch with some friends at Grappa's in Pacific Place on Tuesday. As expected, the restaurant was really busy with the office lunch crowd from the offices upstairs. There was a three course set lunch menu plus coffee and tea, prices ranged from $168-$198 + 10% depending on your main course.

For the first course, you had a choice of Caesar Salad, Cream of Asparagus Soup, and a Smoked Tuna Tartar with Fennel and Orange (pictured). It was a nice salad, but I probably would have preferred a little more orange (I only had two segments). The salad mix was mostly arugula, which balanced well with the smoked tuna. A friend ordered the same starter but strangely enough she didn't have any cherry tomatoes.






For the main course there were four choices for the main course - an Angel Hair Pasta with Crab, Pine Nuts, Tomatoes; Oven Roasted Salmon with Cous-cous; Pasta Tricolore Salad (vegetarian), and this US Prime striploin with oven roasted vegetables. I did request for the steak to come out medium rare but it came medium. It's not a big deal, but the steak was slightly tougher and drier. I expected a little more of the roasted vegetable though - it was a lot of bell pepper with the occasional squished cherry tomato and a few chunks of potato. There were some whole cloves of garlic in the mix, but I wish it were roasted a little longer to soften and sweeten - the garlic was firm and had the texture of an undercooked potato.

Onto dessert - choice between a yogurt parfait (which, from appearance, looked like you could make for breakfast at home), or the panna cotta. It was a decent panna cotta - creamy, but slightly firm {maybe a little too much gelatin in the mix}.









Grappa's is okay for lunch. Service wasn't great, which is expected during the packed lunch hour, but you could tell the servers were a bit strained. Food was fine and price point was about right for a sit-down lunch at Pacific Place. It did get noisy though, so it's not really the place for quiet conversation with friends.