10/12/03 by Matteo Crozzoli (Italy), Anurak Kengrian (Thailand) and Yasuhiro Miyagawa (Japan)

Vibration

It was Saturday night, and the moon was bright. Three friends went to an Italian restaurant, Machiavelli. The restaurant was vibrant. In the restaurant, there was also a bar. People, who were waiting for a table, were in the bar. They were having fun and chatting. After entering the restaurant, a server who was friendly talked to me, “May I help you?” In the family-style Italian restaurant, it was clean and looked old. The restaurant had American servers and chefs, but had Italian foods.

After we were seated, we had a very fast brainstorming, where Matteo, who is Italian, explained to us the characteristics of the dishes on the menu. We decided to order a pizza, and later on, three different courses for each person. Before the pizza the waiter gave us a very good free appetizer: a house sauce (oil, vinegar, pepper and salt) that is really simple to make and tasty to eat. The Pizza al Pesto ($ 7.95), which is very unusual to find in Italy, was good but a little spicy. In the confusion, for the other dishes that were coming, the waiter has put on a big quantity of pepper. Yasu decided to eat, in contrast with Matteo’s recommendation of Lasagne al Forno, a not authentic, for Italian taste, Pasta alla Carbonara ($ 9.95 bacon, cream, eggs, pepper and parmigiano). It was uncommon because the original is cooked with a different kind of bacon and served with Pecorino cheese on top. Besides it was salty. Anourak chose one of the main dishes, Tortellini with cream ($ 9.95 Tortellini beef , pepper and Parmigiano), that was very good and probably one of the best courses in the restaurant. The taste, in fact, was very delicate and really close to the original Italian course. We do not know why, but Matteo took the only dish without an Italian name. Probably he thought about the Italian dish Spaghetti con Polpette that he loves. Spaghetti with Meatballs ($9.95 tomato sauce, meatballs, garlic and pepper) is a dish that we could not recommend to our worst enemy, because it was too garlicky. If we have to use only one word to describe it, we would say “INEDIBLE!”.

The location is easy to go to. It is not complicated to find it. Machiavelli is near downtown and Broadway. Also, it is close to Seattle Pacific University. It takes about 10-15 minutes by car. Parking was difficult to find because it was on Capital Hill and we had to park on the street. You had better call to reserve a table. Because if you do not, you might wait for an hour, like us.

Machiavelli