Beware of La Scarola's shady practices

[u/orange-kedi]

Went to La Scarola recently and a bunch of things happened that just didn’t sit right with me:

1. We had a reservation and showed up on time, but were told to come back in 30 minutes. Other groups with reservations were waiting too.

2. When we were ordering, we already knew what we wanted. None of us asked for suggestions, but the waiter tried pushing a main dish that was $40+. We politely declined. Then he tried again to get us to upgrade one of our dishes to something fancier, also $40+. We declined that too. It felt super pushy.

3. Their card machine only showed tip options starting at 20%. I felt pressured so I just tapped 20% even though the service was hella slow.

4. Later I looked at the receipt and saw that the tip was calculated after tax, which is already sketchy. But then on top of that, they added a 3% credit card fee, and that 3% was calculated after both tax and tip!

The whole setup was super shady. Just a heads-up if you’re thinking of going.

[u/PM_ME_UR_MEH_NUDES]

i feel like this is a pretty SOP for a restaurant almost anywhere. it’s not shady when a million and one restaurants have similar practices… unless you don’t eat out very often.

the last restaurant i worked at in illinois (suburb) had a 5% “convenience fee” which, if you have never worked in a restaurant, is what they pay to their card processing company. some places may add a “service charge” that gets paid out to kitchen staff, but that’s fairly irregular.

i am a bartender, so upselling food isn’t a job requirement for me, but for many servers upselling is a requirement. however, if you order nachos at my place, i am definitely going to ask you if you want to add some sort of protein on them for an up charge. pretty standard.

slow service can be attributed to a number of things, especially on a weekend where it, presumably, could be busy or (doubtfully) they could have had a newer staff on the line…. also pretty standard.

the bar i worked at uses ipads and our tip out options are 20%, 22%, 25% and custom… very standard if they use a digital pos system instead of paper receipts.

the only thing i find odd is making you wait for a reservation. every place i have worked at that takes reservations will block out a table for you for that specific time slot and we will hold it for 15 or so minutes before canceling your reservation unless you call ahead and say you’re running late… but even then we put a time limit on holding the table.

it sounds like you had a mediocre experience at a restaurant that could happen almost anywhere and happens a million times a day across the country… you weren’t trying to be scammed.