5 /5 Peggy Kahan: We were driving north from Seattle with reservations for dinner in Oak Harbor when we saw this interesting older building off I-5 with Il Granaio Authentic Restaurant written on the side. We were intrigued. A very quick Google search told us that our initial quick impressions were correct.
So we U turned, cancelled the Oak Harbor reservations and had an early dinner at Il Grannaio. Wait time without reservations on a Saturday night was about 20 minutes.
A waft of garlic greeted us as we came in the door and we were immediately taken with this place.
We were on the road and this was an early dinner so we didn’t order crazily as we might have. I was going to order a glass of one of their reds and they did look good. But I’m a California white wine girl and went for the Shortbread buttery Chardonnay and was very happy.
The dining room was fairly large and full but not too noisy. Conversation was easy.
The table focaccia was wonderfully garlicky, soft, with butter and seasoning. We split the Granaio salad with Gorgonzola cheese, seeds, tomatoes and balsamic dressing. Very nice.
We also split the strozzabitti with thinly sliced spicey but not too spicey Italian sausage. Al dente pasta, tasty tomato sauce. So very good. Even after splitting we took some home.
We also split a tiramisu with mascarpone cheese. Tony, our awesome server, said ‘ if it doesn’t have marscapone it’s not tiramisu’. Along with some tasty limoncello it was the perfect ending to our wonderfully spur of the moment dinner.
All the staff were helpful but Tony was understatedly awesome. Just the right balance between being clearly a professional and being there to help us enjoy our evening.
Maybe next time we head north from Seattle we’ll stop in Mt Vernon just so we can stop at I’ll Granaio.