Buca Di Beppo Saturday February 13 2010

Buca Di Beppo 521 N. Rush Street Chicago Il 60611
Date: 02/13/2010
Time: 8pm
Service: Horrible
Food: Good
Price: $$
Description:
This was one of the worst restaurant experiences I have had in a long time. It was the night before valentine’s day so everywhere was crowded. A friend of mine made reservations at Buca Di Beppo for a group of 8 people. I walked into the restaurant and the hostess was rude and unhelpful. She told me that my group was waiting in the lounge. I walked around the entire restaurant and could not find them. About 15 minutes later I was able to reach my friends cell phone and she told me that she was seated at the pope table. The pope table is a very beautiful table with decorations of all the popes. Unfortunately service was horrible and the duration of the meal was incredibly long because of the slow waitress. The restaurant was actually cleared out before we paid our check. I realize that valentine’s weekend is a busy weekend but a restaurant should be able to prepare for this. I wrote the following letter to the restaurant to express my dissatisfaction:

To Whom it may Concern,
I am writing this to inform you of how dissatisfied I was with the service I received at your establishment on the night of Saturday, February 13, 2010. I had reservations at Buca Di Beppo for a group of eight people. The reservations were under the name Dawn Blasko and my group was seated at the pope table. The name of our main waitress was Breanne, although there was another man waiting on us as well. The waitress was extremely slow and even though we had two people serving us neither came to the table often. The appetizer order was taken very late and our drink order was not even taken until about thirty minutes after we sat down. The male server took our drink order and disappeared for at least another twenty minutes. Finally the drink order arrived at the table but only half the table was served drinks and the server forgot the rest of the drinks. When Breanne finally came back to our table to check on us we told her that we had been waiting for our drink order for about thirty minutes and only half of us got drinks. Breanne’s response was “I am aware of it.” I found this response incredibly rude. Not only did Breanne not apologize for the inconvenience of us waiting for drinks she also admitted to knowing that the drinks were taking forever but did not seem to care to take charge and fix the problem. If Breanne was aware that the drink order was late she should have taken responsibility and fixed the problem. Breanne did not even apologize for the drinks being late. Breanne was extremely slow about taking our meal order and when she finally took the order we did not see her again for a long time. Breanne did not come to check on us to see if we were satisfied with our food. Finally the male server returned with the drinks for the rest of the table, at this point we were almost finished with our meal. One man in our group ordered a Bud light from the male server and did not receive it so ordered a bud light from Breanne. Breanne and the male server brought out two bud lights at the same time, which was about an hour after the first bud light had been ordered. It seems common sense that no one wants two beers sitting in front of them because one beer will get warm. The man in our group told Breanne that he did not want two beers. Breanne replied that he placed an order with both her and the male server so he gets two beers. But he only ordered the beer from two servers because he did not think the male server was returning since we had not seen the male server for about 45 minutes. Breanne then proceeded to argue with the man in our group that he must take both beers because he ordered two. This was rude of Breanne and not the type of service I would expect from Buca Di Beppo. The servers then disappeared again. The empty plates piled up on our table. The servers had not cleaned our table for the duration of the meal. Finally Breanne came back to ask if we wanted dessert. No one wanted dessert anymore because of the slow service so we just asked for the check. Overall I had a horrible experience at Buca Di Beppo and I will never return.
We split the checks on the night of our visit but here is the information from our check if you need it:
Check # 330282 Date: 2/13/10 Time: 10:07pm
Check #330218 Date: 2/13/10 Time: 10:15
Thank you,
Elisabeth Schei