Latin Cafe 2000

My husband, my 3 children and I we went today at 3:30 to the Latin Cafe at the Hialeah location. The waitress name Luz P. took our orders, without letting us know ahead of time that our meals will take longer than usual or that the restaurant will charge us an 18% Gratuity. Nonetheless, we order and our food came 40 min later, I ordered the chicken linguine with bacon alfredo pasta. When I received the dish it was nothing but a mountain of 99% dry pasta, just a very little of sauce at the bottom of the plate with just a few very small pieces of chicken already cut and 0 bacon on it. I had to take out from my plate more than half of the dry linguine and order a small pice of chicken breast that of course, I was charged for, it in addition to my plate cost. I also had to asked the waitress for a little bit of alfredo cream sauce to add to my dish. Again, the waitress took an additional time of 25 minutes to bring me those ingradients. Unfortunately by the time she brought me the rest of the food my family was already finished with their lunch and I was so hungry that I end up eating the half of the dry linguine by itself, with no sauce and no chicken. Anyways, it came the time to pay and she brought the receipt charging us 18% gratuity= $21 dollars that in our point of view did not justify her service at all. When I asked her why I was charged for gratuity she replied that for groups of 5 or more the restaurant charges 18%. I said to her that she was supposed to let us know ahead of time about this gratuity policy so we could decide if we wanted to dine in or go somewhere else. The lady didn't say anything, neither she apologized for all the previous inconvenient. After I paid we left and my husband looked at the bottom of the recept and sees that it says that 18% gratuity will be added for groups of 6 people or more. Not only the waitress gave us a very bad service overall but also lied us about the percentage of gratuity based on the amount of customers according to the receipt. It is sad that restaurants will reward their employees with a high percentage tip that in this specific case we got charged without our consent or knowledge. Managment should supervise a little bit the performance of their employees by at least greet the customers at their tables and ask is everything is ok or maybe in my case, a member of management could asked me the reason why I asked for more of the main ingredients of the dish. This will give the supervisor a hint on the underperformance of the employee, but I guess it was no supervision today at the time we went. This restaurant should make sure what type of performance their waitress/waiter they are giving to all clients in general prior to charge them for gratuity. I have never had such a poor customer service experience like this one in any of the Miami locations. Unfortunately, this was our first and last time here at the Hialeah branch. I really hope that this beautiful restaurant will improve their customer service skills very soon ☹️