La Groceria Ristorante Italiano - CLOSED
853 Main St
Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 497-4214
- Nearest Transit:
Central (Red)
- Hours:
Mon-Fri 11:00 a.m.-10:00 p.m.
Sat-Sun 3:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m. - Price Range: $$
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Parking: Street
- Attire: Casual
- Good for Groups: Yes
- Good for Kids: Yes
- Takes Reservations: Yes
- Delivers: No
- Take-out: Yes
- Waiter Service: Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
- Outdoor Seating: No
- Good for: Lunch, Dinner
- Alcohol: Full Bar
11 reviews
Neighborhood: North Cambridge
"Marco's doesn't look like much, but it's a longstanding local business in a residential area (it outlasted Marino's Restaurant, which used…" read more »
28 Reviews for La Groceria Ristorante Italiano
Wow - I was skeptical, being a fan of the North End, but I was very impressed!
We went with a friend who has dined there several times and loved it! The garlic bread (with cheese, of course!) appetizer was incredible. We split two orders of Chicken Parm (it is HUGE) but honestly could have split one order among us. Dessert was great - try the caramel apple pie, you will not be disappointed.
The service was horrible, honestly. I think we saw our waitress twice, never had our drinks refilled....which irks me, but the verdict?
As my Italian & very picky-about-Italian-food-partner said, "I'll go back there again and again."
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Cool (1)
We've been here dozens of times & have NEVER been disappointed. Owners & employees are always very nice & they have parking. Keep up the great work LG! Btw, the lunch menu is very reasonably priced.
People thought this was:
Useful (2)
I loved this restaurant. La Groceria is an unassuming, unpretentious-looking place, but the food is amazing. Everything I had here was phenomenal. Actually, reminiscing about it now makes me hungry all over again.
Only the dinner menu is served on Saturday -- unless you ask. While lingering outside the restaurant, trying to decide whether to go in or not (and whether it was one-diner friendly), I read the description on the posted menu for their Grilled Shrimp dish, which was only on their lunch menu. It was the reason I stepped into the restaurant. My waitress was so accommodating and helpful. She went without complaint or hint that I was being a nuisance into the kitchen and requested the dish for me. She came back saying it was no problem at all. The five very large shrimp had a hint of smoky charred flavor, but the shrimp itself was unblackened and tender. The flavor of the shrimp was so intense. These were served over a saffron risotto with peas and leeks and other deliciousness, and an amaretto-white zinfandel sauce. I loved it. . . . $20
The almond pastry dessert I had was unbelievable. Starting from the bottom: there were two layers of almond-infused cake, separated by a thin layer of sweet almond-y goodness. On top of that was a thick layer of cream, topped with crunchy and sweet almond bits. And all of that was drizzled with caramel. The size of this dessert was big enough for 4 people. I wanted to eat every bite, but couldn't even get through half of it. (The other half made for tasty dessert leftovers later that night!) . . . $8
To drink, the Italian mojito -- a mojito with a twist! The twist being the essence of basil -- a brilliant and not-too-subtle enhancement of the standard mojito. . . . $9
The complimentary bread that is served after you place your order is worth a mention here. I took one bite into the warm and doughy slice, and raved uncontrollably about it to a passing waiter, who informed me that it is baked fresh in their kitchen. This bread was so soft and subtly garlicky, topped with fresh tomato chunks and onions that were baked onto the bread. Wow. I asked for extra bread and then asked my waitress to put more in my takeout container :)
The sparse decor is the charm of La Groceria. With the afternoon sunshine streaming in through the front windows, the wooden tables and chairs glow with earthy modesty, and you enjoy your unbelievable meal while bathing in this simple peaceful natural light -- coupled with non-pretentious, un-affected service, this was better than any upscale dining experience, especially on a quiet Saturday afternoon.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Cool (1)
"Cosi-cosi" Italian food served in an atmosphere that reminds me of Grandma's living room- in the tacky, not charming way. Over-priced, for what it was.
Not too much love on Yelp for this restaurant, but I found it to be a delicious alternative to other Central Square staples.
The food isn't artsy, nor would I expect it to be. It's just simply delicious. The bruscetta was served on toasted mini-rolls (a wonderful touch) and the swordfish I got was hearty and cooked well.
I wouldn't call it a date place, but if you want to eat a very good meal served without a fuss, this is your place.
