La Strada At Lake Lure — Restaurant in Contiguous United States

The staff was terrible from the first interaction we had with them. Admittedly, we sat ourselves without realizing we needed to wait to be seated as there was no one at the entrance area. Our fault completely. However when the hostess came up to us she was very rude when telling us we weren’t sat by anyone. I said “oh, no we weren’t. I’m sorry do we need to go back and wait?” She just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. I repeated myself and still no answer. She then asked while rolling her eyes “Well, are you having lunch here?” I said yes and she just walked away. We decided to get up and go check in and wait to be seated as we should have done to begin with. We get seated and get our drinks. The waitress brings out garlic bread to us and plates and the plates had old wet food on them. Absolutely disgusting. We said something to the staff and was meet with attitude. One of the hostesses brings us another set of plates and sat them down while rolling her eyes and said here’s more plates with no apology or any care that they handed us filthy plates to begin with. And these plates were ALSO dirty. So twice now we get clearly dirty plates. At this point we just decided to leave as to not be treated anymore poorly than we had. This was a terrible experience and I was really disappointed as I’ve been once before and remember it being a much different experience. Shame on the staff for...

Excellent food in marvelous surroundings.

Our party of four enjoyed our variety of fish & shrimp-related dishes. Although the restaurant was very busy (we had to park in the overflow lot), we were able to wait at a table near the bar, & were seated outside in less than 35 minutes.

Our onion ring appetizer was tasty but rather tough. However, the entrees were superb. My wife & I had the pistachio-encrusted trout - generous portions accompanied by one side; garlic mashed potatoes for me, & steamed broccoli for her. Our friends had fried shrimp with garlic mashed potatoes (his) & grilled chicken with pasta salad (hers).

Three of us drank water, while Highland Brewing's Oatmeal Porter was an excellent accompaniment to my meal.

We were brought some complimentary garlic bread biscuits. They were very good.

When it was time for dessert, three of our party demurred, but I ordered the praline apple cobbler. It was served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream - perfection!

As for ambiance, the picture below shows Chimney Rock to the southwest, while the range extends into the north. Only a panoramic picture would do justice to the view from our table on the second floor veranda.

In summary, I'd skip the onion rings, the rest...

Horrible experience. Would not recommend & will never go back. Visiting from out of town & thought we would give this place a try. We had our pup with us walking the nearby scenery and we walked up to the restaurant and my boyfriend went inside to ask if we could sit outside on the patio with our pup and was told no because “the patio was wet and is closed and that we could order food and go sit across the street” which defeated the whole purpose of asking to sit on the patio so we walked back to our car, drove our pup back to the hotel and drove back and get seated and about 10 minutes into our visit this party of 6 goes and gets sat outside-talk about ANNOYED! A simple no to our pup being on the patio would’ve sufficed instead of lying to us. Then we ordered food and not a single thing was good, nor worth the money. The nacho appetizers, rib sandwich and chicken parm were all disappointing - no taste or seasoning and made me feel sick shortly after. Neither my boyfriend nor I could make it through the meal. The waitress was average but also seemed degrading to us as well. $65 down the drain for food we didn’t even eat. Will...