Five stars from me even above the myriad amount of opportunities for improvement. Food: I had the linguini with spicy red sauce, garlic, anchovies, and olives. It was flavorful and yummy. I've eaten here three times and the food is one of the aspects that brings me back. I would say the food is upscale Italian, or at least it wants to be. I didn't notice pizza on the menu though I thought it might help. I think the menu is more limited than I remember. Service: Only the husband and wife were serving. It wasn't as busy as I'd remembered in the past. They did a fine job of keeping up and were pleasant servers. I felt the service was important to them and I appreciate that. Ambience: This place is screaming to be more, screaming to be more than a casual hole-in-the-wall that it has been allowed to become. There is a bar, thirteen dining tables, and an outside area. The space faces east and the lighting is dark. It feels like a place trying to hang on which it may be. It feels like a place of priorities, food and service with everything else slowly fading. For example, the owner could dress better than a cotton T-shirt. The single urinal in the bathroom was out of order. The place feels tired when it has the bones to be bustling with energy. Gilman Village is artsy, creative, and relaxing. Issaquah is one of the most beautiful cities anywhere. The evergreen smells are intoxicating, Especially the cedar trees. Still, I enjoy coming here to eat when in town and will continue to do so. Nicolinos is a lovely and memorable name.
Don G.
We had a amazing dinner last night! Service was wonderfully friendly and attentive. The tomatoe and mushroom bruschetta is so good! We each ordered one of the dinner specials. My wife's was a great pasta dish and I had the New York strip which was perfectly cooked! As always the desserts were amazing. Can't wait for thier wonderful patio to open for the season.
G. W.
What has happened to our beloved Nicolino? Two people for dinner: $150 + tip for a very mediocre meal, at best. We have eaten here as a family and with out-of-town guests many times over the years. We returned last week for the first time in about six months. It felt great to be back in the dining room, but as I had time to reflect on the experience, it was a major disappointment. We ordered the mussels and seasonal pear salad to start. The mussels sauce was not what I remembered and the mussels themselves were small and overcooked not plump and juicy like I remembered. The pear salad was piled high on a tiny plate. It was overdressed with a sweet vinaigrette that lacked sophistication. For main course, we had the lobster ravioli that I have eaten here many times, and the smoked king salmon pappardelle special. The salmon dish was bland, lacked salt and complexity; the pasta was not al dente and the smoke of the salmon smothered by the cream. The lobster ravioli sauce was unbalanced, unsophisticated, and overwhelmed by (the saffron?). Big disappointment - nothing like what I had been served when I ordered thsi dish in the past. I noticed that the wait staff did not ask us how was our food. Maybe they knew the answer already. I hesitated to write this, but I found no way to email or message the restaurant on its website, so I decided to go with this public review. I feel let down, if not cheated. I did not expect a check for $150 or I would have sent the food back. Such a bummer. I think that may have been our last time at Nicolino. If you sort the Yelp reviews by Newest first, you will see that our experience is not unique. It seems that the quality here has fallen off over the past 6-9 months. Until they can turn things around (I hope they do), it is not worth the price or our continued patronage.
When I first moved here from North Carolina, the lasagna was better than the one I had today. Maybe a new chef,overall I had a great time ?
Atmosphere: 4
Food: 4
Service: 4
Recommended dishes: Tiramisu
wai shun vincent cheung
Authentic Italian food! Over 30 years of business and taste very good!
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 5
Service: 5
Duck Y.
Things have changed at Nicolinos. We've been here many times over 30 years, and while I don't expect everything to stay the same.....WHY change the recipes? I had the Pollo amarene, I even have the recipe at home, and someone has screwed it up. Instead of a cream sauce over the chicken & pasta, I got what I'm guessing was a wine reduction sauce. Like pollo marsala with a few amarene cherries thrown on. And you have to ask for bread, Nicolinos used to bring bread and dipping oil.....now you get a few slices of grilled bread, which is OK...except....the olive oil they brushed on it was stale if not rancid. Maybe we got the "B" team, but something has NOT changed for the better at this restaurant. And it's sad.
