Tifa Chocolate & Gelato — Restaurant in Charlotte

We come here at least once a week, we came in Wednesday (8/27) around 6 pm or so. With that being said, normally I'm fairly tolerant of the younger generation, I own restaurants, ran bakeries and deal with a range of ages.

Getting to the review Sweets of any have always been a 10/10. Great taste, always happy with everything and never had complaints.

The service, so when we came in, I had asked a question in regards to the milkshake. If you could get two flavors. Now, I go ahead after asking a milkshake related question and say can I get chocolate and vanilla swirled.

Now, I will admit, I haven't ordered a milkshake, I didn't know that milkshakes I guess just have one size, but when the young woman asked what size I wanted I just said large.

At this point I get the misunderstanding, my spouse was looking at other items and I just sat for a moment to scroll. She brings out a large cup of gelato with the two flavors.

I say, sorry, I meant a milkshake, my spouse even pointed out that the cups have sizes and the milkshakes just come as one and I apologized again. Thought we were on milkshakes when asked. It happens and I apologized for it. Then I said if she could it's okay to just use the gelato that she's already scooped. If it's to much, I don't mind just taking the cup, well she had a twinge of attitude, my spouse even noticed, and she proceeded to say it's fine and chuck the perfectly good gelato she just scooped into the trash. Me and spouse were both shocked, coming from backgrounds where wasting food like that is horrible and I would have just taken the cup if I knew she was gonna throw it away. She made the milkshake. We both said thank you and sorry. Even left a tip. But it felt uncomfortable, almost as if she wanted us to leave and we did. Just her tone the entire time, annoyed, aggravated...unsure but definitely not friendly after a simple mistake that I owned up to. That we both apologized for my own neglect of understanding the conversation of the question and yeah...

Overall, as a business owner, seeing good, homemade food of any kind get thrown away without a second thought baffles me. It saddened me, wondering if honestly it was a store policy that she had to follow or she was just the upset over that, that she decided to throw away good homemade gelato.

Unsure, everyone runs things different but that's just me. Also, the milkshake was fairly loose, it was essentially chocolate milk versus a milkshake. Good flavor, just not a milkshake.

Overall, we'll still come back, but if she's serving, sadly I'll have my spouse handle the ordering so I don't upset her again, plus my spouse will definitely say something next time but that's between her and the mood of...

So my husband and I found Tifa about 6 months ago, and it became our favorite dessert spot after dinner. A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that Tifa acquired new management, but didn't think too much of it. Yesterday, we returned there as usual for our bit of evening delight. The first thing I want to mention is when we walked in, several people were ahead of us in line (not unusual). I watched as the lady serving, greeted everyone with a smile. However, when came our turn, she turned her back and walked over to the register where a gentleman was ringing someone else up. She stood there for about 2 minutes with her back turned towards us until the gentleman looked over and finally addressed us. Next, my husband asked for a cup of water with his gelato (he has always requested this in the past with no issues from the previous management). The gentleman operating the register looked over at the lady (who had ignored us) and quietly said, "This is why we sell bottled water." My husband was so insulted that he pulled out cash and asked the man, "So how much do I owe you for the water?" Now, my husband and I are known professionals (and I'll leave it at that), and we are African-American. Nevertheless, I'm not one to automatically suspect racism in ever case of bad customer service. However, we noted that everyone that proceeded us were not African-American. We were treated terrible, with a major lack of customer service of which we've NEVER experienced with the previous owners who knew us as regulars. I'm not sure if we will ever return to this place, nor if I would recommend it...

Update (3 days after visit - I increased a star). The owner reached out offering to comp our next treat and apologized. Sadly I don’t see his/hers response anymore and missed the contact so not sure we’ll be taking advantage of it, but management was responsive so that is appreciative.

Original review: I imagine that this was a uniquely negative experience and that at other times it’s a lot better. Ordered drinking chocolate. As you can see from the photos, that’s not what this is. Prior to going, I called Tifa to ask if they had European style sipping chocolate and the young lady that picked up the phone did not know what that was but eventually came to the conclusion that they had drinking chocolate. So my wife and I immediately headed over to get some. Ordered it. It took a while for her to make it. She was very polite and apologized for the wait. However, from what I could tell, she melted a bunch of chocolate chips and gave it to us in a cup. We tried to drink it and only got globs of chocolate. Then we took off the cap and realized that she didn’t make it correctly. So now we’re at home trying to make drinking chocolate from this mess. As you can see most of the chocolate on the bottom is hardened and the chocolate around the cup is the consistency that we found it. Unsatisfying chocolate chip globs would’ve been a better name for this $7 “drink”. Was excited and may even give them another try in 6 months and hoping this...