My wife and I live just a block away from the restaurant, and we went there a couple weeks ago for the first time and had a good experience. Tonight, however, we had a terrible experience. We invited another couple to join us at a "great new Italian restaurant in Wicker Park," and were utterly embarassed and disgusted at the way we were treated. We made an 8pm reservation on Opentable, and arrived promptly at 8pm. When we hadn't been seated by 8:30, we politely talked to the manager, who did nothing more than offer us a free drink and lament that "there was nothing he could do." At about 8:55, when a table of 4 had finished and left the restaurant, another group simply helped themselves to the now-vacant table, as if the restaurant were a seat-yourself corner bar. After we and several other parties who had been waiting for close to an hour (some also with 8pm reservations) complained about this, the manager and hostess tried to remove the people who had overtaken the table, but quickly backed down when the customers talked back to them and said that they "knew the owner, so don't mess with us." Utterly disgusted, our group left and told the manager that we would share this experience with our neighbors and warn them about the way the management treated return customers who had been waiting an hour after their reservation time. We then walked over to Chaise Lounge and had a great dinner. Sadly, we would obviously no longer recommend Cafe Bionda to anyone, based on our experience.
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