29 Villiers Street,
London,
WC2N 6ND
0872 148 4129
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La Piazza
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Having seen several depressing reviews of this conveniently placed little restaurant, I must counter them by writing that three of us returned there for supper on Friday evening - probably our fifth visit over recent months.
We continue to find the service robust, prompt and perfectly polite. The atmosphere is always cosy and the place cheerfully busy. As usual we had a good and reasonably priced meal of pasta and had no problem with the not unusual practice of a cover charge for bread and olives on the table.
There is, incidentally, no service charge included in the bill which is a welcome factor these days.
The food I would give a 3 out of 5 (even though the medium-rare steak) I asked for turned out to be well done.
The service however is awful beyond belief. As this site (and others) well document, the waitresses are extremely rude at every opportunity (making orders, receiving food and drink, paying bill at the end).
I have never had service this bad in all my life and our group refused to tip them. I cannot believe their staff make any tip money.
I guess a lot of their customers are on holiday, so they don't rely heavily on repeat custom, but this was bad beyond belief.
You would think that the owner would correct this.
We decided to head for the piaza on a saturday night as it was well-prized and seemed promising.
Even if the food was rather good, the 4 disgruntled waitresses spoilt the already slightly outdated atmosphere of the place.
We were refused to be served tap water while a few minutes later a table nearby was served a huge jar of tap water - which is quite unfair, isn't it?
We refused to eat the bread and olives they put - or threw - on our table hoping that we would not be charged for these but when the bill arrived with a loud thud - and with no smile from the waitress, of course - we were surprised to discover a so-called Cover charge of £5.25 for 3 people.
Apparently, it was the price to pay to sit in the Piaza restaurant: we really felt like we were forced to pay for unplanned expenses - like water or a mere chair.
Anyway, we will go somewhere else next time and we strongly advised you to do the same.
The food was good, the service attrocious (although it was quite busy, there only appeared to be one person working), and to add insult to injury, we were charged cover charge for the privilege of sitting at a small table right by the door.
At least it seems the other tables were offered bread, which is a common ploy for this charge, but we didn't even receive that.
We later found out that this is one of a whole chain of Italian themed restaurants around the centre of London that do this, we will be avoiding them as there are plenty of restaurants that will be happy to have our custom without charging us for extra for the use of their table.
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