Fazio’s Restaurant
Though the story of how this place came to be is on the “heartwarming” side; that doesn’t mask the fact that, IN OUR OPINION, they have fallen WAY short of the acclaim given them in a recent newspaper write-up.
Fazio’s is located in the space that formerly belonged to Quince (in the Grand Pacific Junction in Olmsted Falls), and we were pleased to see that a “family” oriented, fine Italian restaurant (on par with one you’d find in Tremont – so the article said) was moving into that vacant space. To read the really nice write-up, we naturally had very high expectations, but were sadly extremely disappointed. There was only one other table occupied when we arrived and we got the impression that they were known to the owners and staff based on the over-attentiveness of everyone. I don’t know about you, but when we think of an Italian restaurant, we think of warm décor and an inviting atmosphere that just has a certain feel to it. Fazio’s, though very elegant and nicely appointed, felt stark and cold. A contributing factor to this might be that the place was basically empty. Our server was nice enough, but forgot some of the basics (didn’t offer fresh ground pepper for salads, etc.). The menu was really nice and very extensive and I decided to go with something that the newspaper article mentioned – the Pasta Lauren. Mr. Z gauges every Italian restaurant by their Chicken Parmesan and rightly so. If an Italian restaurant can’t do a good chicken parm, then they shouldn’t claim to be “Italian”! Let me add at this point that if you aren’t into micro-brew beers then you will be disappointed. The only domestic beer they had was Budweiser – period (or so we were told) and I think she said it was on tap.
I’ve talked about the atmosphere, the beer (or lack of) so I guess it’s time to get down to the serious business of the FOOD! My Pasta Lauren sounded amazing, having all of the things I like…chicken, spinach, roasted walnuts and cherry tomatoes tossed in a gorgonzola cream sauce over penne (I asked to substitute linguini). WAY TOO MUCH cream sauce! The flavors of any of the other ingredients were totally drowned out by the amount of sauce – it was almost like a cream soup with ‘stuff’ in it. The chicken, I’m convinced, was simply the Purdue “Shortcuts” – the cube-like pieces were tough and dry. The cherry tomatoes weren’t sautéed or cooked prior to being tossed into this dish – just sliced in half and thrown in. No flavor whatsoever and finally, to my dismay, there was very little spinach in this dish. This COULD have been good, but the cream sauce totally overwhelmed. On to Mr. Z’s chicken parm – another HUGE disappointment. The chicken cutlet was relatively fresh tasting and prepared nicely; however I don’t think either of us has ever tasted marinara sauce that sweet before. Honestly, it was like someone accidentally dumped an entire sugar bowl into the sauce. It only resembled marinara sauce in that it was red. He tried scraping it off the chicken, but was only semi-successful. His chicken was served over linguini with aglio-olio (garlic, oil or butter) but the menu neglected to mention that this particular A-O had an abundance of red pepper flakes in it. Now for some, that might not be a problem, but many people have an aversion to pepper of any kind and Mr. Z happens to be one of those people. Our server was nice enough to bring him a separate bowl of linguini with…..more of that ‘yummy’ red sauce on it. In the end, he took a couple of bites, but it really was inedible (I tried it as well and couldn’t get past the first bite…and I like almost everything). We were both really disappointed with both dishes (though we both thought the Caesar salad we shared was excellent) and are still baffled at how Fazio’s could be compared to any of the places in Tremont. We’ve been to almost all of them and there is NO comparison.
8074 Columbia Road, Olmsted Falls
(Located in the Grand Pacific Junction)
(440) 427-8100
http://www.fazios-restaurant.com/