Anna H
To those with allergies: We had a very inappropriate and strange experience at this restaurant. It was our first time coming into the restaurant to eat. We had ordered some of their food to-go during the pandemic and we were excited to be back. My friend has life-threatening allergies to eggs and nuts so eating out can be challenging for her. They had previously stated that she was able to eat some of their food so we came into the restaurant thinking it would not be a problem. She handed the staff her allergy card and a man came back to our table to talk to us. I was unsure of what exactly his position at the restaurant was but he had come to ask us how deadly my friend’s allergies were. He stated he needed to ask for liability purposes and proceeded to tell us a bizarre and disturbing story about someone who had died from eating food that contained an allergen and said that my friend’s allergy card was a “legally binding document” and if something were to happen the restaurant would be completely “liable in a court of law”. Both of those claims are false – my friend’s allergy card is not a legally binding document. It is simply a card that has her allergies in writing for accessibility purposes and does not have any legal implications. He urged us to think carefully about our decision to eat there, stressing that he “does not like losing customers” but wanted us to be sure about our decision. The person who was waiting our table was kind and tried to reassure us that my friend could eat many food items on the menu, but the damage had already been done. I am unsure of what his intent was, but this interaction made my friend very uneasy which led us to leave the restaurant.Neither me nor my friend has ever had an experience like this when we have eaten out. I was very disappointed with the level of unprofessionalism my friend’s allergies were handled with. It was hurtful to see this man treat my friend’s allergies as a “liability” and act as though accommodating her would be a considerable risk. Unfortunately, eating out for people with allergies often comes with various levels of inherent risk, but there are so many precautions restaurants could be taking to mitigate this and create a safe environment for all of their customers. It seems as though many establishments feel it is too much work to go the extra mile and that it does not pass the cost-benefit analysis.Although our past experiences with this restaurant had shown us that this restaurant was a safe place for people with allergies to eat, the way we were treated last night made us question this. In the future, I would urge you to please train your staff on how to interact with people with allergies and do your research on which documents are considered “legally binding”. By doing this, you will help avoid making an already stressful situation for the customer much worse. Giving you two stars because the wine was good.Thank you for your time.
Service: 2
Jeanie B.
This place is pretty underwhelming unfortunately. Agree with another reviewer who said the menu was uninspired. Just basic Italian food. Had two chicken dishes. Chicken breasts tasted like they were frozen and reheated. Bottled salad dressing, canned artichokes, etc. Service was average and they do seem understaffed but doing the best they can. Loud and crowded dining room on Friday night. Will not be back sadly.
Kat L.
Super slow service on a Thursday night. Dining room was very loud and unpleasant. Food was lacking in inspiration (and flavor). Menu had limited vegetarian options. Expensive and not worth the price. Disappointed as this restaurant has come highly recommended.
Nicolinos prepared a wonderful takeout meal for a group of 12 we were hosting. Service and food was excellent! I'm sure everyone attending will be visiting Nicolinos soon.
Food: 5
Service: 5
Tawny Paperd
Delicious food and incredible team. We have enjoyed dining here for nearly two decades.
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 5
Service: 5
Kay A.
Nicolinos has been one of my favorite restaurants for years. The carbonara has always been my favorite dish. The most recent time we came here we found out they had made a lot of changes. Replaced staff, new menus, etc. First change, they took away the free bread and now they charge five dollars for 1 small potion of bread. We decided to order the Bruschetta instead. Essentially just 4 pieces of soggy bread covered in tomato's and mushrooms? Not great. The carbonara came out and we could immediately tell the portion was smaller then normal.. upon trying the carbonara it tasted completely different. The noodles were so dry!! It used to be so creamy and delicious. I was super sad with this experience, I get they are trying to save money but it just wasn't as great as it used to be. They also changed the drink menu entirely.. and the names of the drinks are.. weird to say the least..
Joseph Michniak
Took the family here. The food was good with great service.
