Café Grazie (Mega City, Taipei, Taiwan)

Café Grazie

Mega City - New Taipei City - Taiwan

Restaurant Review

Café Grazie is quiet famous in Taiwan, especially Taipei. There are a number of different branches but they seem to have different menus. The one we decided to visit is located in Banqiao's Mega City on the 9th floor. The 9th floor is what they call the exotic cuisine floor, which differs from what I pegged as exotic, because I've see everything from McDonald's to a small dessert shop. I wouldn't call McDonald's or Potato King exotic, that's for sure. Anyway, there are a few restaurants on the far side of this floor e.g. a German beer house, French streak house, Japanese Sushi restaurant and Thai Vegetarian restaurant. Café Grazie or Grazie is a European themed restaurant which is most famous for their pizzas and pastas.

The entrance and food bar area of Grazie

One thing that caught me straight away was how spacious and atmospheric the dining area is. If you want a more enjoyable experience, I would suggest sitting near the widows as it really is a relaxing experience, not to mention the view over Banqiao is very pleasant, I would imagine even more so at night. If you are on a date, there seems to be more date friendly tables, seating 2 people near the windows. Unfortunately, there only seemed to be 1 booth near the windows and only two long tables, which I photographed for this article. 

We decided to order their promotional set, which was advertised as a family set and was reasonably priced at 699 TWD. This set was actually perfect because it had every main dish that we were interested in plus all the extras, like salad, soup, side-dishes, dessert and drinks. Once we understood what and how many things we could order, it was pretty easy to order our dinner. 

The salad is the first thing to arrive, to be honest it was mediocre, just a typical salad splashed with a vinaigrette dressing. 

Mediocre Chicken Salad - Vinaigrette Dressing

After being disappointed with their salad I was holding my breath when I saw the waiter coming over with the soups.  That feeling was quickly vanquished when the aromatic mushroom and nutty aroma overwhelmed me. I have to be totally blunt, it was the best creme of mushroom soup I have ever tasted. The fact that it actually had large pieces of mushrooms inside was a total bonus and certainly made it a wonderful and surprising  dining experience. 

Satisfying Full Creme of Mushroom Soup

It wasn't long after the soup arrived our side order of potato wedges arrived, which includes 2 sauce portions, tomato and garlic chive. Again, I was left in awe by another dish, this time drooling over a portion of beautifully golden wedges. They did have a southern fried twist to them which was a really nice touch, especially coupled with the tomato and garlic and chive sauce.    

Beautifully Golden Potato Wedges with a Southern Twist

Our first main dish arrived and totally left me speechless, not only did it smell wonderful it also looked phenomenal. It was a pizza just like you get in Italy, where to sauce is spread lightly to complete the toppings, rather than the other way round.  We decided to go for the Hawaiian because we felt it would be a lighter choice, especially when we had another main coming shortly.

Traditional Italian Pizza (Hawaiian) 

Our last main dish arrived which was a mushroom risotto. To be honest I wanted to try this because I already knew their pizzas and pasta were famous, but no one really talks about their risottos. I guess I should have believed the hype, or not so hype of this dish. The rice was rather hard and I honestly felt like it was not cooked long enough. The sauce was unflattering and masked the taste of the mushrooms, not to mention the broccoli had been cooked with garlic which I felt didn't go with the mushroom risotto.  Well, at least I know the reason people only talk about the pizza and pasta dishes. I guess the moral is to always believe the hype.

Rather Disappointing, Not to Mention Hard Risotto

I normally like to get my drink at the beginning of sitting down in a restaurant, firstly, I am normally thirsty and second I like to clean my pallet between the dishes. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask for this, so my drink arrived at the end of the meal like usual, oops. I believe the waiters would've waited for me to finish my drink until they brought the desserts, so we had to request to have to desserts brought to us.

The tiramisu was actually really satisfying, not overwhelmingly chocolaty like it normally is in other restaurants. It was very light and the texture was very smooth and moreish. We did hear that the egg tarts are always a go to by diners, but again, I wanted to ignore the hype, and this time I was right to. 

Overall we were very happy with our dining experience and will no doubt be visiting Grazie again in the near future. Next time I think we will dine with a few people so that we can order a wider variety of dishes. It would be nice to experience everything this wonderful restaurant chain has to offer. We defiantly recommend giving this place a try, even if it's just for the very affordable dining experience.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article and I hope it can be of some help for your future dining choices in Taipei, Taiwan.

For more information about Cafe Grazie please see here: http://www.grazie.com.tw/

Article & Photography by Dean (Mr. Cook)