Portobello — Restaurant in Oakland

Do not, I repeat, do NOT have an event at this restaurant.

The day got increasingly worse by the hour for my cousin’s baby shower. During set up, after the restaurant set up our group of 60+ under a smaller tent, where half of us would be sitting in the parking lot and in the sun- they didn’t help move any of the tables or chairs to the large one. The balloon staff who helped come set up were the ones who assisted. There was no assistance at all in regards to our event.

But the worst had to be the service. We had 2 servers for an entire event of 60+, which is the venues fault- no theirs. But none of us have ever felt more disrespected at a restaurant in our lives and I mean several tables of people. The gentlemen was rude and downright nasty. He walked around demanding- not asking that we sit down, or we would not be able to order our food. Seriously- “sit in your seat or I will not take your order”. I was baffled! Once we were all seated he would come around and tell us to raise our hands depending on what we wanted. He would talk over us. For example, he kept pointing to an empty chair- my sister-in-law who was inside taking her daughter to the bathroom. When I would try to say “I’m ordering for her” he would talk over me “She should be seated if she wants to order dinner!” finally I had to basically yell “I AM ORDERING FOR HER. she’ll have the chicken parm.” And he walked away. We even tried joking with him saying how it all sounded good! I think if he could have told the guest to shut up, he would have. Another woman was completely skipped over for the salad portion when she asked for it, we got huffed and puffed at by the other server. When dinner was brought out, my mother tried to explain where the dinners went and he shoved his hand IN HER FACE to tell her to stop talking and tossed the plates wherever! I thought our table was going to walk out. When he was approached my by aunt hosting the event about his attitude, he stated “well, doing my best” and walked by her. Earlier in the day they came around taking drink orders – soda, water and lemonade were covered. But we could order from the bar. So we opened a tab for our table. He brought out the tab at the end, handed it to me and it had several tables orders on it. I stated I wasn’t paying for other tables, we didn’t have any wine just 7 mimosas (for each woman at our table), while there were 11 listed. He just walked around the party going “who ordered wine?”. Finally he comes back with some cash in hand, I say, we will cover the 7 mimosas and he kept saying I had to pay for 11. I told him no, break up the check like we asked and he said no. Also, the check only had the entire cost! So we didn’t even know what it was per drink, we had to all whip out our phones and calculators. When I asked why we couldn’t have separate checks for tables he said “no”- that was it. He became so RUDE, and nasty. Demanding we pay for it. I finally handed him the cash for it all and walked away. No clean up was helped. One woman leaned over my 3 year old niece and almost hit in her in the face with her elbow. Another guest was helping her elderly mother up the ramp when a server walked by, didn’t stand out of the way and then hit the woman’s shoulder. I could go on for hours how absolutely awful this event was, but these are a few of the major examples. The only reason I’m even giving ONE star is that the food was good. Besides that, they have about 60+ people now who will never, ever recommend this restaurant to anyone. In fact, as we were all leaving and cleaning up- we were actually laughing about what an absolute disaster this restaurant is.

Also… this is coming from a server herself. I’ve had my bad days, I’ve had bad events. And I’m sure the servers aren’t 100% to blame, it’s managers and oversight. But man, I’ve been to restaurants before that have run out of food, or silverware or certain drinks, I’ve had people who don’t even make eye contact, and I’d rather go there then ever step foot in this...

Some people prefer skydiving, but nothing gets my adrenaline pumping faster than knowingly going to a restaurant with incredibly negative reviews. What a ride. One of my top-tier chums has been craving a solid Italian meal for months now and specifically picked this place for its cuisine and relatively convenient location just off 287. In what I found to be a fascinating throwdown between the two main online review portals I use, Yelp cited an average rating of 2.3, while Google was at 4.0. Google is an easy lay in my opinion, which is why I usually rely on Yelp for the tough but accurate assessments, but even I thought this was a gigantic discrepancy worth investigating. This wasn't off-the-charts terrible, but I can understand why a lot of people are pretty tepid on it.

We stopped by here for dinner last Friday night a little after 6pm. It is...a behemoth. I'm not sure how else to describe it. It feels much more like its natural business model is that of an event or banquet hall versus a "normal" Italian restaurant. There's a ton of parking (a good thing), large ostentatious rooms and there's nothing small here - even the wine glasses looked like twice the size of the ones I normally use. Despite what I'd consider to be a pretty busy time for an Italian restaurant (aka Friday night dinner in North Jersey), it was noticeably empty throughout our visit. I guess it's possible that there were other rooms beyond our radar that were bustling with patrons but I honestly doubt it. Odd though.

