Labriola 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’ve been here several times, almost always for take-out. The service had always been great. The staff is friendly & the wait has never been long. And everything I’ve ever had was great.

The last time I was there I was taking my son out to lunch & it was the first time I ate there (as opposed to my usual take-out). My son was home from college & wanted to go someplace nicer than the typical places he goes when away at school. Basically, since mom was paying, he wanted a “nice” lunch.

Where to go?? -It had to be someplace “nicer” than a chain restaurant. -It had to have plenty of options (anything from a salad to a sandwich or a steak). -It had to have a nice atmosphere; an upscale feel that was also unpretentious. It had to have fast service. (Young people today have no patience!) needed to be casual &. -And it needed to serve good coffee (for me) & beer (for my son).

As soon as I thought of Labriola I knew it would be perfect & it did not disappoint.

We ordered at the counter & when we said we were dining in & they gave us an electronic device, like the thing you get at a restaurant that vibrates to tell you your table is ready. We sat at an open table in the back room.

When I noticed staff members serving food to other tables, I admit I was a bit confused. I’d thought we’d been given that electronic device to alert us when our food was ready so we’d go to the counter to pick it up. I thought perhaps the people being served had sat & ordered from their tables instead of the counter.

Then the woman who’s taken our order arrived with my cappuccino. Not only was it beautiful, it was one of the best coffees I’ve ever had (and I’m a coffee person so that’s a huge compliment). My son already had his beer which he’d picked out from the cooler when we ordered.

Then a waiter arrived & served us our food. I had an Aha moment - that device we’d been given wasn’t to alert us. It showed the staff where we were so they’d know where to serve us. (Maybe I need to get out more but I thought that was pretty cool).

Our food was outstanding. My son ordered a sandwich with a salad on the side. I ordered the pulled chicken sandwich with fries. We were almost finished eating when before I even thought about taking a pic of the food.

My “sandwich” was actually several sliders & I couldn’t eat all of them. I told my son to eat the last 2 sliders but he said he was too full. (What?? That never happens!!) So the portions, while not huge, we’re definitely generous.

The atmosphere was good. Lovely decor & the acoustics were good. We could talk without raising our voices but there was enough background noise that we didn’t feel like our conversation could be overheard by everyone near us.

Labriola has two sections. One side is the bakery. Although I haven’t had a chance to try anything from there yet, the selection is good & everything looks delicious. They have everything from bread to cookies to cannoli & a variety of cakes sold whole or by the slice.

The other side is the cafe & there is lots to choose from. They have a full menu with enough of a variety so if your group has some picky eaters, everyone should be happy. (In my family I have a carnivore, a vegan & a health-conscious teen & they’re all happy here).

Off the top of my head, some of the to-go options are: -A selection of Stan’s donuts; -a variety of huge cookies; -large rectangular slices of pizza that are thick, almost like focaccia. **I never leave without buying at least one slice; -Gelato (another thing I’ve not had a chance to try but I definitely will).

I highly recommend...

We had our wedding at Labriola in October 2024. Overall, it was completely beautiful and everything we dreamed of, and we would absolutely do it again if we had the option. The patio was the perfect space to showcase our love and have all of our friends and family there for an intimate dinner party wedding.

The good: The food was phenomenal. We are still getting compliments on the food two months later and I have had people tell us they wish they were at our wedding because they heard the food was so good. and the space was absolutely beautiful. Our head bartender Julie was the perfect bartender. She was so knowledgeable and attentive. All of our guests absolutely loved her and all of the bar staff! The weather was absolutely amazing so we were able to have the patio walls open still for late October. Everyone had so much fun and went home with very full bellies and warm hearts!

The not so good:

Leading up to our wedding, there was a turnover in events directors at the beginning Amy the new director immediately missed our first meeting, but I was understanding as she was new and it takes some time to get things sorted, but this was never the case as all the way leading up to the wedding, she missed other meetings with us. her communication was completely awful. There were multiple times that I reached out to her with questions and she wouldn’t send a response and I would have to follow up at a minimum of two times for answers which most of the time I never got answers to those questions. To this day there are still questions that I have not gotten answers to. She was sending me space options all the way up until the day prior to the wedding when I had tried to sort these things out with her for weeks and months prior. I sent her our menu a full month prior to the event in order for them to have everything set in stone when it came to dinner time at the wedding my husband and I noticed that there were only thin crust pizzas and we requested deep dish pizzas. After my husband finally tracked Aimee down in the restaurant she said to us “I knew about the deep dish pizzas, but they weren’t on the kitchen ticket, but that’s not my fault“ But that is her fault since she was the one who set up our menu for our wedding. After this we were told we would need to wait 40 minutes for the deep dish pizzas to come out, which was frustrating because we paid an additional fee for each guest for those deep dish pizzas as well as having to tell all of those guests that they now needed to not fill up on the food that they already had because there would be more coming. When those deep dish pizzas finally came out they all came out with the incorrect toppings they were supposed to be vegetarian, deep dish, pizzas, and everyone came out with meat.

When the desert came out the cannolis were sour, wet, and soggy, but the donuts were huge hit!

When we asked her to turn off the heaters on the patio because it was a beautiful evening she actually didn’t know how to turn them off and had to ask the bar staff (shout out Julie again) . When she turned on the firepit, she almost lit my aunt on fire.

Overall though it was a wonderful, beautiful, incredible day, and I got to marry the love of my life, so all of the little things really don’t matter in the grand scheme of it. We can not wait to come back to dine with...