Pizzeria Ristorante La Scala — Restaurant in Wassenaar

I came to leave a one-star review after a horrible experience this evening and saw that I provided a five-star review 2 years ago! Several nice and cosy memories we collected in this place before the pandemic but what happened tonight has removed them all, really sorry to say that. Here are the highlights: over crowded, under staffed.. pizza maker is the owner + 1 chief waiter who was super aggressive + 2 young waiters (poor kids) who were paralised with huge amount of work/chaos and the aggressive chief. Felt like there was no one else in the kitchen so slow service as a consequence had to remind and correct our orders 3 times we were 6 people, they could not serve us at the same time. The latest dish arrived only after the 3rd warning and to my 7 years old niece!! soft drinks like coke, fanta was served from 1 liter bottles, the taste and texture is never the same as small bottles or cans of course. felt stress throughout the evening due to chief waiter's unmanaged stress and chasing our orders we observed frustration and dissatisfaction from other tables as well we left zero tip of course and the aggressive chief waiter gossipped about it in Dutch assuming that we would not understand!.... unbelivable! two positive things from the evening: food was delicious. And the dough show that pizza maker (the owner) performed together with my niece when he reckon my niece was not served even after the 3rd reminder was a relief, at least for my niece. He also apologised when we were leaving which was a nice behaviour. However, I would prefer he got organised well enough in order to not to have a reason to apologise for anything, just like as it was in the past. Maybe he could have limited the number of seats to serve according to his capacity...

We were the only people in the restaurant, we ordered a lemonade, bottle of red wine and a jug of water (we previously order a glass of water for my youngest child but replaced it with an order of a jug). We waited for ages, another family come in 10 minutes after, gets their drinks before us (similar order but they had additions). After 10 more minutes, we chase drinks. Finally got the drinks, but it’s a bottle of water and not a jug, but also a glass of tap water. We are polite and just wanting to enjoy our last evening on The Netherlands, so let it go, we’ll pay for water, no big deal. They’ve now taken food orders for several tables, but seemed to just be ignoring us. So again, has to chase for service. The food was fine when it arrived. We requested the bill and they charged us €2.45 for a glass of tap water and on top of it obviously an additional charge for the bottle of water. We queried this with the waitress and she said this was policy. I pointed out the bottle of water and asked why did they feel the need to charge us for running a tap, when clearly we had a bottle and €30 bottle of wine and a bottle of water. Lots of mumbling and “that’s just what we do”. We were utterly disgusted to then be charged for a glass of water. Awful restaurant, that just seems to be trying to get as much money from you without providing any...

Bit of a shambles really, on arrival all seemed well, busy outside with tables available inside which we took, drinks service was good but after that we ran downhill fairly hard, ordered starters and mains with 2 kids 8-10, olives, garlic bread and bruschetta, and 3 pizzas and ravioli, we waited for over an hour and no starters with other tables who arrived after us having mains served. Waitress was visibly embarrassed and avoided us. Eventually our starters appeared and before I'd put an olive in my mouth out mains appeared. My calzone which was the house special did not contain any of the promised salami so my calzone was just vegetables edible but upsetting. When questioned how were the meals I highlighted the lack of meat in the calzone of which she apologised and for the delay we were offered a drink to compensate but by this point we wanted to leave. When we asked for the bill we were then informed the card machine was not working and only cash would suffice, with the nearest atm at the other end of the high st. Kids and wife had gone for ice cream round at the fabulous Luciano's so I had to leave my phone as collateral to go and get said cash. Not a offer of discount. Would not be going back in a hurry and I'm...