Layalina Lounge — Restaurant in Jacksonville

I truly wish I could give zero stars. I’m still confused as to what happened last night with my visit at Layalina. A friend and I chose to go out for a drink or two and specifically tried to find somewhere with hookah too, the atmosphere of this place looked super vibey so we chose to go here. Luckily because we arrived right at 11pm there was no cover. We walked in and chose a seat, we sat there probably about 15 mins before we looked around and questioned if we were in the wrong seating, was it walk up service? Because surely we weren’t just being ignored. I chose to walk up to three waitresses standing next to/behind the bar area to ask how do we get served. She said she would send our server over in a minute… okay. A woman finally comes over and we ask about hookah and was told this was only served outside so no problem we chose to get up and move to the patio. Being that we already asked about service inside we thought surely someone would pay attention to us and make sure our order was taken. We sat outside 10 mins or so before I walked up to the hostess outside and asked how do we get service out there, she responded by saying “that’s a really good question” huh…. She said she would send someone over so I went to sit back down. We ended up asking another customer sitting next to us how did he get his hookah and he recommended us going in to order. So we still chose to do that because maybe our own confusion of how service works was on us and not the establishment. As I am a general manager of a restaurant and do understand not every customer is right. However, we go inside stand at the bar and try to make eyes with a bartender for service. After about 5-10 mins we finally get our order taken. Finally we can just enjoy ourselves. Nope. This same bartender continues to serve bottled beer to multiple customers, clearly isn’t making any mixed drinks. Finally we make eyes, she then speaks to another bartender (who was also sitting outside the same time we were while we were asking how to get served) points to us and then that lady comes over to ask us what we would like to order….. I told her we just ordered about 10 mins ago….. she asked again what we ordered. I looked at my friend and we walked out. This is undeniably the worst service and the most uncomfortable I have ever felt in an establishment. We were very clearly ignored and I am not sure for what reason but I know I will never be back nor ever recommend this place to anyone. We left to go to Dua Lounge which was amazing customer service and...

This place was a joke. We got there at 9:30pm and was told they don’t open for 30 minutes, but we could still have a drink and hangout inside. So we play pool for a little while, they don’t let us know when we can be seated so I ask if we could sit and have hookah after around 30 minutes. While the entire time they have their own hookah at the bar going they’re smoking on. They say we can sit anywhere, but while we were playing pool on a Sunday night they start BLARING music. The music was so loud that my sister standing right next to me couldn’t hear me yelling at her trying to tell her something. Well we sit down and the waitress eventually comes to us and we order more drinks, doesn’t bring us any menus or anything. We ask nicely to please turn the music down some and she says she will, then she never does. We watch her go hangout at the bar with their own hookah going and smokes hookah with her friend? We get our drinks after a while and again ask nicely please turn it down, she says yes again and doesn’t take anymore of our requests (still no menus or hookah) then still just leaves to go hangout at the bar with their hookah with the music blaring.

We were tired of wasting our time since my sisters and I couldn’t really hangout since none of us could hear each other and being irritated with the terrible service so I called the hookah restaurant 3 minutes away to see if we could go there and not have to yell at each other to have a conversation. We ended up ubering there and was just glad to be away from Layalina. My sister went to close the tab and we were shocked at how expensive our drinks were?! We got green tea shots that honestly mostly tasted like juice and they were $9 a shot??? On the way out, a group of people that were friends with the workers showed up and they were all loudly hanging out with the music blaring. I guess they wanted a party of their own so they just wanted to make us leave with this service?? Paid a lot of money to have terrible service and pretty much waste an hour of our night. So thanks for nothing and I don’t see how a business will stay in business if you don’t provide the service...

I just want to say that this lounge gave me the worst experience of customer service that I have ever had. A friend and I decided we were going to go to a hookah lounge last night (Saturday night) to get some drinks, a hookah, and enjoy ourselves. We arrived at Layalina a little before 11pm. We waited at the door to go through security and get our arm band. We walked inside and found seating for ourselves. After 15 minutes of watching a server attend to other guest and others stand at the counter on their phones… we wondered were we the problem? Did we need to go to the bar to order? So my friend walked up to the bar and asked that question… they said a server would be with us in a couple minutes. The server came, who we had watched served several other guests already, and finally asked us did we want to order. We asked about a hookah menu, to which we were told hookah was only served outside. So we said okay… got up, walked outside and found seating. After another 10 minutes of absolutely no acknowledgement, we walked up to the lady handling the wristbands at the door and asked her do we receive service outside or do we have to go inside to order? She responds “thats a good question….” Now we are utterly confused so we say okay…. We will go to the bar to order. It takes 5 minutes at the bar for us to get asked what would we like to order… after ordering, we wait 10 minutes. We watch the lady who took our order point at us to another employee, then that employee comes to address us. She asks us “would you guys like to order?” At this point we simply walked out. We spent no less than 30 minutes at this establishment simply trying to get serviced. I will never return. We drove 10 minutes away, to Dua Lounge on Baymeadows. We were immediately sat inside, to which we received both of our drinks and our hookah within 10 minutes. Highly recommend visiting there instead of this horrendously poor serviced...