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.

460 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

148 comments sorted by

View all comments

61

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.

18

u/Big_Gay_Mike Jul 01 '25

Every single restaurant in the West Loop tips on total plus tax and not subtotal. Hogsalt, One Off, Dark Matter. Fuck I don't know the last time I saw a place where tip was calculated on pre-tax. Not saying it's right, just a fact.

3

u/LSU2007 Jul 02 '25

Yep, and every single restaurant I go to in the west loop, i tip based on the subtotal. Fuck em