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 4
Service: 5
Nic E
The food here is awful. We got chicken parmesan and lasagne (which the server said has the same meat sauce as the pappardelle bolognese, in case anyone's wondering whether other menu items are better) and both my partner and I found it hard to eat our entrees. It tasted like the sauces came out of a can (in the Chef Boyardee way, not in the crushed canned tomatoes as a base to produce a homemade sauce way) and like the chicken base for the parmesan came from a frozen packet. The meat in the lasagne also tasted like something from a Chef Boyardee ravioli. I took home half of it and I honestly don't know if I can bring myself to eat it. It was a $29 meal.Bread service is a surprising, nice touch these days, but the bread here is clearly mass-produced store-bought white baguettes, which takes away from the appeal.The parmesan they brought out was crumbled (think Kraft shaker bottles) parmesan in an open bowl. I am not a big fan of the open bowl from a sanitary perspective, but more importantly, I expect that kind of cheese at a cheap pizza place, not at a dedicated Italian restaurant with $25+ entrees. Even Cheesecake Factory, a chain restaurant not specializing in Italian food, will come over and grate real parmesan over your pasta dish. Cheesecake Factory also manages to have better, fresher bread. I am saying this as someone who hasn't been to The Cheesecake Factory in years, because why go to a chain when there are so many great, independent, specialized restaurants around? I guess this is why. Not all independent restaurants are good.I could see into the kitchen from my seat and it looked like there might have only been a single cook back there, on a busy Saturday night, at peak dinner hours. Maybe if this place relies on frozen/canned everything, they feel 1 chef is enough, but it's clearly not.For this awful food, we waited a little over 45 mins from the time of ordering. We arrived hungry, so you'd think 45 mins of waiting would have made ANY food taste good, but no. You may be thinking 45 mins is an exaggeration, but no, we actually timed it, because we made note of the time after the server took 15 mins to take our food order after we sat down. It turns out that on a busy Saturday night, this place only seems to have scheduled a single server for the whole restaurant. The hostess (or idk maybe that was the manager or owner) was doing multiple roles, helping to run food and check on people, and the busser was also fulfilling a few roles, but come on. I've worked in food service, if you can't support the number of patrons in a place with the level of staff you have, you don't just keep seating more and more people - you leave some sections closed, so you can give th people already seated a good experience. How this place had a completely full restaurant with 1 server, 1 host, 1 busser, and 1 chef blows my mind.Nobody checked in on us or said anything to assure us during the 45 mins we waited for our food, btw. My partner and I were in between wondering whether they forgot our order and joking about walking out.Never again.
Five stars from me even above the myriad amount of opportunities for improvement. Food: I had the linguini with spicy red sauce, garlic, anchovies, and olives. It was flavorful and yummy. I've eaten here three times and the food is one of the aspects that brings me back. I would say the food is upscale Italian, or at least it wants to be. I didn't notice pizza on the menu though I thought it might help. I think the menu is more limited than I remember. Service: Only the husband and wife were serving. It wasn't as busy as I'd remembered in the past. They did a fine job of keeping up and were pleasant servers. I felt the service was important to them and I appreciate that. Ambience: This place is screaming to be more, screaming to be more than a casual hole-in-the-wall that it has been allowed to become. There is a bar, thirteen dining tables, and an outside area. The space faces east and the lighting is dark. It feels like a place trying to hang on which it may be. It feels like a place of priorities, food and service with everything else slowly fading. For example, the owner could dress better than a cotton T-shirt. The single urinal in the bathroom was out of order. The place feels tired when it has the bones to be bustling with energy. Gilman Village is artsy, creative, and relaxing. Issaquah is one of the most beautiful cities anywhere. The evergreen smells are intoxicating, Especially the cedar trees. Still, I enjoy coming here to eat when in town and will continue to do so. Nicolinos is a lovely and memorable name.
We had a amazing dinner last night! Service was wonderfully friendly and attentive. The tomatoe and mushroom bruschetta is so good! We each ordered one of the dinner specials. My wife's was a great pasta dish and I had the New York strip which was perfectly cooked! As always the desserts were amazing. Can't wait for thier wonderful patio to open for the season.
