Warung Laota Tuban — Restaurant in Kuta

Have always visit this restaurant every time we come to Bali. Their food is good and affordable and service used to be ok. Today, we revisited the restaurant again. We went in and the place was full. We waited for a table and a while later managed to sit down. We were not given a menu but it was fine. Probably because it’s a full house, we thought. Awhile later, we managed to get a waiter’s attention and he passed us one. After ordering, some customers beside our table were also trying to capture the waiters’ attention but to no avail. They are Indonesians and looked irritated. Their food was already served and they were probably trying to ask for something but were ignored. The customer asked for chilli and the chilli wasn’t served. She didn’t want to eat her food until her chilli has been served, so she waited. Her request was clearly forgotten after about 10 minutes as she loses her patience and started shaking her head and complaining to some other customers who were also having dinner w her. She shook her head and mumbled, and approached a man who was dressed differently and had 2 walkie talkies w him. Probably the manager? She was served the chilli and I also noticed that her dishes were served wrongly to her. By then, our first dish was served and we too, noticed that they served the wrong dish to us. We ordered long beans with beef but we were served long beans with garlic. We made it known to the person who served us immediately. She checked our order slip, gave an irritated face and walked away with the dish. I saw her passing it into the kitchen staffs ( we were sitting right beside the serving area near the kitchen). Probably because we are tourists, they tried to convinced us that what they served us is what we ordered. But this clearly isn’t going to fool me because I showed the pictures of the dishes we want to order, to the waiter who took our order. So it can’t be wrong. These pictures were taken from their Google review website. I showed the pictures to the waitress again who came back to us with the wrong dish served earlier. She looked at the picture I showed her and nodded her head. She passed the food back to the kitchen staff and they smiled at each other. I really didn’t like what I saw. I ignored as we are tourists and didn’t really know their language. After awhile, our food was served. The last dish which came was wrong again. We would have just accepted the food and just consume it if we can. But we can’t as our children can’t eat spicy food and the last dish which arrived was filled with red cut chilli. I caught the attention of a waitress, showed her what I order from my phone. A manager wearing orange shirt appeared and mumbled some Indonesian language, shook his head, gave out loud sighs and frowned at us. He knows how to speak English and says it’s the same! By now, I got really really irritated and showed him the picture, asking him how can I be wrong when I clearly showed this picture to your waitress who took our order? He kept sighing and asked me repeatedly, “are you sure you want to cancel this order?” My husband asked if we can change and he sighed at us again and shook his head vigorously, trying to show us how troublesome we were. I got irritated and told him to stop shaking his head and stop sighing in front of customers. I told him that we have revisited this restaurant countless times every time we came to Bali. We have also always ordered the same dishes. Unless you can confirm with us that there is no such dish anymore? Then I said to him that it’s ok, please stop sighing and shaking your head in front of us just so you want to prove how irritated you are. We’ll accept the wrong dish , and also accept the fact that service here is no longer the same and we will never step our foot back here again....

Unfortunately, our experience did not match the reputation this restaurant holds.

There was no greeting upon our arrival, and no one assisted us to our table. After seating ourselves, we had to wait around 20 minutes just to place our order—despite calling for the waitress three times. The first two simply asked us to wait, and only the third (though noticeably unsmiling) finally took our order. For context, we arrived before the dinner rush, and only five tables were occupied at the time.

Interestingly, the food arrived in just 15 minutes—faster than the time it took to place our order. Most of the food tasted good (except the fuyunghai, which we wouldn't recommend).

There was a power outage that lasted five minutes, after which half of the restaurant's lights came back on—unfortunately, not the half we were seated in. We sat in the dark for another 15 minutes before checking with the cashier, who informed us they were still investigating. During this 20-minute issue, not a single staff member came over to explain or apologize for the inconvenience.

We asked one of the female staff to help pack our leftovers, and she responded by taking the cutlery (not the food) and saying someone else would assist us—again, with no smile and a rather unpleasant tone. We waited another 10 minutes, but no one came. Only after asking a different staff member did we finally get our food packed.

To be fair, the food is worth noting—it’s solid, and clearly has earned a legendary status in Bali. However, the service fell far below expectations. The male staff members were slightly better, though still lacked basic hospitality gestures like a smile. The female staff, with one exception who said thank you as we left, showed little to no courtesy throughout.

It’s a shame. With such good food, the service could—and should—be so...

Almost every day my husband and I eat at Laota for dinner for almost a year, sometimes in Nusa Dua sometimes here, but twice the food we ordered was not satisfying, if we order chili shrimp, we always order live shrimp to be cooked chili shrimp because we prefer live shrimp compared to fresh shrimp. and for the price is calculated by weigh / count of boiled live shrimp, and for the past few days we take away food every night because it is always crowded there and tonight we ordered live shrimp and the staff showing us the live shrimp that we order still alive but when we opened the food at home it turned out we were given fresh shrimp, which is much more expensive than live shrimp and importantly its really taste different ,And once We also ordered live steamed grouper ala Hong Kong few months ago but were also given fresh grouper, but because at that time we ate there so we didn't want to eat the fish and they not charge for the fish and finally we ate other foods that we ordered. While earlier we brought home food so we were forced not to return, here everything mostly is delicious and also often the food is fresh and comes according to order that's why we come here almost every day, but for more than 1 year my husband and I have often come here, only a few times disappointed with the food we ordered. I actually don't want to comment badly because we like the food and food that is sold and served to customers, but it's a shame if we order food that should come according to order but are given something that is not appropriate. Hopefully the owner or manager can manage the staff or whoever does this situation.And Hope its not the last time we visiting laota cause tonight make us...