Rione XIII - Seattle

I have written a RAVE review of this restaurant in 2016 when it was exceptional. I recently took an exec in town from the northeast US here based on my previous experiences and it was embarrassing. What happened? Is no one checking on what the cooks are plating anymore? For starters, the description on the menu was changed without consulting me and the alternate presentation was terrible. What was listed as caper brown butter finish on grilled branzino was a dry, off smelling fish with under cooked head on the plate and a glob of tasteless blood orange on half of the malodorous fish. I asked for filet, which is how they would finish it for plating in the past. My guest received an equally ordinary and unimpressive dish, I lost credibility as one who knows the dining choices downtown as there are MANY better options. Crossed off my list for good.

Food was terrible. I can’t believe this is an Ethan S. resturant

Great pasta and great service. What more could you want?

The pizza was burnt, and the pasta and pizza were both insanely salty. We had to drink an entire carafe of water to just mitigate the salt taste, and neither one of us could finish our meal. The flavor of the pasta could have been salt for all we know, it had no other discernible taste. The garlic pizza had so much salt flavor it burned the tongue. The wine and appetizers were fine, and the service wasn’t terrible, but they really need to use less salt on the pizza and pasta.

The waitress rejected my ID even though we were talking about one of my favorite Rione wines that I used to drink there a year ago lol. Makes no sense. There were “extra shadows” on it, whatever that means. After that happened, I also feel like we weren’t getting as much attention compared to the other tables, which then made our overall experience worse. Honestly, Rione was better before compared to now. And tbh, you’ll find better pizza/service at other restaurants in the area too…