L'Isola Bella Bistro — Restaurant in Lake Country

I don't like writing semi-negative reviews for small, independent and locally-owned businesses, but in this case, it is warranted and I hope it encourages the owners to take action.

We've eaten at the bistro six times now: twice for lunch and four times for dinner. The time of our visits yielded very different results. Lunch was fantastic, but unfortunately the owners, for reasons that make no sense to me, discontinued lunch service at the peak of the Okanagan tourist season, leaving us only with a dinner option.

First, the good. The food is usually good, if not very good when you consider the portion sizes and price. The value is excellent. The food is simple, flavourful and comforting. Exactly what a bistro should be. There have been times when food has been burnt when we've ordered takeout and some of the ingredient choices are interesting, such as peas in a meat sauce. They also use Costco frozen meatballs (someone in another review complained that meatballs are terrible, and now you know why) and Costco “spicy" Italian sausage. It's not spicy.

Now, the bad. The service is terrible. So bad that it offsets any delight that accompanies enjoying the food. There are always two servers and one host/bus person. Even at half capacity it is very clear that this is not enough servers. The following is how our night tonight went (and please understand, this is not an aberration, we’ve had very similar results every single time):

We arrived at 7:06 and we were promptly seated by the host. There were about 30 people seated in total, including the patio. There were many empty tables. It wasn't until 7:17, 11 minutes after we arrived, that our server finally came along to take our drink order. Having been down this road before, my wife and I knew to order our drinks, appetizers and entrees all at once, or we would be there for hours longer than we wanted to be. Our bottled water arrived 13 minutes after we ordered it. Two small bottles from the cooler to our table took 13 minutes, or 24 minutes from when we arrived to get our drinks. It wasn't until 7:53 (36 minutes after we ordered) that our bruscetta arrived. Bread, tapenade, a slide of tomato and cheese, baked for two to three minutes took 36 minutes to arrive. At this point I asked for my small Caesar salad that I had still not received. That took another 11 minutes. Sixty-seven (67!!!) minutes after we ordered, our entrees arrived. My food was as expected, but my wife's gnocchi was overcooked.

Our server made no acknowledgement to the fact that it took a ridiculous amount of time to receive all of our food. She didn’t come to our table unless we caught her attention. She brought two appetizers as if they were separate courses, instead of together, which they should have been. She didn’t bring any bread until she brought us our entrée, despite the fact we sat at our table with nothing but water for almost an entire hour.

I can understand the timing if this was a restaurant where you don’t go for dinner, but for an evening. An evening in which many bottles of wine are imbibed, many courses are eaten and hours are spent in good company. This is not that place. It says so in the name. It’s a bistro. People come to eat. People don’t go out for evenings to bistros that have Canadian Tire camping table covers as “tablecloths” (true story).

The bistro either suffers from terrible service, a poorly organized kitchen, an identity crisis, or all three. The foundation is there for this to be a great eating experience, but it needs help. I hope the owners can turn it around because it was one of the few decent places to eat in all of...

It was my woman and my anniversary yesterday and we had never been to this restaurant before, but heard good things. I called ahead of time to book a reservation for 2. I spoke directly with the owner Andrea. I told him we had never been there before, and that it's our anniversary. I asked that he do something to make it special and I'd be more than willing to provide a nice tip to our server. He agreed and told me "sounds good". We drove all the way from West Kelowna, to Lake Country for dinner. Unfortunately the traffic was awful and even though I left an hour early, we were still about 7 minutes late for our 6pm reservation. We entered the restaurant and had 3 employees walk right by us without acknowledging us at all. No "hello" no "we will be right with you". We stood there for 9 minutes before someone came up to us. When I let them know who we are and apologized profusely for being a bit late due to traffic, her reply to me was "oh yeah we almost gave up on you guys". At that point we finally got to sit down but before we sat they told us we need to be out of that booth by 7:30 to which we said no problem. No one has wished us a happy anniversary yet at all.. We waited over an hour for our food to come out. The bruschetta was dry and lacked balsamic dressing but I have to say, out of everything we ordered the dressing for the house salad was phenomenal. My dish the Neptuno was decent too, but there was a LOT of cheese. With that being said, my woman ordered the Alfredo and it had FAR too much cheese for her to be able to enjoy it. She took a couple bites and was unable to continue. She went to the bathroom, at which point I pulled our server aside. I let her know in the nicest way possible, that it was extremely disappointing that not once did she stop and ask us "how is everything tasting". Not once did anyone even acknowledge it was our anniversary. There was no music playing and when I asked about it, the server said "it's playing its just quiet" and left it at a non audible volume. While we were eating, she came by 3 times asking if we needed ground pepper within 8 minutes. After I expressed my disappointment, she offered to bring us out a dessert and comp my woman's Alfredo off the bill. I said I would really appreciate that. Not once did she apologize for ANY of the things mentioned above. Her excuse was "I didn't even know" to which I told her I spoke with the owner directly, and she should have known. It was all very unprofessional and you could tell that as soon as I mentioned an issue, the server lost all interest in trying. Kept calling us "dear". It was all very inappropriate and demoralizing. The only thing I'd recommend about this experience is the salad dressing... we even told our server we wanted to buy some and she made no effort in selling any to us. We will definitely not be returning and do not recommend anyone to go for a special occasion. If the menu is as pricey as it is, I would expect the service, atmosphere and food...

I go out for a dinner a lot and I must say that this is one of the worst dining experiences I have ever had. Six of us went for dinner and I´ll speak only for myself. The restaurant was empty when we arrived and was full when we left. There were two staff working on the floor and I had to get their attention every time I needed something - ice, parmesan cheese for the pasta, etc. The salad, which accompanies every meal, was lettuce, carrots and maybe a bit of cucumber with a thick strong garlic dressing. I would have preferred some tomato or more veggies in the salad and a better dressing. I thought even the bread was doughy and flavorless. It was difficult to choose a pasta entrée as the only pasta with a meat was the spaghetti and meatballs. There were sides of meatballs and Italian sausage which could be ordered for an extra $5. The lasagna had peas in it so I didn´t order that. I ordered a cannelloni stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach and asked for meatballs on top. There were 5-6 small meatballs but they were terrible. The pasta was gummy and flavorless and the red sauce was just a plain sauce which could have come out of a can. It was supposed to be baked with cheese but only the centre had a blob of baked cheese on it. The only redeeming factor is that the prices are not very high. So, if you´re looking for quantity instead of quality, this...