Zazio's and Greenleaf Trust

It's been almost two years in the making, but the Greenleaf Trust building at the corner of Maple and Woodward Avenue in Birmingham has finally come together.  What once was an abandoned eyesore of a lot at one of the most popular intersections along Woodward Avenue, is now an architectural delight built by the Catalyst Development Co.  Below you will find a set of pictures as the building progressed...

At the ground level, they opened a new restaurant to add to the night life in Birmingham, Zazio's, a modern (very modern) Italian restaurant, which we ventured to tonight.  While we were a little disappointed by the extremely long wait to get a table, we couldn't really say much seeing as it was opening week for this restaurant.  You could tell they were still trying to get their arms around everything as the bartenders were slow, the food was slow, and even the service was quite slow.  Overall, since it was opening week, we couldn't complain, but we hoped for a much better experience.

The ambiance was very Birmingham.  While it is much different than any other restaurant in Birmingham, it had that flashiness that made you think, I bet anyone is anyone in Birmingham will be checking out this restaurant at least once.  And sure enough as we looked around in the bar and while dining, we recognized a few familiar faces.

After a little over an hour wait at the bar, we were finally seated for a 9pmish dinner time.  This would have been completely acceptable by our standards but it took us about 25 minutes to put in our dinner order and a subsequent hour to actually get our dinner.  In-between, we did have our salads, which were quite tasty, but still, we were confused why it took them an hour to deliver our food. At one point, we had to ask the manager where our food was because we were confused and about to eat our arms!

In the end, the food was okay.  I think we actually enjoyed it once we finally had the opportunity to devour it.  On the other hand, I don't recall thinking that it was worth the 2+ hour wait that we had.  Obviously, we figured that after a few months, Zazio's would iron out some of these issues they had with the volume of restaurateurs during opening week, so I'm sure we'll be coming back here soon.