Labo Chao — Restaurant in Haarlem

You pay a €15 deposit for a booking.

Once there, the table wasn’t ready ~5 mins wait (not a problem).

Once at the table, drinks ordering process was brilliant, lovely cocktails too. (Indo Mule recommended).

Now it goes downhill from here.

1. none of the teenage staff (I specify this because the empathy and service delivery was pathetic) truly cared for your experience.

2. none of them informed you before seating that a dish was no longer available. I ordered the chefs favourite and I was informed after it was not available anymore - very disappointing.

3. settled for the mussels and my partner the veggie dish - this took over 35 mins to arrive after 1) starters had finished. 2) Rice dishes arrived before the mains for 10 minutes before a staff member took it back and apologised it shouldn’t have arrived yet & finally 3) a kind reminder to the staff that if it wasn’t there in the next 2 minutes I’d be leaving (they told me 2 mins) - food arrived after 2 mins from that reminder…

4. Food arrived - no flavour or unique taste to the mussels (highly recommend avoiding it if you like mussels) & the rice was extremely dry to the point I left most of it as is.

5. after informing the staff that it was a poor service and quality after being asked ‘how was the meal’ - I received a sorry + a €98 bill which was quite frankly an absolute rip off considering the experience.

No offer of discount or additional appetisers like a coffee on the house etc as you’d expect after such abysmal service & food - simply a ‘well I hope that next time It will be better for you’ - politely informed that there will not be a next time for me. Then left.

Highly recommend the cocktails though, they were extremely good. For the rest,...

Nice ambiance and almost-excellent service. However, although the portion sizes were okay, the food was sub-par and some menu items are overly priced. We had the rijsttafel (see photo). The rice was prepared poorly - the white rice was too sticky or burned and the fried rice was too dry. The shrimp and much of the meat were overcooked and dry and even having them doused in their respective sauces was insufficient. Many sauces were either on the salty side or excessively sweet. We also ordered a pork belly dish which had a texture like very tough beef jerky - I tried three bites of it and actually had to spit it out twice into the napkin. In general, I would say that about a quarter to a third of the total number of dishes was good, about a quarter was decent, and the rest was barely passable. If you come here, you are simply cashing out for the ambiance and plating presentation.

I eat regularly at many Indonesian restaurants and this is my first negative review for one. Shame. It could be that the kitchen staff is inexperienced because most of the people in the kitchen looked quite young. I would also dare say that none have had sufficient immersion into...

Normally I don’t give bad reviews, and this happened a few months ago, I want to say I had really terrible experience in this restaurant! I went to this restaurant with my friend, the waiter who looks asian (by the way, I’m also asian) told me the tables are fully reserved, he asked us to leave, actually there were lots of free tables. We felt strange, so we went out and called the restaurant with another mobile phone. It was picked up by the same person, and he told us that we can come directly without reservation and there are lots free tables. It felt ironic. What’s this? Why we were so unwelcome, we had never been to this restaurant before. So I called and asked the waiter why there were free tables but he told me no. He was very dramatic at this time, and he told me that many customers had left in the past few minutes. I can come here now, I said I don't feel you welcome us. We go will you welcome us? He didn't answer directly this question. This gave me a very bad experience, I don't even know why he wouldn't let us in to dine? Can the restaurant give an explanation? Was it our outfits, we dressed sports...