Grubsnitch

This place has AWESOME brunches. Try the ricotta fritters.

I've had good appetizer experiences here, with the delicious baked eggplant and tasty beet salad, but less excellent entrees. One serviceable pasta dish (cappellini with tomotato) and one ok pizza (good sauce, fine crust, bland cheese-- but I'm an admittedly harsh pizza critic). My meat-eating co-diner had a fish entree that was quite good. Sette seems solid, but it hasn't bowled me over yet.

I actually only refrained from "never again"-ing Sette because I'm ending up with too many negative reviews! The last time I was here I ordered a baked pasta dish, and half the noodles were burned black. My dinner on a previous visit was fine, but for the price of  a sit-down I want something good. The service ranges from indifference to smarminess. In all fairness though, I can't drink since being knocked up, and it seems like what many snitchers like about Sette is the wine.

The pasta dishes have gone up in price and I haven't enjoyed the food here quite as much since the chef changed several months ago (the beet salad is still a great choice, but the old recipe was even better.  the asparagus dipped in parm fondue dropped from the menu, but it's still offered regularly as a special, and it's excellent), but it has only slipped from love it to an enthusiastic like it.  I wouldn't suggest that anyone travel to Park Slope just to eat here (it's no Al Di La or Stone Park Cafe), but it's a terrific neighborhood spot.  The manager, John, is friendly and genuine.  Waitstaff quality varies, but I have had some terrific waiters here.  The quality and prices of the wine list are a big draw.   

Yum! The decor is kinda strange. Walking in the place kinda feels like it's going to be some old west saloon. Maybe it's the wood door with "Sette" carved into it? The interior doesn't do much to help... However, the food was excellent. The foccacia and olives were so good we would've been content just getting full of those. The appetizers were great as well, I'm not a fan of beets but the beet salad was tasty and the wood oven baked eggplant was great. For my main course, I had the wood oven baked fish and that too was excellent. Nice cheap wines too!

Needs salt.

Just went here again tonight, in fact. In this part of the slope, this is without a doubt the best place to go for quality food of European extraction. Perhaps of any ethnicity, actually (the only place of comparable sophistication is Yamato, and it isn't my favorite. The 20 wines for 20$ are a great gimmick, but more than that, the wines are actually good and interesting, and for that price you can afford to try something new. Service and ambience are generally of a high, date-worthy level, and the menu covers a fair amount of ground, making it possible to do meals at different price points (i.e., salad and pizza, if you are feeling modest (though the brick-oven pizzas are billed as appetizer-sized, they are perfectly adequate for an entree if you have an appetizer_, or a more traditional antipasto-pasta-secondi and contorni-dessert route if you are feeling more ambitious/flush. They have a brick oven, which is put to good use in the foccaccia served (with very tasty olives in herbed oil) gratis, and in various entrees, such as whole fish. I've yet to have anything bad, though some things have been more impressive than others. My favorite dish so far is a grilled calamari salad with watercress and chick peas. The calamari is ccharred but unbelievably tender, and contrasts nicely with the lemony vinaigrette. There are a few other flavor flourishes that get overwhelmed my the strength of those two flavors, but that's fine, because it's a wonderful, tasty, homey dish with those elements alone (it used to be on the menu, but today it was just a special). That criticism could perhaps be made about some other dishes as well (that the five notes in their menu descriptions turn into a domninant two or three on the palate), but that's just quibbling about what is well-cooked and interesting food at fair prices.

Sette is my pick for best restaurant on or near 7th Avenue.  The food is consistenly tasty, inventive, and genuinely Italian.  The prices are very reasonable.  The long list of good Italian wines for $20 a bottle is a breath of fresh air.  The slightly more expensive bottles also represent good deals and I have yet to go wrong with any wine there.  The desserts are often great and usually not overly sweet - at the very least, you can trust your waiter to inform you accurately about the relative sweetness of the desserts, or on almost any question about the food, for that matter.  The manager (John?) is very friendly, helpful, and non-intrusive.  The waitstaff is, overall, pretty good, but my experiences have varied considerably.  My girlfriend and I absolutely adored one waiter (a tall, large man with a beard), but we haven't seen him around in a while.  Other waiters have ranged from fully competent to sort of green - one was ridiculously awkward.  The patio area is really nice, whether open or closed, depending on the weather.  The decor is pleasant, suggesting rusticness without eschewing urban modernity - far more successful, in my opinion, than the forced rusticness of Scottadito and Convivium (neither of which I consider on par with Sette, though the latter is considerably more expensive).