La Natural — Restaurant in Miami

I find it quite humorous that the first thing you see when coming to this restaurants website is asking you to let them host your party at their establishment. My friends and I attempted to do just that this past Saturday. One of my very good friends is moving and we decided to have a going away dinner for her at La Natural. This is not a big place, the patio door was opened and we were seated near the back wall by the bar area. I recall another large party of 6 or 7 younger women, a pair of couples and a family of four who left shortly after we arrived. We were a party of 10 and we were CELEBRATING in a public restaurant. One can imagine people having conversations and laughing as most would do when gathering amongst friends with food and wine.

After placing our orders, which we did rather quickly upon arrival, we did what most restaurant goers do, we had laughs, we talked and drank our wine because we waited nearly 90 minutes to even get our food. While we waited, one of the workers who was not even our server asked for the birthday girl. Now we weren’t celebrating a birthday and we never said that we were and thank god it wasn’t because we assumed she was asking her to do something special but no she called her out to tell her that we were being too loud. If it was her birthday it would’ve been ruined. The entire night we spoke at volumes you would expect in a restaurant just like the other larger party seated next to us but they were never told to “quiet down” as we were. The woman who decided to pull the “birthday girl” to the side claimed 4 tables complained. So did this include the table of women who were speaking at volumes the same as us? Because there were only 3 other tables sat. My cousin decided to speak with the woman to explain how ridiculous it was that she even brought the “complaint” to our attention and she became super defensive didn’t even try to provide customer service and deflected saying she would tell the owners. At this point, we were already turned off and ready to go. Based on this experience, if you’re a black or brown person or someone who claims to care about black and brown people this ain’t the restaurant for you. The pizza wasn’t even that great to have come and had this experience. To be in Little Haiti gentrifying the place and attempting to keep people of the community out of it is unfortunately all too common but trust and believe these black dollars won’t return to this place and I’ll tell everyone who will listen to...

I went to La Natural again after having not been there in a while. We ordered the Brussels sprouts salad which was $24 for what essentially is ONE Brussel sprouts with the leaves torn off. Fine. My friends and I then ordered the Szechuan peppercorn pizza that we’ve ordered every time we’ve been to the restaurant, maybe a combined total of 10-20 times. We each tasted one slice (3/4 slices total). The pizza had an incredibly off putting taste, one that can only be described as mouthwash. After the second bite, we felt that our mouths were going completely numb and the taste of putting anything else in our mouths were so foul that we couldn’t eat anything else.

We called the waitress over who called over their manager, and I politely asked if there was any way they’d be able to taste the pizza themselves as it had a very odd inedible taste we were not used to. The manager immediately snapped back at me that I must not know what Szechuan food is - after telling her that I absolutely do know that the Szechuan peppercorn has a numbing effect, the pizza has never TASTED as it did that night. She told me that they’d take it back and made a remark that if we didn’t like it we shouldn’t have eaten it at all (1 slice was left and we each took bite of 1 slice).

A few moments later, we noticed that 2 chefs in the kitchen were taking turns looking at us.

Soon after that, it started pouring rain outside which started leaking indoors on the cushion next to me, splashing myself and the customer next to me and soaking the cushion. None of the staff acknowledged this, until 5 minutes later when we call them over to fix the situation.

We got the bill back, paid for everything we ordered and left extremely dissatisfied. Although the food is clearly on the decline and now highly overpriced, the most upsetting aspect is the terrible service and upper management’s bad attitude. Time and time again there are reviews that talk about the owners bad energy and it sucks to go to a restaurant that you were looking forward to only to be met with massive gaslighting, hostility and quite honestly, terrible food. Please, let’s put our money into supporting kind hearted, hard working people, who are building up their small businesses and filling our community with good food...

Worst dining experience ever. A scam. Upon sitting down we were given menus and asked sparkling or still. Not sparkling still or tap. My gf said sparkling I asked for still. They brought me Aquapana and I was confused and looked at other tables and noticed they had normal tap still water at that point I felt odd. Our serve Adriana heard us speaking about a bottle she relayed it was happy hour so we would need to get a bottle now, great and so we did. When she came back with the bottle she’d poured me a taste and I thought since we were both women we would both get a taste and so I waited for a moment and she impatiently say “can you drink it” I quickly did as I felt like she was annoyed and it quickly made me anxious (I don’t know wine etiquette). Everything after that was a dud. No one at any point checked in on us, no one at all explained anything on the menu, no one spoke to us and we truly did feel like it was personal after observing their interactions with other tables. We could not get why because we’d barely spoken to anyone. Our squash arrived and it was awful, I mean absolutely awful. We ordered a side of bread and we weren’t sure what the deal was as no one came to explain anything server again was annoyed when I asked for bread. Which was very good when we got our pizzas they were also excellent but the white sauce is a pesto sauce no white and has someone explained anything to us maybe we would’ve had a better experience. At the end we get the check and it’s $200. $12 for the sparkling 12 for the still $10 for the bread which the app with eggplant and pomegranate is $15. Then a 20% gratuity when all they did was make us feel uncomfortable and annoying. When I mentioned the water the serve quickly took it out left me without the itemized receipt. When I called the next day to speak. To the owner he said” first of all we are not a Michelin star, if you have WhatsApp send me a picture of the receipt and I will refund you” I did and he said I need the itemized receipt which I was not given. He never responded after that. Very very upset about this and I will be coming back in for you to explain to me why you treated us to poorly and why you scammed...