I decided to play it super safe and go with their general pasta/sauce entree (where you just pick a type of pasta and its accompanying sauce) - Penne with Bolognese. Huge helping and tasty. I was pretty hungry and still brought at least another meal's worth home with me. No need to go metaphorically skydiving with the menu. Like most white tablecloth Italian restaurants, we also got a generous portion of bread and butter, and two of us had glasses of wine. All good. If the experience had maintained this level throughout, Google would have won the day unquestionably.

The meal took a real nosedive toward the end when we ordered dessert. In hindsight, it's pretty frustrating because Portobello got SO close to the finish line here and then stumbled - a real unforced error. Up until then, I would have classified the service as very good. Our waiter was friendly, attentive and stopped by often. If memory serves, there was a secondary staffer nearby as well to add some grated cheese to dishes, fill up the water glasses, etc. So plenty of assistance on the premises and all was going well. We split a few items (I ate most of my chum's cappuccino gelato - refreshing and a decent palate cleanser) and the minute the dessert showed up, the service went up in smoke. Very strange - all they really needed was ONE more visit to the table for the win. But despite the fact that we were within eyesight of numerous employees and very obviously done with our meal, it literally took close to half an hour for someone to come back to our table for the check. Our guy just up and disappeared, and no one took his place. It's hard to look at that as anything other than bad management, and from the other reviews, this seems to be their biggest problem - fixable but doesn't seem like it's being solved.

The food is decent but something isn't quite clicking here. I don't think it's worth the risk, especially when you have so many options for this type of cuisine...

I am writing and posting this review because Portobello did not have the courtesy to respond to my email...

I wanted to take this opportunity to let you all know how wonderful Kristina was during the entire "re-planning" of my daughter Carly's Bridal Shower (that was to take place exactly 1 year ago). She was quick to respond to my many emails, informative, accurate, pleasant and made this experience a positive one! So I wanted to give a shout out to her and say a formal THANK YOU!

Next, I wanted to give a shout out to Michael our ONLY waiter that day! He was terrific, despite the fact that he had to single handedly wait on and serve 45 people (and retrieve everything from downstairs virtually himself). How can a party of 45 people be assigned ONLY1 in wait staff? (In my opinion and in the opinion of all my guests, subpar for a facility that has been in business as long as you have)! At least 2-3 in staff tending to this party was in order. It would have alleviated people finishing with their meal before others got theirs, desserts coming out in stages, coffee being served in a timely manner and Mimosas and Bellinis could have been ready by 12 before all the guests came. Again, nobody blames Michael, he did the best he could ALONE and was a professional, and cordial at all times and should be complimented and since I have little faith that anybody will, I am doing it now, GREAT JOB MICHAEL ( I hope the tip didn't have to be shared with anyone).

We were told we could arrive at 10:30 the day of our party to set up which we did. There was nobody to greet or help us! In fact I had to seek out Marcello as there were 2 round tablecloths missing and we needed them in order to set up. He responded " you have to wait until the wait staff comes in at !!:00". Really, you couldn't locate them for us? (Which by the way we never did receive!) Marcello never said anything else that day to us, NO WELCOME, NO CONGRATS TO THE BRIDE, NEVER STOPPED UP TO SEE IF EVERYTHING WAS OK, OR DO YOU NEED ANYTHING, NOTHING, NADA...OH WAIT, UNTIL THE END WHEN THE BILL HAD TO BE RECALCULATED! I have been to many brunches, parties and events and the host is present in some way at some point during the 4 hour event! This was gross negligence of his duties and your reputation. If he was too busy, someone else should have been delegated that responsibility. Believe you me, I am thrilled that business is booming again for the industry but if you don't have enough in staff something has to be done to maintain the caliber of service you want to maintain. After all, I chose your restaurant based on its reputation and good food.

Suffice it to say, this was extremely disappointing and more so now that nobody responded to my email.

By the way, it also would help if each burned out lightbulb was replaced in that room, I was up to 15 out when I stopped counting (not only would that help with the lighting but it...