What has happened to our beloved Nicolino? Two people for dinner: $150 + tip for a very mediocre meal, at best. We have eaten here as a family and with out-of-town guests many times over the years. We returned last week for the first time in about six months. It felt great to be back in the dining room, but as I had time to reflect on the experience, it was a major disappointment. We ordered the mussels and seasonal pear salad to start. The mussels sauce was not what I remembered and the mussels themselves were small and overcooked not plump and juicy like I remembered. The pear salad was piled high on a tiny plate. It was overdressed with a sweet vinaigrette that lacked sophistication. For main course, we had the lobster ravioli that I have eaten here many times, and the smoked king salmon pappardelle special. The salmon dish was bland, lacked salt and complexity; the pasta was not al dente and the smoke of the salmon smothered by the cream. The lobster ravioli sauce was unbalanced, unsophisticated, and overwhelmed by (the saffron?). Big disappointment - nothing like what I had been served when I ordered thsi dish in the past. I noticed that the wait staff did not ask us how was our food. Maybe they knew the answer already. I hesitated to write this, but I found no way to email or message the restaurant on its website, so I decided to go with this public review. I feel let down, if not cheated. I did not expect a check for $150 or I would have sent the food back. Such a bummer. I think that may have been our last time at Nicolino. If you sort the Yelp reviews by Newest first, you will see that our experience is not unique. It seems that the quality here has fallen off over the past 6-9 months. Until they can turn things around (I hope they do), it is not worth the price or our continued patronage.
Tuscan bread - 1/10 - soft, doughy, overly herbal.Lemon chicken pasta - 1/10 - dry, rubbery, flavorless.Atmosphere - 3/10 - Extremely darkService - 5/10 . Nothing to remark.Sorry, but try something else.
Atmosphere: 1
Food: 1
Service: 3
When I first moved here from North Carolina, the lasagna was better than the one I had today. Maybe a new chef,overall I had a great time ?
Atmosphere: 4
Food: 4
Service: 4
Recommended dishes: Tiramisu
Authentic Italian food! Over 30 years of business and taste very good!
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 5
Service: 5
Things have changed at Nicolinos. We've been here many times over 30 years, and while I don't expect everything to stay the same.....WHY change the recipes? I had the Pollo amarene, I even have the recipe at home, and someone has screwed it up. Instead of a cream sauce over the chicken & pasta, I got what I'm guessing was a wine reduction sauce. Like pollo marsala with a few amarene cherries thrown on. And you have to ask for bread, Nicolinos used to bring bread and dipping oil.....now you get a few slices of grilled bread, which is OK...except....the olive oil they brushed on it was stale if not rancid. Maybe we got the "B" team, but something has NOT changed for the better at this restaurant. And it's sad.
To those with allergies: We had a very inappropriate and strange experience at this restaurant. It was our first time coming into the restaurant to eat. We had ordered some of their food to-go during the pandemic and we were excited to be back. My friend has life-threatening allergies to eggs and nuts so eating out can be challenging for her. They had previously stated that she was able to eat some of their food so we came into the restaurant thinking it would not be a problem. She handed the staff her allergy card and a man came back to our table to talk to us. I was unsure of what exactly his position at the restaurant was but he had come to ask us how deadly my friend’s allergies were. He stated he needed to ask for liability purposes and proceeded to tell us a bizarre and disturbing story about someone who had died from eating food that contained an allergen and said that my friend’s allergy card was a “legally binding document” and if something were to happen the restaurant would be completely “liable in a court of law”. Both of those claims are false – my friend’s allergy card is not a legally binding document. It is simply a card that has her allergies in writing for accessibility purposes and does not have any legal implications. He urged us to think carefully about our decision to eat there, stressing that he “does not like losing customers” but wanted us to be sure about our decision. The person who was waiting our table was kind and tried to reassure us that my friend could eat many food items on the menu, but the damage had already been done. I am unsure of what his intent was, but this interaction made my friend very uneasy which led us to leave the restaurant.Neither me nor my friend has ever had an experience like this when we have eaten out. I was very disappointed with the level of unprofessionalism my friend’s allergies were handled with. It was hurtful to see this man treat my friend’s allergies as a “liability” and act as though accommodating her would be a considerable risk. Unfortunately, eating out for people with allergies often comes with various levels of inherent risk, but there are so many precautions restaurants could be taking to mitigate this and create a safe environment for all of their customers. It seems as though many establishments feel it is too much work to go the extra mile and that it does not pass the cost-benefit analysis.Although our past experiences with this restaurant had shown us that this restaurant was a safe place for people with allergies to eat, the way we were treated last night made us question this. In the future, I would urge you to please train your staff on how to interact with people with allergies and do your research on which documents are considered “legally binding”. By doing this, you will help avoid making an already stressful situation for the customer much worse. Giving you two stars because the wine was good.Thank you for your time.
