Bocca Lupo — Restaurant in Bucharest

Did all the well-groomed, passionate and experienced restaurant professionals leave this country and went wild? I'm giving this place 1 star due to its interior design and nothing else. Otherwise, 0 stars would be fair. Here is my visit in a nutshell: first of all, none of the food we wanted to order (from the menu) was available -- not even pizza :(, because "the pizza man moved out of Romania" (and no other pizza man was to be found in Bucharest ... quite sad!), every missing dish had its own said story delivered in a buffoonish style by the waiter who could have very well worked in an old-fashioned hole-in-the-wall dinner. I ordered salmon tartar, but since this fish escaped from the sewer, they proposed me tuna tartar instead, that was almost 90 lei for the taste of 25 lei (max). Second to none: the entire place smelled like a sewer on a warm summer day, not like a kitchen, which made my 90 lei tuna tartar taste like an expensive garbage. On top of this, out of curiosity (I was checking out the interior decorations), I dared to enter the wardrobe area and I was sanctioned on a harsh and dictatorial tone by a surprisingly communist waitress (who looked miserable -- poor her!) that I am not allowed to enter that area. A Restricted Zone inside an Italian Trattoria, that hosts guests’ coats next to the kitchen ??? Just imagine the smell we took back home ... Unfortunately, Bocca Lupo, at this point in its miserable, but fancy looking life, is just a nicely decorated, expensive and mediocre half-available food that tastes just like the place smells, with an excuse-me like service-model. Don't go there until a Wind of Change...

From the moment I entered, the floor manager, instead of greeting me with a simple "Hi," immediately informed me that there were no available tables, despite my reservation made three weeks in advance. The restaurant was half-empty, but somehow, we were eventually seated.

It took three requests over a span of 20 minutes just to receive a menu. When I asked for a glass of wine, I was informed that my selection was only available by the bottle. Instead of helping me choose another option, the waiter condescendingly explained how to read the menu, implying that I was wasting his time.

When the food arrived, it was cold, and the waiter never checked back to see if we needed anything else. After requesting the menu again, we waited another 20 minutes. Other waitstaff simply directed us back to our assigned waiter. When we finally managed to get the menus, we had to follow the waiter inside the restaurant just to place an additional order.

We requested some food to be packed to go, but it never arrived. When we inquired, the waiter claimed we had never mentioned it and said the food had already been thrown away.

To make matters worse, the check included several items we never ordered, including drinks that never arrived. When I brought this up with the floor manager, instead of addressing the issue professionally, she asked if I might be "too drunk" and mistaken, despite me only having one glass of wine. No one apologised for the mistakes throughout...

It is one of the best Italian restaurants we ever tried. Delicious authentic Italian food! It's like being back in Rome. We will be back tomorrow for our dinner. Well done guys! 👌

Update: We were on the second night for dinner, and there was a different team. Now I understand why the reviews are split. It was like we were going to a different restaurant. The food was not as good, and the service was okay. The bit that upset us was the way we were talked to when we chose how much tips we wanted to pay. We asked the waiter to round up the bill, and he said he couldn't. We had to pay the amounts options offered on the bill! That's untrue because we could pay whatever tips we wanted the previous evening. And we did with no problems and the waiters were very grateful. He should Ask someone to show him if he doesn't know how to use the machine. ( obviously, that wasn't the real reason) He should be grateful I want to leave tips, etc, even though not everything was ok. It would help if you didn't make people feel cheap or nasty when you don't know their experience. Embarrassing and Disappointing! I now wish we didn't go back

I want to leave five stars for yesterday's team still because we had that experience on 9/08, and I hope the waiter from 10/8 learnt something if not Is the...