La Parada Waterfall Corner — Restaurant in Gauteng

#delayedpost

Friends and I got together for lunch at La Parada (Waterfall Corner)

I've heard good things about them and my friend also agreed the food is good so we decided to meet up here. While waiting on my friends to arrive I couldn't believe how everyone kept coming to check up on me if I was ok or needed anything. However once my friends arrived, trying to get help was a mission we had a few people helping us and one waiter that helped the most. They were not that busy when we placed our order.

Now they have a Tapas menu and normal menu, now when the price difference between a full meal vs a Tapas portion is approx R10 to R20 it makes you question it. So I changed from the Tapas prawns (flash fried in chilli and garlic etc R110) and pork belly my friend wanted (R120) to the Prawn Linguine Pasta which was R125. The others took the Waygu Burger, Margherita pizza and another Prawn pasta. Our food took forever to arrive. Once we received it, the Burger was cold and the meat looked a bit too rare for me. The other friends pasta and mine was also cold but I was hungry, she sent hers back to be warmed up. My prawn pasta also had the head and shells on so it was like half utilising finger and fork to eat, and no plate to put shells on. My other friend sent her Burger back as well as she was just put off. She didn't want it cooked again or replaced. The friend with the pizza just ate hers. When the friends pasta returned they had made a new dish this time with sauce all over it. So now we queried what happened as we just asked to warm it up. It got sent back again. Waiter came back again. Same thing sauce all over the pasta. Sent it back again. 4th time lucky they finally got this right. The poor waiter was feeling rather deflated and told him it's not his fault if the kitchen is stuffing things up.

At this point we decided to rather just pay and leave. When we sent the food back the first time, the manager agreed to take the Burger off the bill which was fine. So while waiting for our bill, another manager Michael who had just come on duty came to check up on us as we were just sitting waiting. We explained to him what happened and that it wasn't the best experience in terms of food and initial service we received and explained everything that happened. He asked if we would give them another chance as we mentioned it was our first time there as we had always heard good reviews on the place. So he then removed the pastas off the bill as we waited to pay, as the Burger was already off our bill. He then also asked for our contact details so that he can contact us to come back again. I gave my real name cell and email address (as they had no idea i was a foodie and i did not want it being mentioned). It's been 3 weeks and I still haven't heard a thing from them. I do appreciate that he removed the items off our bill. But really the place was not busy there was no excuse for cold half cooked food, and no contact thereafter as promised.

Disappointed as the menu items looked great, but the Tapas prices are a bit high for the portion...

LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS to avoid any disappointment because this place was just pure disappointment, actually disappointment is an understatement because i really am embarrassed for La Parada. Coming from Cape Town with the hope that La Parada Waterfall will maintain the same standards as the La Parada in Cape Town. I guess i had too much expectations there. The service is the WORST. We got there at 1pm, the lady at the door had an attitude like we were bothering her until I mentioned that I have a reservation then she changed, and that was not the worst experience for the day. We anyway got our table The guy who was waiting on us was just MIA, we saw him when we got a table and after that we had to continuously look for him when we wanted to order. We ordered an MCC bottle, and it was warm, literally HOT, really who drinks warm bubble though like how💁‍♀️🤦‍♀️. That was literally the last time we saw this guy until hours later. We asked another friendly waiter who was passing by to help us place our food order because the person who is supposed to be waiting on us was no where to be found. Why didn't we just get the friendly and attentive guy initially because that other one was seemingly busy with whatever where ever he was. Anyway we ordered tapas and it took more than an hour to get them, just tapas not even the main meal, Tapas guys. How do Tapas take an hour really. Aren't they supposed to be the fastest thing to put out whilst we wait for the main meal.I guess La Parada Waterfall has a different view on this. When we finally got the Tapas, thats when we saw 'The waiter' 🤦‍♀️ . Anyway we got the food and it was just disappointment again, the prawns where the saddest of them all, skinny and not even fresh swimming in oil 🤣. We ordered apple juice (actually we settled for apple juice because we initially wanted appletizer but they didnt have), the waiter brought cranberry juice 🤣, he even had the guts to say 'no i know you ordered cranberry' I mean are you telling us that 3 adults sitting at a table had memory loss at the same time. The guy did not even apologize or ask if we would like another. Anyway after that we decided we will not be having mains here, asked for the bill and enjoyed the rest of our afternoon at another better place, the best decision for the day. Let me try add some positives, 🤔. Well there was at least that nice guy who helped but he really couldn't attend to us entirely because I'm sure he had his own tables to worry about. The place is lovely, has great lighting, the scenery is lovely🤭. And thats...

For me it was a nice place to go to. It was pleasant and the staff was friendly. The food was good. But it did not have any wow to it. My first dish was suppose to be spicy "Spicy Kingklip Bites" it was cooked well but with very little flavor and no chilli that I could taste. The portion was very small, literally 3 teaspoons. My second dish was the prawns. The sauce was really good. The actual prawns was not prepared well and very small. Not one of the 5 praws was cut all the way to the tail so you could get to all the meat. Now this still left me hungry so I ordered a platter of chicken wings. Why one would call 8 chicken wings a platter, I don't know. This time the chilli was turned on to the max. I liked the sauce a lot, it was very tasty and hot. Like one would expect from chilli chicken wings. I ended my meal with a dessert "Chocolate Popcorn Smores" that looked great but did not have any burnt marshmallows. It tasted good regardless. We were asked if we were ok no less that 7 times by 4 or 5 different staff, it became a bit much as our meal was constantly interrupted. I would not...