Service: 2
This place is pretty underwhelming unfortunately. Agree with another reviewer who said the menu was uninspired. Just basic Italian food. Had two chicken dishes. Chicken breasts tasted like they were frozen and reheated. Bottled salad dressing, canned artichokes, etc. Service was average and they do seem understaffed but doing the best they can. Loud and crowded dining room on Friday night. Will not be back sadly.
Super slow service on a Thursday night. Dining room was very loud and unpleasant. Food was lacking in inspiration (and flavor). Menu had limited vegetarian options. Expensive and not worth the price. Disappointed as this restaurant has come highly recommended.
Restaurantji Recommends
Nicolinos prepared a wonderful takeout meal for a group of 12 we were hosting. Service and food was excellent! I'm sure everyone attending will be visiting Nicolinos soon.
Food: 5
Service: 5
Delicious food and incredible team. We have enjoyed dining here for nearly two decades.
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 5
Service: 5
Nicolinos has been one of my favorite restaurants for years. The carbonara has always been my favorite dish. The most recent time we came here we found out they had made a lot of changes. Replaced staff, new menus, etc. First change, they took away the free bread and now they charge five dollars for 1 small potion of bread. We decided to order the Bruschetta instead. Essentially just 4 pieces of soggy bread covered in tomato's and mushrooms? Not great. The carbonara came out and we could immediately tell the portion was smaller then normal.. upon trying the carbonara it tasted completely different. The noodles were so dry!! It used to be so creamy and delicious. I was super sad with this experience, I get they are trying to save money but it just wasn't as great as it used to be. They also changed the drink menu entirely.. and the names of the drinks are.. weird to say the least..
Took the family here. The food was good with great service.
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 4
Service: 5
The food here is awful. We got chicken parmesan and lasagne (which the server said has the same meat sauce as the pappardelle bolognese, in case anyone's wondering whether other menu items are better) and both my partner and I found it hard to eat our entrees. It tasted like the sauces came out of a can (in the Chef Boyardee way, not in the crushed canned tomatoes as a base to produce a homemade sauce way) and like the chicken base for the parmesan came from a frozen packet. The meat in the lasagne also tasted like something from a Chef Boyardee ravioli. I took home half of it and I honestly don't know if I can bring myself to eat it. It was a $29 meal.Bread service is a surprising, nice touch these days, but the bread here is clearly mass-produced store-bought white baguettes, which takes away from the appeal.The parmesan they brought out was crumbled (think Kraft shaker bottles) parmesan in an open bowl. I am not a big fan of the open bowl from a sanitary perspective, but more importantly, I expect that kind of cheese at a cheap pizza place, not at a dedicated Italian restaurant with $25+ entrees. Even Cheesecake Factory, a chain restaurant not specializing in Italian food, will come over and grate real parmesan over your pasta dish. Cheesecake Factory also manages to have better, fresher bread. I am saying this as someone who hasn't been to The Cheesecake Factory in years, because why go to a chain when there are so many great, independent, specialized restaurants around? I guess this is why. Not all independent restaurants are good.I could see into the kitchen from my seat and it looked like there might have only been a single cook back there, on a busy Saturday night, at peak dinner hours. Maybe if this place relies on frozen/canned everything, they feel 1 chef is enough, but it's clearly not.For this awful food, we waited a little over 45 mins from the time of ordering. We arrived hungry, so you'd think 45 mins of waiting would have made ANY food taste good, but no. You may be thinking 45 mins is an exaggeration, but no, we actually timed it, because we made note of the time after the server took 15 mins to take our food order after we sat down. It turns out that on a busy Saturday night, this place only seems to have scheduled a single server for the whole restaurant. The hostess (or idk maybe that was the manager or owner) was doing multiple roles, helping to run food and check on people, and the busser was also fulfilling a few roles, but come on. I've worked in food service, if you can't support the number of patrons in a place with the level of staff you have, you don't just keep seating more and more people - you leave some sections closed, so you can give th people already seated a good experience. How this place had a completely full restaurant with 1 server, 1 host, 1 busser, and 1 chef blows my mind.Nobody checked in on us or said anything to assure us during the 45 mins we waited for our food, btw. My partner and I were in between wondering whether they forgot our order and joking about walking out.Never again.
Atmosphere: 2
Food: 1
Service: 1