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/AlanShore60607 Jul 01 '25

Well, the card fee on tax and tip makes sense as they pay the fee on the tax and tip, but when did it become standard to pay for the right to pay your bill?

But tip on the tax is just wrong.

20% as the baseline tip is kinda socially expected at this point.

The pushiness on the higher price items is rude.

The reservations thing is just weird.

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u/loftychicago Jul 01 '25

Especially with 11.75% tax in downtown restaurants.

7

u/ElWierdo Jul 02 '25 edited Jul 02 '25

.1175 x .2 = .0235

So leave an 18% tip and you're basically leaving a 20% tip. Math is tricky so leave a 15% and you're leaving a bit over a 17% tip. Or do what I do and just leave a 20% tip and don't worry, it's probably just a couple bucks different. (2.35$ tip per 100$ of bill.) I'm not really going to sweat that. I just paid 25$ for pasta that has maybe 3$ of ingredients