During our vacation stay in Grand Rapids, we were getting acquainted with the downtown area and we happened upon an area - Monroe Center Street - that had a number of restaurants up and down the street. One restaurant caught the eye of my wife for it's Italian name, old world facade, and the dining patio in front of the restaurant. We decided to give Uccello's Ristorante a try for dinner one evening.
Faro Uccello immigrated from Sicily to Grand Rapids in 1976 and within two years he opened his first take-out pizza place - Faro's Italian Pizza. Less than 10 years later, Faro's had grown to 7 locations around the greater Grand Rapids area. In 1990, Faro sold his chain of pizza places and was in the midst of moving his family back to Sicily when circumstances changed and the Uccello family ended back in Grand Rapids.
In 1996, Uccello opened Uccello's Ristorante Pizza and Sports Lounge on East Beltline Road in Grand Rapids. The concept caught on and four more Uccello's restaurants opened over the next 20 years on the periphery of Grand Rapids. But an opportunity to put a restaurant in downtown Grand Rapids came about in 2016 when Adriano Moscatelli, the owner of the popular Tre Cugini Italian restaurant retired in December of that year and closed the doors to his restaurant.
Uccello's Hospitality Group - the corporate umbrella owned by Faro Uccello, his son Sergio, and Faro's son-in-law Mario Piccione - bought Tre Cugini in early 2017 and Uccello's replaced it with Mazzo Cucina d'Italia in May of that year. However, less than a year later, Mazzo shut down and was replaced by a Uccello's location. (In addition to the six Uccello's locations, the Uccello's Hospitality Group operate two Herb & Fire Pizza locations in the Grand Rapids area.)
The Uccello's Ristorante in downtown Grand Rapids is located just across from Rosa Parks Circle, a popular destination especially for ice-skaters in the winter. (see map) Parking on the street is limited around and near the restaurant, but there was a public parking lot located just next door to Uccello's.
The patio in front of Uccello's was set back from the front of the restaurant along a wide sidewalk along Monroe Center. It looked nice enough as it was spread out and the tables were away from both foot traffic and car traffic on the one-way street. It was just a bit cool out and my wife wanted to sit inside that evening.
Walking in to Uccello's, well, I immediately noticed that it didn't look like a nice little Italian restaurant but more of a sports bar with a line of flat screen televisions along the wall opposite the bar. The curved bar had more televisions hung on the back wall. I should have known better as this was nothing more than a glorified sports bar.
We were shown to a table along the wall and given a couple menus to look over. Our server that evening was also the bartender, a young lady by the name of Lexi. I started out with a Deschutes Fresh Haze IPA while my wife ordered her usual top-shelf vodka and cranberry juice. Later on when we got our meals, my wife got a glass of the house chianti and I got a glass of the house cabernet.
The menu was a cross between what you'd see at a sports bar with some Italian dishes mixed in. While they had calamari, bruschetta, and a margherita dip with Italian bread for appetizers, they also had wings, nachos, and chicken tenders on the menu. "You don't see chicken wings on the menu at many Italian restaurants," my wife noted.
While they had Italian specialties such as pasta dishes, chicken marsala, and Italian sausage with peppers, they also had a burrito, a grilled chicken wrap, and a turkey avocado with Swiss cheese sub on the menu. And since Faro Uccello got his start in the pizza business over 40 years ago, Uccello's had pizza with their traditional crust, a thin-crust, and a thick crust pizza. They also had a stuffed pizza available on the menu.
Something in my bones was telling me that this was going to be a monumental mistake. They had a four-cheese stuffed ravioli on the menu, but I would rather have beef or veal stuffed ravioli. There was a fettuccine in a sausage cream sauce that caught my eye, but I wavered on that, too. I ended up getting the chicken parmigiana.
I should have listened to my bones. When the chicken parm was brought out to the table, I almost recoiled in horror at what was presented to me. It was a plate featuring two very overcooked breaded chicken breasts covered in a thin layer of mozzarella cheese. A side of spaghetti with a small dollop of marinara sauce came with the chicken parm.
When I cut into the chicken parm, I could easily tell that it was overcooked. It was tough, the chicken was dry and there was absolutely no flavor to the meat. My wife could tell that I was not happy. When she asked me how it was, I said, "This may be the worst chicken parm I've ever had. It's set all the other chicken parm's in the world back 30 years."
My wife ended up getting the penne pasta in a tomato cream sauce. She also got some grilled chicken on top of it. Now, my wife's idea of a tomato cream sauce and what she was served was completely 180 degrees out of phase. She thought that it was supposed to be in a sauce, but it looks like the noodles may have been IN a tomato cream sauce, then taken out and served in the dish. "Ahh...", she hesitated for a moment. "I've had better." She wasn't all that impressed with her meal, either.
I wanted to get some more marinara sauce to put onto both the chicken breasts - to help with the taste and make it more easy to get down - and onto the spaghetti. When Lexi came over to check on us, I asked if I could get some extra marinara sauce. "Um, well, we don't really have a marinara sauce," she said completely confusing me. "It's more like a tomato sauce." I was confused at this point - and maybe she was, too. I thought to myself, "Isn't marinara sauce really tomato sauce?" She told me that they had a meat sauce and I told her that I'd take that. But she was busy behind the bar and with other tables - no doubt due to a staffing shortage - and it was quite sometime before I got the meat sauce. And I was also charged $3.00 for it. And it wasn't worth 3 bucks.
I should have known better when we walked into Uccello's and saw that it was nothing more than a glorified sports bar that happened to serve Italian food. My wife was completely underwhelmed with her penne pasta in a tomato cream sauce - which was more of a glaze on the pasta than a sauce. And I have to say that the chicken parmigiana that I had may have been the worst I've ever experienced. I make chicken parm at home and it's not all that hard to make. The service was friendly, yet spotty - but, we're giving a lot of places the benefit of the doubt because of staffing shortages. All the promise that Uccello's had - the nice looking building frontage, the nice patio out front, even the name yelled "Old World Italian". But I'm sorry to say Uccello's Ristorante was one of the biggest disappointments that we have encountered in our travels.
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