Laguna Libre – Eco Ristorante Jazz club & Cocktail Bar — Restaurant in Venice

Ok where do I start, we were tempted in to the restaurant by a lovely lady, she had good chat and encouraged us in with talks of all the food being made with love. We sat down and ordered our food before our drinks. Ok that was alright. We both ordered the pasta set menu, with a bottle of merlo. The starter arrived after about 10 mins and was lovely, it's was buffalo mozzarella on salad with tomatoes. Then we had nearly and hours wait for the main course. As we were waiting we could see the restaurant starting to get more busy. It was quite funny to watch the waitress coming out with dishes and have no idea where they were going, almost walking round with dishes until someone from the other side of all the tables shouted that it was their dishes. There was a long period of time where no dishes were coming out at all and I noticed no one was eating, just lots of people looking hungry. The waiting staff were clueless. I noticed other people round us starting to get upset by the lack of food or attention. One person cancelled one of his and his friends meals as his friend was leaving and both meals turned up even though one had been cancelled. He was charged for both dishes in the final bill but when he complained his bill was reduced. My main dish turned up, the carbonara OMG how salty like others had said, yuk! We then had desert which was ok'ish. The reason for this long rant, the bill arrived, it was wrong, when I tried to speak to someone about it being wrong I was ordered to go and speak to the man at the till, apparently he had changed all the price during my meal and they were the new prices. Obvious they could not charge us the prices as he had changed them to during service, but what a shambles, the bill was 97euros when it should have been 85euros. I would have said all of this of this them but no one asked how my dining experience was. I saw countless people leave as they were not being attended to, i think one couple left after they heard me saying the bill was wrong, they escaped quickly when the waitress left them. I have given two stars for the starter, I'm quite optimistic like that. You need to sort out your customer service and carbonara please, but until then I will never...

We were recommended this restaurant by our Air b n B host, ensured we booked a table as it was a busy Friday night.

In hindsight, the almost empty tables at 8pm on a Friday night where every other restaurant in the immediate area was packed, should have given us a red flag, but the reviews sounded so good we went with it.

Started out ok, have us some toasted bread in a paper bag, but no olive oil or the like to moisten it, but when in Rome and all that we took it as it was , we had a mixed fish starter to share, it’s was pretty good, not great, but good.

I had ordered the pork and daughter the lasagne, waited an hour after the starter to get these served, when it came out the waitress advised they had served me lamb instead of pork, was that Ok? I don’t eat lamb, so of course it wasn’t so I had to reject it and elected for the risotto. they took the lasagne away too, but not before I noticed it looked good, about 6cm tall. Waited another half an hour for the new food to come, lasagne had shrunk to about 1.5cm tall.

The risotto was ok, not really to My taste, but that wasn’t a criticism to the plate, the lasagne was just mush, wet and nasty, clearly reheated, she only managed 1/3 of it.

I complained and said it was clearly reheated and was assured that the original portion of lasagne was given to another customer (!!) and her portion was from another area of the big tray they make and the béchamel sauce makes it mushy, it’s the way it’s supposed to be al dente pasta doesn’t apply to lasagne, mushy does.

Well, there didn’t seem to be any recourse, so went into pay the bill, not only had they charged me for the original missing pork dish, that was more than the risotto, they also charged me for listening to this God awful singing act that had been playing during our experience, I did manage to get them to agree to deleting this and re adjusting the bill to the correct food received.

The staff were pleasant enough, but the food it pretty bad, the experience was just so sad when we only had 3 meals whilst in Venice, you want them to be really good, it’s sad that I could get better Italian...

Well, it's hard to write a review when the evening at this lovely looking venue suffered so many mishaps that we were thoroughly put off from the idea of coming for another visit. That's a huge pity as the combination of a jazz club serving high quality local dishes is something I really admire, and would love to see succeed.

So what went wrong that night I came with the family? The wine we ordered wasn't in stock anymore and replaced with another. Not a big deal, that can happen. When he first dishes were served - starters for my wife and me from the tasting menus we had chosen, mains for the kids - it dawned to the waiter that the dish for my eldest son was the wrong one, so he whisked it away without explaining what happened to get a replacement prepared. The replacement dish came and the starters were cleared. Time went by, the other dishes were cleared and while we were enjoying the wine and the soft jazz background music, we couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the mains. So we signaled a waitress after about 45 minutes, asked if she could check in the kitchen. She said she understood and would check. She then appeared a couple of minutes later with the bill, totally oblivious that the mains for the adults hadn't been served yet. After we had made clear one more time what was missing they finally got that they still had some cooking to do. The mains finally came after another 10 minutes or so. Desserts were then also served without too much drama. However the bill, when it turned up was incorrect, with the dish for one of the kids booked wrongly. And while this finally got sorted, there didn't seem much of a care about the string of mishaps beyond a half hearted apology.

The food, while imaginative in its composition and reasonably well prepared, didn't really wow us either. If all had gone ok, I'd give the place a 4* review with slight room for improvement in terms of value for money. With the mess I experienced, 2* are generous.

I really wish you have a good look at how you organize your venue, and wish you the best of success...