Focaccino — Restaurant in Berlin

I am sure that on a quiet day this is a nice place. But we experienced what happens on a busy night: they cannot manage the amount of tables they have. There are too many tables and the staff is unorganized. The staff gets frustrated, haste becomes chaos, frustration becomes rudeness. They do not know who ordered what, the waiter's elbow is at your face, basic payment questions won't go smoothly. It is a challenge to get into the ladies' room. If you have a reservation for a big group and not everybody is there on time, the manager starts to harrass you. You must be there and you must order ASAP. His communication becomes condescending. And when you don't tip, you mention that the service was bad, the manager puts pressure on you and will not accept his failure. You can see this here too, under the bad reviews. It is not a problem for him to use unacceptable tone against the customers. He never actually says something like "I am very sorry for it, next time we will do better". It is so easy, but he truly believes you are the problem.

Focaccino could be a good place, you can see it in the good reviews. But it is not now. A restaurant is always 75% about the service. I worked in this industry and even at the busiest nights, under extreme pressure I smiled at the customers and handled them as kings. I said sorry again and again for any kind of inconvenience. And I was never, NEVER EVER pushy if I did not agree with the customer.

On the feedback of the manager: "25 EUR unpaid" - any restaurant in this world asks the table to pay for the remaining bill when the last one pays. (in group reservations unpaid drinks is very typical mistake.) As I said before, basic payment issues are problems here. I always pay my bills. The manager should send me his bank account to my email and I will send 25 EURs: karamcsand [at] gmail [dot] com.

"10 instead of 14", "1 our late arrival for 2 people" - other typical situations about groups. Many restaurants do not accept reservations for 5+ people for this reason. It is up to the restaurant to decide its model. (!) There was no empty seat from our arrival (not even one in the full restaurant), we did not occupy extra space. Everybody ordered dinner, we the "late ones" ordered desserts too, the restaurant for sure did not lose money on our table.

"continously changed seats" - it happened once, when the last two arrived. 3 people shifted left by one step. Easy to handle. "you ate everything" - Wow, is this a privilige here? "many of your friends were happy" - They were just polite. Even before I stepped into the restaurant they texted me about your pushy manner and they said the same on the spot. I was just the one who said it into your face, which you still react with ad hominem attacks. "two big luggages" - It was one. And how come it is a problem, how it is an argument? "52 people group went well" - Why should I be satisfied that you were nice for another group?

Obviously the manager still wants to win arguments on how good his restaurant is, not actually making the restaurant better, fixing the problems. That is the very reason I left here my feedback. This is one of the worst things that can happen to...

Maybe this is me misunderstanding how New Year’s Eve service should be in Berlin, but still. We agreed to a predefined menu with 4 courses. When we came to the restaurant at the appointed time and got our table, the staff didn’t seem to be quite sure what we ordered or if we already have paid. Had to wait some time before ordering our first drink. The waiters in general were quite unavailable and moved through the restaurant without even lifting their eyes from the floor. So our first PREORDERED dish came 1 hour after we came and we did not get any apologies or even explanation from anyone while we waited this whole time. The carpaccio was fine, but the taste of the long wait was more overpowering. Next dish came also maybe 40 minutes after the first one. It was ravioli and it tasted really good, so it is a shame that the rest of experience was underwhelming. We realised that if we stayed we would not be finished with our meal until midnight. This was not working for us since we had further plans and we had to leave after the second dish. The waitress tried to explain to us about it being busy and so on, but I still don’t understand how you can manage to give such a looong frustrating experience when the number of guests and chosen dishes is predefined and it is a special night as New Year’s. If you don’t have the capacity to provide a good service than reduce the amount of tables you choose to serve. This was a real downer as we expected something else considering the reviews...

My husband and I visited this place for the first time 2 days ago on a valentine's day. It is very difficult to rate this place for me as our experience was ruined when the oldest waitress there started screaming at me for putting my gum in my plate. There were no napkins :) Not going to lie I was stumped by her rudeness and only said at some point of her lecturing me for the next 5 minutes "I am sorry, the next time I'll swallow it". Really, I felt like my mother was giving me a shameful lesson in front of everybody. When in fact, even my mother has never done that as she has a sense of tact.

The owner of the place was very nice, picked a nice bottle of wine for us, was very present and attentive, the other waitress was also very nice.

We had a steak and tuna, octopus salad and some deserts. Tuna was delicious.

With that being said, a sense of bitterneas stayed with me, so never will visit this...