Trattoria La Tavola — Restaurant in Kennett Square

Such a shame. So many reviews had a great experience. But that was not the case for my visit. Food - mediocre. Service - horrible, rushed, often forgotten. Atmosphere - had potential to be great. DO NOT PAY WITH THE QR CODE ON THEIR RECEIPTS. I made a reservation online, and called an hour ahead to let them know my party was going to be late. The person on the phone said "no problem, we can accommodate an hour later." Fine. When we arrived, the person who sat us said "oh, no your reservation was for 2 hours ago, but we'll squeeze you in." Then shoved us in the back corner. I should have taken that as a sign to just leave, but thought we'd give it a chance. 15 minutes later, NO SERVER CAME BY TO GREET US. My partner had to flag down a server, who we had to remind to bring us water, twice. He dropped off water and cold bread then never returned. A new server came by and said he'd return to tell us the specials and take our order. Another 10 minutes pass. My partner flags him down so we can order. He asks that we place our appetizer and entrees together as they are short staffed and the kitchen is backed up. Fine. We make our order and I order a glass of wine and someone else in our party orders a mock tail. The mock tail comes out and is slammed onto the table by the runner. Appetizers come out and are dropped off, no one checks on us again until the entrees are brought out 30 minutes later. My glass of wine comes out with dinner. My partner asked that his dish come with no capers - you can guess it came with capers. The only request we made off menu. We had to flag down our server to change it and he rolled his eyes with frustration (I know not at us, but at the situation) and said he'd fix it. At this time, a 2nd mocktail arrived, that we didnt order, but we didn't want to make a fuss. My partners entrees arrived. More cold bread. We ate. Flagged down our server for boxes and the check (with the additional beverage) We tried to pay, and no one could be found in the dining rooms, so my partner decided to pay with the QR code at the top of the receipt. He gets a confirmation number, but the emailed receipt doesn't reflect a total with a tip. So he finds the gaggle of servers in the waiter station and asks if the check reflects that we left a tip. The manager and 2 servers couldn't figure it out, so we handed our server a cash tip (25% because I didnt want to wait for the change) and leave.

2 hours later, at 1030 pm, I receive a panicked call from the manager that the check is still showing open and I needed to pay up. I told the manager that my partner is asleep and we would have to deal with it tomorrow. Me thinking that possibly the payment needed to batch through on their system overnight and might clear in the morning. He said he'd call again at noon the following day (today). I didn't receive a call at noon, I received one at 4pm while I am at work and I tried to call back.

My partner called around 530pm and rehashed this entire experience to our server, because the manager had gone home for the night.

My partner paid the bill, in full, because no one offered any sort of compensation for the poor service, the unprofessionalism of a 1030pm phone call or because we are honest, prior restaurant workers who understand how an unpaid bill comes out of our servers wages, decided we should call back and pay the bill that did not clear their alternative payment option.

Needless to say, there are other restaurants in Kennet Square. Try one of them. Not worth the hassle or embarrassment of trying...

Honestly, this was one of the worse dining experiences I've had and I am shocked by all the positive reviews. I saw multiple other tables leave before even getting a chance to order or after getting their apps and before entrees arrived because of how slow service was. It took about 15 minutes after sitting down to even getting water. We waited 50 minutes after placing our entree orders to actually get them, and we had to flag down the wait staff to ask what was going on. Two separate servers informed us that they were short-staffed and it was the owner and one cook making everything in the kitchen. Still, even at the height of business there were only 7 active tables and service was extremely slow and inattentive.

The food itself was also extremely mediocre. Hopefully, with the regular kitchen staff, the quality of food would be better. I'm a big cook and have visited Italy, and most of the entrees we got were "off" in some way. The crab cakes and meatballs were both mushy and bland. The crab cakes also had a curry powder in it that was very odd and unappetizing, especially for Italian food. We were a table of seven and we each tried it and agreed that something wasn't right. The carbonara tasted like they added in a wrong spice--something sweet like cinnamon, and lacked the salty, umami punch typical of the dish. The amatriciana was fine but forgettable. We didn't finish most of the dishes despite being hungry from the wait. The owner came out unprompted and was rude about the delay, despite us not complaining about any of the dishes. He stated that the wait was because they make everything to order and nothing is prepared....which felt insulting to our intelligence because it does not take that long to freshly make these dishes and because the wait staff gave us the honest answer about being short staffed in the kitchen. I felt bad for the wait staff but really turned off by the owner.

There's a whole litany of other issues we had at our meal....but suffice to...

We stopped in to get some cream of mushroom soup today. We both asked for bowls. We also asked for some bruschetta. The bowls were large, but we were disappointed when we saw they were less than half full. We found the mushroom soup to be tasteless. I did ask for salt to try to help, it didn’t. The cream base was thin, mushrooms were totally ground up with a few pieces of melted cheese in it. Neither one of us cared for it and chose not to eat it. Once we were served our food, we never saw our waiter again, except seeing him go back and forth to the outside. We had to flag another person down to get the salt. When we were through, a fellow eventually came over to our table and asked how everything was. We told him how we felt and we were met with an argument about how everybody likes their soup and this is the way it’s done in Kennett Square. We reaffirmed that we didn’t like it and asked for our check. Another gentleman arrived and asked us how everything was and we again stated that we did not care for the mushroom soup at all. This man continued to keep up the same argument about how wonderful their soup is and how they make 20 gallons a day, etc. It wasn’t going to make us say, “Well in that case, we like it”!! Why ask us as your customer how everything was if you don’t want to hear the answer? We had to ask for our check several times from him. Very disappointed. The bruschetta wasn’t that great either and we left some of that behind as well. We buy Kennett Square cream of mushroom soup from a caterer in Delaware and it is absolutely terrific with many many mushrooms in it. Solid mushrooms, not ones all totally obliterated. Cream of mushroom soup is my most favorite soup and has been my whole life. I would never destroy it like that. However, if that’s Kennett Square’s thing, good for them, but we’ll just continue to make our own or go to other restaurants that have a normal cream base and healthy hunks...