average food, poor service. we have dined at this restaurant several times, at both this location and the original in seattle. the food is average for the price point. when you are paying these prices, it is not "outstanding" to get a well cooked piece of meat, etc., that is simply what you paid for. paradiso in kirkland is a more authentic italian experience.
i write because of what i feel to be overreaching, dare i say greedy, customer service. specifically, corkage.
i get it. restaurants feel they need to charge corkage. (albeit, really successful restaurants that have a passion for wine, often do not if you bring in something not on their list and is exceptional) margins are razor thin on food and most of the profit comes from the alcohol and it simply will not work if everyone brings in their own wine. i get it.
but, every good restaurant does not charge corkage when you already bought a bottle of their wine, and a round of cocktails, and multiple apps, before dinner. the point of corkage is to deter people from passing on the restaurant'swinelist to bring in their $15 bottle of bathwater they bought at safeway.
but for a typical evening, i am not going to buy two bottles of wine. if i bring a special bottle to have, that is just something over and above the very expensive bottle of your i already bought. yes ? i already partook of yourwinelist and your doubled bottle price, yes ?
so in summary, the kirkland outpost is not as good as the seattle one, i feel they are overreaching, the service was indeed slow on top of everything else above (and no, they were not slammed, perhaps busy, but there were empty tables), we won't be coming back and will be recommending to others that ask not to bother. we will direct them to paradisio.