Arriva Ristorante — Restaurant in Vancouver

One star rating for the owner of the restaurant who apologized to us.

Do you agree that when you visit a restaurant, besides the quality of food, we as customers are also looking for a good experience?

I have never written a poor review for any restaurant but my terrible and frustrating experience tonight prompted me to do so. So here’s my experience:

When we arrived at the restaurant, it was not even half full. We stood at the entrance for 5 minutes and no one greeted us at all. A hostess finally pointed us to a table where we seated. No menu or water served. We waited for a while and I had to go to the front and grabbed the menus ourselves.

The same hostess who pointed us to the table walked by us couple times and after he picked up the empty plates from another table, he continued to walk by our table without even an eye contact. I excused him and asked him “Are we being ignored here?” One would expect a quick apology and some attention; however, to my surprise, he said “we are very busy tonight and you don’t have a reservation. You should be lucky that I seated you here.” I was in shock....the restaurant is not even half full..... :o

I responded: “if you do not welcome walk-in customers, please put a sign at the entrance so that we will go to another restaurant. Once we get served a table, we would expect some attention, isn’t it?” He continued to say “you can say whatever you want.” He walked away. Wow..... speechless..... :o

The restaurant manager probably heard our conversation and came right away and tried to apologize. He was nice and wanted to make up for our terrible experience. However, the hostess has already spoiled our night. As he was pretty arrogant in his response, we are all concerned he might do something to our food. Also, I was extremely upset with how I was being treated. So we left. They have lost a long term customer (over 20+ years). It’s so important to hire staff who understand customer services.

We went to Italia Bella on 215 Kingsway. It’s our first time there. We were greeted by the hostess right away and our server, Colleen, is a wonderful server. The food was excellent and the cheesecake dessert was delicious. Reasonable pricing and good portion of food. The mussels were fresh and every dish was excellent. Italia Bella is now our favourite Italian restaurant and we will be back for sure. Try there, you won’t be...

I write this review with great disappointment.

I made a reservation for a birthday dinner with my friend here and made a note of it on OpenTable, since they had that option open.

I was excited because I knew the previous owner Paolo before he passed away, who was a very warm and kind gentleman. However, I don’t know his sons, only from photos, and had not been to the restaurant.

When the day came and I arrived at the restaurant on time, it was his son the new owner who led us to our table. The greeting was very matter-of-fact and he quickly left after leaving us with the menu.

A different server expediently took our order later on.

The food was okay. The bread was cold but delicious; the salad was a bit bland but still good. My friend liked his fettuccine, though my lasagna was frankly unremarkable. I could taste the quality of cheese, but otherwise I think the lasagna from a certain family-friendly Italian restaurant was slightly more enjoyable than this.

None of the above really mattered too much, because what I was annoyed about was how stone cold the service was throughout the entire affair.

When I walked to the washroom, a waitress was staring at me. I gave a smile as I walked past her, and there was not a single change of expression on her face.

Near the end of our meal, the waiter asked if we would like to order dessert, I replied thanks but it was my friend’s birthday and we had to leave some space for cake. The waiter acknowledged simply with an okay then left. He also didn’t say anything while we were paying our bill.

Not once did the server ask us how the food was throughout the entire evening. They were, however, noticeably more attentive to other tables near us. Not sure if it’s got something to do with us being the only non-white table in the restaurant at that time.

Ironically, the best service we got was from the water waiter who was replenishing our glasses all evening. He was incredibly attentive and friendly the entire time.

I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but I will say the service was quite disappointing by any standards.

Based on my experience, I cannot...

I would like to preface my review based on the service alone. The food was actually flavourful and pretty decent. That being said, I was horrified with the level of customer care the servers and the floor manager provided on what was supposed to be a pleasant night out with my friends.

The four of us ordered their Dineout menu along with their wine pairing. Throughout the course of the evening, the servers seemed to intentionally avoid eye contact with us and one of them completely disregarded my friend’s direct wave towards him. On the third try, one of the server gestured that he saw us, but he never came. Lastly, they refused to split our bill and blamed us for needing it split. The floor manager recognized the discord and proceed to tell us that we should have taken the onus of how we were going to pay from the beginning. Later, he told us to figure out the difference of the bill amongst ourselves. I understand that tips are a REQUIREMENT in our culture, however neglecting your customer’s needs completely and handling customer service so unprofessionally are things I really cannot stand for.

My final straw was at the end of the meal. My friends and I were horribly upset with the level of service and it ruined our night out. We decided that we would reflect the unsatisfactory service with the appropriate tip. I was the last to pay and I have been planning to pay a bit extra to compensate for my friends’ tips, but the floor manager continued to express his discontent and started to guilt trip us along the way.

I believed that customer blaming and guilt tripping were a thing of the past or something you only experience in movies to emphasize the level of stupidity the restaurant stood for. Although, this was the case on this particular night. I was furious as he handed me the POS terminal and I proceed to give them a 5% tip.

If anyone actually wants to enjoy their meal and their experience, I would not recommend this restaurant. There are plenty of great restaurants with great services in Vancouver. I, for one, am never going back to...