3 stars and here's a quick why
-Food decent but overpriced. If I'm paying 17-25 dollars for italian food then it should be pretty darn good, but my pasta was just average and kinda cold honestly (I was with a large group).
-Dessert was delicious so that keeps it from being two stars.
Not a terrible place to go, but it's not at the top of my list for that price range.
Bad. Bad. Baaad. Our waiter.. lurked... He'd come by and check up on us at very awkward moments. That shit's supposed to be clockwork, man.
Food was mediocre. Extremely overpriced. Bruschetta was really nothing special. Get a recipe off allrecipe.com and voila, bruschetta with more flavor and heart than La Groveria's. My salmon was very, very salty. Boyfriend's pasta was.. eh. All our food just looked like it was lazily scattered about a plate. I mean, this place just seemed like an Olive Garden with a little more effort.
The place also looks like a cheap diner that was half-heartedly revamped. Just. No. Don't. I mean, go down one block to Cinderella's if you really want mediocre pasta but at half the price. This is one of those places where I will just absolutely never return to because the food was not worth the price, and service was.. too weird and imposing to deal with again.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
I wanted to fall in love with this place- it was cute, home style Italian with attentive and sweet employees- but the food really wasn't very good. My salad was pre-made and my veggie pasta was nothing special. It was also exceedingly expensive for what it was. We only ended up here because Bertucci's down the street had a twenty minute wait. Damn impatience.
Great Italian food. The sauces were not too heavy, not too salty, but still flavorful and hearty. The seafood was tasty for me, and I think everyone else ate every last bite.
I came here for a department lunch. The food was good but the service was bizarre. We all ordered bruschetta to share and soups to start which were all delicious. They ran out of one of the entrees that a couple of people had ordered but had to come back to tell us. They forgot to refill our drinks which was problem when we had our meals and the servers disappeared. I hate eating without a drink, I get thirsty! All in all it was just bad service. I've heard similar stories from coworkers who have been there recently as well. In the future, I may order food to go from this restaurant but I won't go back for table service.
We went for a free dinner with one of our professors one time, and he spent the entire meal telling us a story about how he once brought visiting emissaries from Italy here, and they stayed there for four hours hanging out in the wine cellar making pasta, and that's how he knew it was the best Italian restaurant in Boston. Anyway, I got spaghetti carbonara that time and it was pretty fantastic. Then I saw all the mediocre reviews and wondered if I only loved it because it was free.
I came back after graduation, and it was just as good as I remembered. The bruschetta is mind-blowingly good, although maybe that is because I am in love with fennel. The spaghetti carbonara is still great. And the waitresses never have any clue what is going on. Seriously, one of them picked up my salad while I was actively eating it and took it back to the kitchen so the chef could sprinkle cranberries on it.
It's better than any Italian I had in the North End, but I think the North End is generally kind of a crapshoot.
Just popped in here for dessert on a whim last night. They were so accommodating, so friendly. We wanted a brownie or whatever and there were no brownies in the display case.
So the waitress can see that we need to be hooked up, so she tells us to hold on, yells to Frankie (of course his name is Frankie) to get us a brownie from the basement. And he does, and it was delicious.
It was delightful all around.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Funny (2)
Cool (1)
I just didn't think the food was that good. It wasn't horrible, but I've definitely had much better Italian food in Boston.
The place DOES look like it is from 1985, with pink paint on the walls and the outdated decorations. Everything about the restaurant would not be out of place in that era.
I got the Chicken Margherita for about $17, and it was basically a piece of chicken breast covered in cheese in a slightly sour white-wine and mushroom sauce. It was a huge piece of chicken, but that's all there was on the plate. It tasted like the 80s. It came with a side plate of pasta in tomato sauce. It had some fancy Italian name on the menu, but it looked and tasted like what I got for school lunches back in the day, a slight step up from Chef Boyardees.
La Groceria, in my opinion, does not merit a $20 cost for the dinner I got. I hate to compare it to a chain (since Yelpers hate chain restaurants), but I like Bertucci's a lot more. In fact, I also like Cinderella's (right down the block) more as well. With two better similar restaurants in its area, I can't even fathom comparing it to a North End place.
Central Square has much better other options for a medium level dinner.
People thought this was:
Funny (1)
YUM! We just got back from a birthday dinner for my boyfriend, and it was good. The bruchetta does indeed rock and is deliciously flavored with lots of fennel and onions and tomatoes and cheese. We had caesar salads and they were super good; very cheesy and in reality, a meal in themselves. I chose the mussels and clam pompodoro, which was really delicious and garlic-laden. I usually enjoy mussels and clams more in a white sauce, but this was red and garlic-y and very good. The pasta is clearly homemade and very good. We skipped dessert, as I made proper birthday cupcakes, but what I saw in the case looked good.
