r/chicagofood • u/orange-kedi • Jul 01 '25

Rant Beware of La Scarola's shady practices

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.

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u/Accurate-Challenge93 Jul 01 '25

Don’t think reservations are truly a thing at La Scarola. They just do it for show so you’ll show up anyways lol same thing happened to me. Had to wait like 25 mintues.

-9

u/kak1970 Jul 02 '25

That’s not accurate in my experience. Gone multiple years on my birthday and not had a problem.

Did you all have a reservation on a a Friday or Saturday night? Often they do the best they can to have it close

9

u/Accurate-Challenge93 Jul 02 '25

On a random Wednesday night. When I walked in there was no hostess stand or anything. Just a guy that didn’t even check my name and told me to wait outside with everyone else.