Hands down- my worst experience in a restaurant to date. My boyfriend and I stopped in for a quick lunch and began the experience by seating ourselves, then retrieving our own menus 5 minutes later after still not being acknowledged. There were only two tables in the restaurant, yet we still had to leave our table to walk over to the server and place our order. Ten minutes later he had the busboy drop off waters without asking if we wanted anything else to drink. Another 5 minutes went by (we'd been there now a total of 20), and we finally had to ask the owner for the bread that each table is supposed to receive immediately upon being seated. After another 15 or 20 minutes, the kitchen placed our food in the window and rang the bell, which we heard from across the restaurant. My boyfriend and I watched in complete disbelief as for the next 6 minutes, the owner stood right next to our food chatting with the manager and some woman who ordered take-out, and our server stood in the corner counting his money. Eventually we had to ask them to bring us our food. The server never came by our table after that, and when we asked for a box and the check, he walked away from us and went back to counting his money. We asked a second time, and he brought us the check. We asked a third time for our box, and he took my food and gave it to the kitchen to wrap up. When they rang the bell and set my box in the window, we eventually had to go get it ourselves. To sum up our experience at La Bottega Marino we seriously began looking around the room for cameras thinking we must be on MTV's Boiling Points. The food wasn't bad but it was nowhere near good enough to compensate for the careless wait staff and snobby managers. Please take our advice and stay clear.
Pros: decent food
Cons: careless managers and horrible, slow service
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