This place is definitely a good place to go celebrate, and the service was decent. I can see why it was chosen for tonight; it was good and now I am too full to eat cupcakes. We were casually dressed, and it was nice to wear a hoodie. We were all wearing hoodies to think about it. It's pretty awesome to eat a good pasta dinner in comfy clothes. I am over dressing up for dinners.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Cool (2)
UPDATE: If you do come (and it should only be on someone else's tab!) -- your best bet is the Risotto Tutto Mare.
-------
So-so overpriced Italian food. The brick building and inside decor are rather quaint and cute, but don't let that or the glass counter of desserts and appetizers at the entrance fool you.
I had the Pollo Scarpariello -- chicken, sausage, peppers, and artichokes on rigatoni. It was alright, though I probably wouldn't order it again. Break that $20 elsewhere!
What happened to this place? Did I just go on a bad night? The antipasto was boring, the Lobster Fra Diavolo was not hot at all, the dessert was congealing. Did I just get a bad waiter? Usually I really like the food here but I don't know, I got a phoning-it-in feeling the last time I went. Maybe I should have had something powerful off their upperwardly-mobile financial-district-esque "martini" menu. I know, now I'm just being mean. But really. Egh.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Cool (1)
I tried La Groceria this past weekend...and really found the Yelp reviews to be pretty amazingly and almost humorously accurate.
1. the Bruchetta is indeed fantastic.
2. it definitely looks like a hotel lobby. WTF? are they blind?
3. our waitress was so overwhelmed by everything. she got completely flustered when we ordered our bruchetta and wine at the same time...and then waited a bit to order dinner?
over all, everything was really yummy, straight up traditional italian. i tried a chicken dish with broccoli, fontina and plum tomatoes that came in a heavenly wine sauce. really lovely. my husband got the clams and muscles in garlicky marinara over linguine and loved it. the wine was okay, not a huge selection but containing the requisite pinos and chiantis (pino was a bit fruity for my taste tho). the dessert wasn't anything to get excited about-- a kind of dry crumbly warm molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream...good strong coffee though.
we left really really full (we went there starving)...don't know how i danced my ass off at the party i went to after!
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Cool (1)
La Groceria has decent food and parking and is generally worth a visit. There are some draw-backs that the management could easily fix, but for some reason it doesn't. First of all, the decor seems to be based on a mid-range 1980's hotel lobby. The art is the type which is bolted to walls of a Marriott. It is really off-putting. The place is not inexpensive and really deserves a face-lift. Indeed, my former boss stopped taking guests there as even he noticed the out-datedness -- and this man is definitely not a slave to fashion.
The other issue is the service. The staff is nice, but a little over-whelmed or not particularly attentive it seems. Every time I have gone, I have lamented that if they just tried a bit harder I would have a wonderful experience to match the tasty food.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Normally I wouldn't downgrade a place for being without vegetarian/vegan options, but in this case I just can't help myself. Even if I ate meat, I'm not sure I would want to trouble myself with La Groceria again. It's not that it's necessarily a bad place, I'm just not quite sure what is so special about it.
The service is so-so, and the servers seem to be easily overwhelmed. We arrived on an afternoon near Christmas for a quick "team lunch." Now, honestly, La Groceria--you are a slightly upscale restaurant situated between Tech Square, Central Square and a university--of course people are going to want to come here for holiday lunches and company gatherings--prepare for it.
When we first arrived I was really excited to see a vegetable tagliatelle on the menu. It was listed as having cheese so I asked the waitress to make sure there was none on my food. It arrived without cheese, but I didn't stress the non dairy enough (my fault, i know), so the whole dish was swimming in butter. Yuck. I don't like to waste food so I made due, picking off the vegetables and leaving the butter soaked pasta behind.
All in all, I enjoyed lunch with my colleagues, but I think the company made the day more than the restaurant. It definitely didn't live up to the hype...except for the bathrooms--those babies were pretty nice...
Otherwise, I think I would suggest elsewhere for our next day out.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
We tried this place for the first time the other day after hearing nothing but rave reviews about it. One person even said it was better than anything we'd find in the North End. I don't know what they were smoking.
