Cape Town is full of superb restaurants, so the standards are high and bad service is unacceptable. I don’t often come across really terrible service, but La Piola really outdid themselves and go straight to my “worst ever” service experience.
La Piola is a pizzeria in Steenberg Village in the Constantia Valley. It is a small but busy restaurant and we arrived on Saturday night at around 8 pm. After a ten minute wait we were served drinks and our order was taken. The place was buzzing and, having worked in restaurants ourselves, we were happy to relax and wait our turn.
However, an hour later, we hadn’t seen our waitress again, and were getting pretty hungry. We went to find her and asked when we could expect our food. She then rushed off and we could see her talk to the kitchen staff. She then went to the computer to put through the order (which she had obviously forgotten to do). She then came back to us and told us that the food would be out in two minutes. No apology given.
Ten minutes later, no food had arrived. We had now waited more than an hour and ten minutes for a pizza.
I approached the open plan kitchen counter to find out what was happening. Instead of the expected apology, I was met by aggression and arrogance. They told me to go and sit down and wait until they were ready. The staff was utterly unapologetic; felt that they were well within their rights to shout at me.
I am absolutely appalled by the behavior of the La Piola staff.
In a city where so many restaurants are struggling to survive, this kind of arrogance was truly staggering. We were insulted and verbally abused when I was owed an apology at the very least. I would urge you to support establishments who value your custom, something that the management of La Piola on Saturday night demonstrated rather convincingly that they do not.
