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| - You should always listen to your gut. And my gut told me that after eating at Terroni on Queen, I had been warned. I did my due diligence and read the reviews of La Bettola--a mixed bag it seems. Let me begin by saying that Madeline, the hostess that booked my reservation was obviously doing me a favour by taking the call. She was irritated that I asked if she was on the subway line. I thought she'd slit her wrists when I asked how to get to the restaurant from the subway station. There was a lot of sighing, with a tone that most clearly said, "you are a nuisance". There were no "pleases or thank you's" here. That should have been my first clue about the attitude of the staff. After that, I phoned to ask for a wine list to be emailed to me before my reservation as the wine list online has no prices. This is one of my biggest pet peeves, btw. I received nothing, until I called two hours before my reservation, again, and then did receive one.
When I arrived, the hostess was pleasant and accommodating--the only nice thing I have to say about La Bettola. We were shown to a table that was dropped into a corner. A corner of what? A corner where a party of 17 was sitting. What does that mean? The length of one wall was sat with half the guests, and the length of the adjoining wall was sat with the other half. And our table was right in the nexus. The table should have never been sat. We literally had rear ends brushing by our heads. Servers were whizzing by clipping parts of our body each and every time. Their rear ends so close to my face that they were closer to me than my actual guests. The guests from one half of the 17 top were surrounding our table, talking over us, between, around us to the other half of their table. We couldn't hear one another at all. We asked to be moved to another table. Our choices were, sit at a bar table on a bar stool, or sit directly beside a party of 5 and share the table with them. As in, my chair is directly beside a stranger, as we share a meal at a common table. Neither of these options were suitable and so we waited for a real table to come available. We waited 30 mins, without any server coming to our table. At that point, I went to speak with a manager. Remo. Remo the manager was dressed in jeans and a flannel tee. Very professional. He never once apologized to me about our table until I pointed out that he never apologized. His attitude was, we're busy, get over it, other people don't have a problem with this. His actual response, "You caught us with our pants down, what do you want me to say?" After still feeling like our complaints had fallen on deaf ears, I spoke with one of the partners. His attitude was that he was trying to accommodate everyone--us and the large party. My point was that our table should never have been sat in the first place. That they should have left that table open and unsat because it was so close to the other table--almost touching!! He maintained that he must fill his restaurant and others have no problem sitting there. This may be true. But I did. And I'm not picky. In fact, I'm a former server of 15 years, and know when something is reasonable, and when something isn't. All I wanted was someone to say, "You know what, you're right, this is a crappy seating plan. We shouldn't have sat that table in the first place. It's unfortunate that you and your guests are having a disjointed and unpleasant meal". Instead I got indifference and aloofness. I will never go to any Terroni family restaurant again. Okay, we had a crappy table, but management, do something about it. Make your guests feel welcome, wanted, and appreciated. We left after drinks and appetizers and went to another restaurant for dinner. Embarrassing.
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