La Squadra - Restaurant Cuisine Italienne — Restaurant in Gatineau

La Squadra should be a straight 5 stars review restaurant without any doubts. Having an Italian family myself, i know good home-made Italian food prepared with care and this restaurant nailed it 100%.

The seafood plate i received had a safran perfume, amazing herbs, perfectly cooked shrimps, clams and scallops, it was delicious, the lady i was with took the salmon and pasta, and it was creamy, amazingly good and fresh as well. Again... 5 Stars!

Where it all went down, unfortunately is when i ordered a 50$ 2013 Italian Urlo bottle of red from their cellar, and received a 2016 instead. The waiter was amazing, very polite and fast but unfortunately opened the bottle (twist cap) a bit too fast for me to have time to see it was not what i ordered. Too late the bottle was opened so no big deal, i told him it was ok, just ask the owner to knock like idk 5$ - 10$ and everything is ok you know?

Well no, as in the end, after a $150.00 meal, the waiter came back and say: "Sorry sir the owner said... "No can do!" So i talked to the owner myself before leaving, the man said it was either my fault or the waiter"s fault and that's it. Certainly not his fault and certainly not his responsibility to verify in the menu what he has in his cellar no, of course not. So he washed his hands clean of the problem pretty quickly.

Sadly, i felt that i was not an important person enough for him to take care of me, or show respect and honesty and be a good sport and fair to me at all. Honestly i felt like i was treated like a ONE STAR unimportant individual which is very sad, because the food is extremely delicious and well done.

So in the end, the score i give La Squadra is the exact same one the owner made me feel like....Which is.... One Star.

I will gladly change my score if we go back again, and he shows a little bit more respect but for now, back to Mama Teresa where they love and take good care of...

We went last week on a group reservation for a meeting. Not many of our group had came to this restaurant before but we voted to try it since it looked great!! I went online to check their menu before hand and already knew what I wanted to eat. Once At the restaurant, I didn't even really bother looking at their menu since I already knew what I wanted. I asked the waiter to have the dish I picked off their online menu. He indicated that that menu is no good and only the in house menu was accurate. As such, he could not order my dish. I asked him why since it was pretty simple (Penne, with vegetables and chicken mixed in a cream sauce). He indicated again that he can't make that. For an Italian restaurant, it seems like a pretty easy meal to put together.

Anyways, I then looked at the menu and nothing really interested me based on what I was in the mood for. There was one pasta dish I liked but it came with duck . I do not like duck so I asked to switch the duck to chicken instead. The waiter again told me that he would only do it if I paid 3$ more. I questioned him why since Duck is more expensive then chicken. He just said if you want a replacement, I am charging you 3$ more. Do you want it? Since I didn't want to delay any of the other people ordering from my party, I just said ok.

The food wasn't worth the price we paid. Overly priced and the waiter had no personality and I personally think was rude.

After our group meeting, I spoke to some others and they agreed. Not sure any of us will return. My wife also wanted to try this in the future and I told her...

If I could give this restuarnt less then 1 Star I would. I personally am the type of person to give people the benifit of the doubt and lead with kindess but I have to give this place a negative review. Their servers were rude, their service was slow, one of their servers had the audacity to come up to me (An invited guest to a birthday party that night) and tell me if the other half of the party doesnt show up withihn the next few minutes he would give the seats away. What could I do about the birthday girl being a bit late? They eneded up removing half of our reserved tables to give to the customers they said they had to keep turning away but never filled the seats. The last 10 guests of the party showed up and ended up pushing the tables back themselves. I understand you may have other enthused patrons wanting to dine with you but please... don't threaten to remove seats, do it for your so called imaginary guests then never fill them... I guess La Squadra wasn't THAT busy... Anyway when the birthday girl complained about the service and the treatment, the manager had the gall to say "Well you shouldn't have been late." As if customers who reserved and paid for their meals with a forced gratuity weren't valuable enough customers.Unfortunately I have no idea if we were treated this way because half of the GUARANTEED guests were late or if it was because the majoirty of us were Black or Arab... Needless to say I will never dine there ever again and will be sure to let friends, family and collegues in the catering industry know about the awful customer...