La Fabbrica — Restaurant in Brussels

Very upset to be leaving this review. Reserved a table for 6 for a family lunch.

Service was extremely slow and painful: We order the dish of the day. Everything was fine until they come back saying the dish of the day is no longer available. (Despite having asked: this is available, correct?)

We choose other dishes. They come with our plates, and we immediately see one is wrong (same color of the pasta, but they brought us a completely different plate from what we had ordered). We tell the waitress who is fully lost and we end up just deciding to take the wrong plate in order to not further delay things (it had taken long enough already)

Ordered a beer which came when food was already finished. Who takes 15-20 minutes to bring one drink ?

We order one dessert which ends up taking forever (25-30 minutes), also because the waiter was not reactive and had no idea what they were doing. After asking again about this dessert and being told it would be ready in five minutes , we decide to then leave, as this had gotten ridiculous and we had other appointments during the day.

When you are charging 20-30 euros per plate it is unacceptable to have such bad service and cut corners by getting student waiters who have no idea what they’re doing (not their fault by the way).

Cherry on the cake was the floor manager antagonizing us at the cash register whilst paying for the meal. She wanted to of course charge us for dessert. She very rudely took out the menu and pointed out the time indicated to prepare said dessert, which was 15 minutes “I have to throw this in the garbage now!!!” . After an animated back and forth, we pointed out the other flaws of the service and of course were met with similar behavior as described.

What a shame: cute setting and ambiance. Food is fine for Brussels although overpriced (and not authentic of course)

We live nearby and would have been very happy to spend our money here for brunches and lunches during weekends but will of course do no such thing.

Never...

Cute setting, very quiet and comfortable. The service however is a disaster. We asked if the daily dish was still available to which sounded like it was to then having to reorder our choices as the daily dish had ran out.

There where quite some misunderstanding on both ends of the parties however this got worse has one person clearly ordered one dish and then got given something completely different. The serving of the food was also very sequential, as for a party of 6 it must’ve taken 5-10 to get all the plates from pick up to the table. This would ensure some meals turned colder.

We then wished to reorder some bottles of water and a beer during our meal. The drinks arrived when we finished. Way too late.

Eventually one person wanted the Pain Perdu as a dessert. This was made clear to the server however 5 minutes we got asked again if we wanted desserts.

15-20 minutes passed until the server showed up saying it would need 5 more minutes. Due to time constraints we couldn’t wait more (flight).

Then, what looked to be like, the floor manager decided to confront us with the pain perdu which still wasn’t ready when we got to the check out area. She showed us a wait time for the dessert written on the last page of about 15 minutes for it to arrive. We for sure waited 25 minutes.

Concluding, above average food, disastrous service and wait times. Amplified by a manager antagonising us by forcing to pay for a dessert that still wasn’t ready.

They however dropped the charge after the fact.

Never...

Worst wanna-be Italian in Brussels?

An astonishing experience. We were a table of 13 people. Before even welcoming us, they told us we could only get 5 different choices of dishes, no more or the chefs will not manage. But in fact this was not difficult, since they were out of pizzas and a few pasta choices as early as 1pm. Staff was unfriendly and completely lost despite the place was not even full, multiple people came to get orders and left without taking them with random excuses (but probably this is not the best place to work in). Pasta dishes can be all you want them to be, but they are certainly not Italian recipes. The way they are advertised is fraudulent: ortolana doesn't even have eggplants in, pappardelle ai funghi are floating in cooking water and roquette. It's like asking for a coffee and getting a tea instead. Our drinks arrived after we finished our dishes. And of course the prices...prices are not only above average, but if you compare them with a ridiculously bad cuisine, we all got the feeling we were robbed at gunpoint.

I'm genuinely surprised this place is still...