DO NOT ORDER TAKE-AWAY FROM L'OSTERIA!

This is an amazingly crazy story...my family was visiting Bayreuth and I had a late afternoon appointment at 17:45, so my wife suggested I should pick up pizza on the way back. We heard good things about L'Osteria from a friend, and as I left for the appointment she told me that she would put in an order for pick-up at 19:00 in the name of "John."

As it so happened, my appointment went quickly, and I was 30 minutes early for the pick-up. Not wanting to wait a long time in the restaurant, I decided to drive around Bayreuth. I circled the city 3-4 times, and then arrived at the front door of L'Osteria at 19:00. I told them I was there to pick up an order for "John" that was supposed to be ready at 19:00. At the bar, the nice lady asked if I had ordered 2 pizzas, and I shrugged my shoulders and said I wasn't sure what my wife had ordered...only that it would be marked "for John" and ready at 19:00. She found a sales slip and gave it to me, showing 2 pizzas, with prosciutto and other things my wife would probably order (except that one seemed to have "mais" which I took for corn...not a typical thing for her to order). I gave the young lady a credit card, but then it took about 5 minutes for them to figure out how I could pay by card (there was some error in the system).

Later, after the payment was complete and I was waiting for the pizzas, they came back to me with 10 euros cash, saying that I had ordered 1 pizza but paid for 2 pizzas. I was very confused about this, since I thought the sales slip clearly showed 2 pizzas, but they were very insistent. Still, I thought it was odd that my wife would order only a single pizza, but I wasn't feeling great and didn't want to get into an argument since I had not placed the order myself and didn't know the details (and have no cell phone since we're traveling from abroad).

After waiting a while, I saw the manager in a verbal argument with the guy making pizzas, they were yelling and shouting and I could hear words like "pizza" and "prosciutto" and thought "oh no" since they were probably discussing my pizza. After a minute the manager came to me and apologized for the delay, and offered me an espresso, which I gratefully accepted. At 19:20 the bar lady handed me...2 pizzas. The manager came over and was like "hey, I thought it was only 1 pizza." I responded again that I had no idea what my wife had ordered. He was exasperated and said "OK, just take 2 pizzas, a pizza on the house."

(Of course, by the time I got the pizzas, other customers who had arrived at the restaurant after me and were seated at a table were already enjoying their dinners...dining at the restaurant seems to work quite well.)

But when I returned to my family I found out that my wife had never actually ordered anything from L'Osteria! She had tried calling them for 30 minutes straight, and nobody answered the telephone. She finally gave up when the time was approaching 19:00 and I would anyways arrive at the restaurant. I'm not sure whose order we ate.

The pizza was decent, and in the end the staff were courteous and the manager tried to make things right. But in the end they wasted 50 minutes of my time and 30 minutes of my wife's time, a free pizza is the least they could do.

In any case, as you can tell, this restaurant is clearly not set up to handle take-away food orders!