Vapiano — Restaurant in Amsterdam

Vapiano Rembrandtplein Amsterdam Review

WARNING: DO NOT EAT IN THIS RESTAURANT

On September 23, 2023, at 18:30, my friends and I decided to have a quick bite to eat at Vapiano Rembrandtplein. We had tickets to the National Ballet at 20:15, so we wanted to eat something fast.

When we arrived, there was no one at the counter to greet us. After a few minutes, a waitress came and showed us to a table where people were already sitting. She pointed to three stools and walked away.

We placed our order using a QR code that took us to a website. We ordered three pizzas and three drinks. We had to pay and tip immediately, which I thought was strange because we didn't know how the service would be.

After 20 minutes, one of our drinks arrived. Ten minutes later, a bottle of Radler with the cap still on was placed on our table. The waitress walked away.

I tried to get the waitress's attention, but she ignored us. I looked around and noticed that at several tables, not all people were not eating: at the same table, the same group of people, not all the people had their food.

After 20 minutes, I finally caught the waitress's attention. She took the bottle of Radler to open it, but then she disappeared for another 10 minutes—still no third drink.

We had been waiting for 45 minutes at this point. We decided to go looking for the third drink ourselves. We asked a staff member, who went upstairs and yelled for someone to bring it up. The restaurant has three floors.

I decided to go to the bathroom. The bathrooms were dirty. There was a broken sink, no soap, and toilet paper all over the floor.

By now, it was 19:30, and we still didn't have our pizzas. The third drink arrived. The beer was warm, and there was no foam on it. The drinks were just as expensive as at the bars on Rembrandtplein.😡

The first pizza arrived at 19:45. We had ordered vegan cheese and paid extra for it. Two of my friends are lactose intolerant, so the pizza must be vegan. We asked for a box to take the pizza with us.

The two other pizzas arrived at 20:00. They were cold, and the other pizza didn't have vegan cheese. We asked for two boxes and ran to the concert.

I would not recommend anyone to eat here. It was a complete disgrace. Once you've paid, you can't leave; otherwise, we would have gone after an hour if we could have, but we had born good of money, and there was now an to whom we could complain. The staff was indifferent and didn't know how to serve customers. They didn't seem to care either.

Maybe they were overworked, or they're not hospitality people, and they weren't trained. Whatever the reason, I will never eat or order food from Vapiano again. I was almost late for the concert. I spent a lot of money on food I couldn't eat, and I was so angry instead of having a pleasant dinner.

I would strongly advise anyone to avoid eating or ordering food from Vapiano. It is a genuinely terrible restaurant. I gave one star because you can’t give O star.

Summary of the review:

Long wait times Dirty bathrooms Incorrect orders Indifferent staff

Recommendations:

Vapiano should improve its customer service and training for staff. Vapiano should offer refunds for incorrect orders. Vapiano should make it easier for customers to leave if they are unsatisfied with...

Warm wine, cold service. Avoid this place at all costs, the antithesis of good Italian dining experience, what a disappointing way to spend our only night in Amsterdam - precious time that we should have been enjoying turned into a dismal eating experience. Arrived and told 15 mins wait for food, OK no problem it's a busy Friday evening. Checked with the front of house - before taking our seats, that's fifteen not fifty. Yes.

Thirty minutes after ordering (and paying ahead mind) we hadn't even had our drinks. Went to ask the poor harassed girl working the bar what was up, she told us the order was lost in the system but she'd bring them right across. Except the wine wasn't in the fridge so she had to go and carry a whole case from somewhere else. When it arrived the white wine was warm. I asked her to check that our food order hadn't been lost as well. She said she only had the authority to check for drinks. Then said I could go to the front desk (which was unmanned) to ask. I had to insist that someone could come to our table to speak to us.

Eventually the manager came out of hiding, and was immediately called across by Three other groups who were having similar problems.

We eventually got the first plate for our party of three 15 minutes later, the other two plates took another 7 mins to arrive.

In this time we were entertained by - the girl behind the bar literally running across the restaurant several times (accident waiting to happen), the other customers complaints - missing food & drinks and wrong orders and a high chair brought for a toddler which was about 50cms too low for the table. All served up with an air of uncaring and condescending staff who looked like they'd prefer to be anywhere else in the world than here.

They say you can have good food but have to wait, or you can have bad food fast. Here at Vapiano Amsterdam you can have bad food, brought slowly by staff who could not care less. If we hadn't had to pay up front we'd have walked out when we didn't get drinks after half an hour. As it was we were forced through the pantomime of bad service in order to eat a beer...

I guess that’s the only time I am sorry that my phone camera is so good that it can’t show the whole disaster. The photo looks much nicer than the reality. It was the worst pasta in my life. Overcooked, cold, dry of being on air or under the heating lamp, sticked to each other. You could even separate the spaghetti from each other. The veggies in Bolognese sauce were crunchy (so even the sauce wasn’t cooked properly). The atmosphere is another disaster. I understand that horeca is going through hard times as I work in hospitality too. Tables are dirty and they stay like this for 30 minutes at least. The staff doesn’t know what guests order. Waiters were constantly walking around the floor and asking every table if someone ordered this dish or not (no wonder the dishes come cold). Saw pizza man delivering orders to the tables. Saw guests going down to pick their order as they couldn’t wait anymore. I am writing this review not only for the customers but for management of the restaurant. It’s super dirty in the restaurant and the atmosphere is chaotic. The staff doesn’t know how to act and plan their work. Keep walking around bringing plate by plate separately (and it’s going down and up the stairs!) when you must teach your staff how to use trays for god’s sake. Your waiters bring drinks, straws, cutlery and clean the table not all at a time but come every two minutes! So it’s four times they come to the same table without any real need while the restaurant full of people and you lack staff (and it’s for every table!!!!!). Other tables are full of dirty dishes so new customers can’t take a seat. I was watching this chaos and then I got my awful food I wasn’t even going to finish. At least train your staff before letting them begin. I never blame the staff who has no experience but the management who doesn’t care about training their staff....