The food was good, I definitely enjoyed my lobster ravioli and their brusectta is fantastic, but I'll take G'vanni's over La Groceria any day of the week.
Also, what's with the decor? It looks like the last time they redecorated was 1986.
People thought this was:
Funny (1)
Cool (1)
Decent Italian food at a reasonable price. Fairly nice ambiance. I came here with a fairly large group, and the service was still reasonably good. I ordered the lasagna of the day, which they claimed was lasagna bolognese (meat sauce). In fact, it was some sort of vegetable lasagna (it had ground carrots and zucchini). The food was still quite good - very creamy and fattening. My entree was about $15 - I think that the meal (with alcohol) came to about $35 per person, including tax and tip.
ever had a waitress with a nametag on that says BUTTERFINGERS? ok, well, i've been to la groceria several times, all of those times it was pretty good, and i'm a picky italian. great bruschetta, yummy eggplant parm, and decadent tiramisu.
but, here's where it gets funny...
i'm there with my boyfriend and his lovely parents. first, our waitress dropped all of our menus on the floor. no big deal, whatever. then, she dropped her pad of paper to take our orders. ok, spaz . soon, she comes over with a tray of our drinks. manages to get several on the table, then drops the rest on the floor, covering my feet. glass everywhere. ok, so some guy comes over and cleans it up, but my feet are soaked. then, she was VERY CLOSE to dropping an entire tray of food on the floor, like to the point where i gasped. i had to bite my tongue not to laugh. ok maybe i'm going to hell, but it was just getting funny at that point.
she was either wworking on lack of sleep, lack of crack, too much crack, who knows. it was absoloutly bizarre. no apology from the owner/manager, like.. oh, we'll take the drinks off the tab since they landed on you. nope.
alas, we won't be back, because it was just too weird. but it sure was memorable since we still laugh about it.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Funny (3)
Cool (1)
A cambridge Italian tradition La groceria is your typical feel good Italian. The have fresh ingredients and the pasta is always al dente. lately the menu has changed to include more "light" dishes and fish. It is a great place in the winter time. for a family reunion, a company party or a xmas party.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Good food at reasonable prices. It's a great place to go with groups. While I wouldn't suggest it, my friend made a last-minute reservation for a group of 15 - how many places can take that large of a reservation a week in advance? Not many.
That is typically worrisome for me....but I thought the food was pretty good (standard Italian fare) but it was a little on the pricey side.
I NEVER complain to a waiter about my food- except for the one time I went here. I went here on a date thinking it was closer than the north end and it got good reviews so we would give it a try. They had very few vegetarian options. I ordered some kind of pasta in red sauce (putanesca possibly- it was a few years ago so I am not sure of the exact meal)- something simple and hard to mess up. The waiter brought out our meals and mine was ice cold and sopping wet, with a huge amount of water and very little sauce. The pasta was soggy and it was as though they had not drained it! It was just horrible. I finally got up the nerve to let the waiter know (which takes a lot of nerve for me), he told me that that was how it was supposed to be, to which i responded "are you telling me that my pasta w/ red sauce is supposed to be ice cold and overcooked, with a huge amount of water in the bowl?" I was not trying to be rude, I just knew that that was not how it was supposed to be. I did not eat my meal, I left it sitting there after taking one bite, mixing it did not even help. He charged me for it and did not apologize and when I asked to speak to a manager I was told that none was available. I guess the customer is always wrong here. Never to return.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
I love this resturant. I think the food is incredible, the tiramisu is the best I have ever had. It has a nice comfortable atmosphere and friendly service. It is conducive to good conversation.
My family has gone here for countless graduations and birthdays, as well as Valentine's day. We have never been disappointed.
Decent italian place. Has parking.
good, reasonable italian. which is different from decent, cheap italian (that's cinderella's, up the street). i like their lobster ravioli, their lasagna is above average (contains vegetables, not just meat and cheese).
a good place to show up at unexpectedly and they also handle groups pretty well.
People Who Viewed This Also Viewed...
Related Lists
-
places to avoid
here is a list of places i would not suggest going…
Hot and New
- Sweet
67 reviews
Neighborhood: Back Bay
- Dali Restaurant & Tapas Bar
223 reviews
Somerville, MA
- The Hen House Wings 'n Waffles
19 reviews
Boston, MA
- Petsi Pies
51 reviews
Somerville, MA
- James's Gate
77 reviews
Neighborhood: Jamaica Plain
