Taverna La Fenice — Restaurant in Venice

I NEVER comment and I travel and have, mostly, lovely experiences, but, this was, BY FAR, the absolute worst fine dining experience I've ever had.

Let's start from the top:

First of all, it took ages for anyone to take our order. We had a main waiter, but, there was also a second waiter that came to our table from time to time (like they were alternating), but, they never communicated with each other, which was really interesting... especially, since they DID feel free to exchange commentary between themselves about us. Our main waiter was drunk. We ordered in courses and ALL of the timing was off. Not only was my first course wrong, but, the suggested wine pairning never arrived... AND at the end of the meal, they tried to charge us for both... and when I say my first course was wrong, I asked if it was correct and they LIED... only when I saw the correct dish go to another table, did they admit they were wrong. I asked for the wrong items to be taken off of the check and, now that I look at my card statement, they never were... so, I paid $120 for the most over-priced meal of my life. (Just now seeing that charge on my credit card has made me so irate that I was moved to post here). Did I mention that the waiter was drunk? At the end, when we tried to pay partially in cash, the waiter claimed he never got the $50, charged my card for the total and, when we figured that out, we had to argue to have him find the 2nd waiter to get the cash back (remember, the charge was already on the card by now). ' All of this AND the waiters had the audacity to pretend that we did something wrong.

TLDR: Literally a nightmare tourist trap......

The food was good, but just average. The service was horrendous, starting with the waiter that came to our table and didn’t say a word but just held his pad impatiently. It was like an old western to see who would flinch first…. No greeting, no introduction, no nothing. He bexame irritated, so I guess having patrons bothers him somehow. Next we waited 45 minutes for two simple pasta dishes. That might not be so bad in a true fine dining experience, but in that 45 minutes, not a single person approached our table for anything. We were served some hard cold plain breads at the beginning of the meal, and had to ask for some olive oil or balsamic or something. After the food was served it was the same story. Nobody came to the table again. My wife needed to use the restroom and it was absolutely filthy. That never makes you feel good about the food…. After finally flagging someone down, the topper was the bill. Not only was the pasta extremely overpriced, but they added a surprise 10% service charge to the bill, which I do not recall seeing anywhere on the menu. Regardless, that’s just a bait and switch on menu prices. Just raise your prices 10% so customers know they are paying €30 for a simple pasta. Never again…. I recommend others...

The staff here are incredibly rude. When we first sat down we weren't even acknowledged for a good 15mins, despite there being only two other couples at the cafe. I tried to find where their toilet was and asked two different male staff members who looked at me after I asked and then completely ignored me. Complete arrogance.

When we were finally served, the waitress spilled an entire beer on my partner and whilst she was embarrassed about it, she didn't actually say sorry once. She said she 'messed up because it was hot'.

So we were moved to a nearby table and sat there with glass all around our feet with my partner soaking wet with beer while she proceeded to take 10 mins to clean the other table (which was fine but my partner had to actually ask for a paper towel to dry himself while she was doing this).

We finally got our beers which weren't particularly cold and the waitress then had the audacity to scold us about feeding the pigeons when it was actually left over crisps on the floor from her spilling the damn tray on us.

And we still paid full price for the drinks, even though we walked away soaking wet in beer....