LaBarra Ristorante Oak Brook — Restaurant in Oak Brook

Anyone looking to have an event, please be warned. Food and cocktails here is absolutley amazing! Everytime I have dined here as a typical guest has been great 10/10. So, my husband and I decided to not have a traditional wedding and instead an intimate 35 person (including me&him) dinner at La Barra. From the start, the communication with Amy, the Event Manager was atrocious. But she said she was new & it was near memorial day so i turned an eye. I did have to make multiple emails to follow up with her, even to confirm if she ever applied our deposit after I emailed her the completed form with my cc info. That is super unprofessional. We confirmed in email documentation time and date for a site visit. My husband and in-laws show up at the scheduled time & to find out Amy wasnt even at the facility, off running some errand? Getting lunch? Who knows. Thankfully, we had no plans and chose to have lunch while we waited for her. We had cocktails, apps, and a pizza before she even showed up, she wasnt just late, she was BEYOND late AND she shows up and calls me by the wrong name and had the wrong person’s event pulled up. I wanted to walk out BUT we already placed the deposit, we loved the food and drinks, & the wait staff and manager we spoke with that day were incredible so we again turned an eye to Amy’s unprofessionalism. We discuss what the day of event would look like and work on the menu. She says itll take 2 days to email me the BOE. I say thts fine, we move on. Fastforward 8+ days, still no email woth the BOE. So i email her, no response. Email her again, no response. I call x2, left 2 voicemails on event phone line and finally spoke with someone at the front who tried to get Amy but she was with another client and would call me back. Now, we are 2+ weeks out from our site visit with no follow up or BOE she promised. I explain that im frustrated. Late the next night i finally get email responses from Amy with horrible excuses about how busy they are, her job isnt for one person, everyones upset with her, etc. she claims the only way to get in touch with her is by sending multiple emails and calling, but thats exactly what i was doing with no success. Regardless, unprofessional.

The remainder of time up to our event her communication was still very lacking. We confirmed the final headcount with her but she never updated it so when we showed up the day of they were set for 30 not 35 guests as we told her and is documented that she confirmed. The setup on the patio was not AT ALL what she promised it would be like when we met during the site visit and my husband and I had to fight them to move things back as they promised so we had enough space. Not to mention day of Amy was INCREDIBLY hard to find or attend to us even after we asked other staff to get her, she was in another meeting they claimed. I never felt like a priority to her. She literally would blame errors on her wait/banquet staff that I know for a fact was her fault, not theirs. The 2 banquet staff men we had were INCREDIBLE! They saved the day!! Amy, however was nothing but scattered, disorganized, absent, and always trying to put the blame on someone or something else.

I am sorry we have loved La Barra, but was beyond disappointed that a place SO reputable would have such a disorganized, lack of empathy Event Manager. It put such a bad taste in our mouths. I did call and speak with a General MOD the following day, praised our wait staff and explained all my frustrations with Amy. She was kind and acknowledged my frustrations and they did give us a comp giftcard, which was kind. However, that does not erase the stress I had the day of my technical ‘wedding’ nor stress leading up to it. Please, be warned when working with Amy!!! Its almost a month out from our event date and i still cringe about the stress that day was and how unhappy I was. If i could go back i dont think we would have our event at La Barra. Please, just be warned regarding events here, i dont want anyone else to feel this way, especially about such an important day...

I have eaten here and gotten take out here several times without issue, they were great experiences. Food is delicious, anything you get will be satisfying esp something made with dough. This isn't about the food though. This is about communication. I was so excited to be having lunch nearby so I could order some pizza from here via a scheduled pickup order.  I placed my order this morning to pickup this afternoon and received an email that said your order was placed with an order number. This email also said you'll receive a second email when your order is ready. Around the time my order should have been ready, but without receiving the order is ready email, I went in to pick it up. I was disappointed to find out that the order I placed this morning was not a true order and was told I would receive three emails, 1 when your order is placed and two that your order is confirmed and 3 when your order is ready. I did get an email that my order is cancelled around five minutes after my order pickup time... after I had already been told my order was never ordered. They also said their online ordering hasn't on been all day, the tablets have been off all day. Ok? In any case this is how I learned about 3 emails, not two even though that is what the first email says because I told them I received an order is placed email with an order number but they said that is different than a confirmation email.

I'm sad that I will never eat here again because it's some of the best pizza ever but this is such poor communication that could have been avoided in a couple different ways. Re: order canceled email after the pickup time, it seems like if your tablets haven't been on for sometime the system should recognize this and send out cancelation emails way before expected pickup times, not after. Re: email notifications, change the wording in the first friggin email, ie if you don't receive an order confirmation in 15 minutes order...

our waiter was jerry we were here for a hmgs little wars convention near target so this was a blast um we came here on two separate nights um one thing i remembered was i got my pizza and i somehow dropped the cheese and toppings slid right to the ground i actually pointed it out to the waiter and he immediately got it the reason i did that was when i worked at a restaurant there were things like if someone is going to eat something out of the garbage to think of some stuff like what i was saying about chicago blues howlin wolf muddy waters iggy pop and at first i was upset but one of my quotes actually was a story is where something not that bad happens then things keep going um so the kale salad was good um some of the busers looked nice and the host was very professional and helpful we went to giordanos before this um the ivy wall with the aperol reminded me of miami um the other waiter was nice too a bald guy and earlier that day we saw a brian urlacher billboard um the deep dish was real good chicago was fun i mentioned the orwells to people but no one seemed to register who they were i saw them twice um some of the chicago names were like oprah who seemed to be the winner also barack obama um harrison ford not really john cusack the restaurant was very nice um it was a lot of fun yeah jerry seemed real charming and experienced like he knew what i was saying during the meal there were other people around who were cool too a attractive manager we met at one point on the second day who my dad vouged for jerry um the pasta was great no food poisoning um the shrimp was good the seasonings that is a little bit of a kfc word um we had waterfront views and there was a heat lamp yeah that solved all my problems thanks labarra it was by blueberry hill and a vietnamese joint it was fun um we tried the thin crust too everything was hot and quality also went...