La Piazza (Orinda) — Restaurant in Orinda

My wife and I decided to treat ourselves to an early (5 pm) patio dinner on a warm July day. We had our well-behaved dog with us, and the restaurant was very accommodating, providing him with a large bowl of water. That said, the rest of the meal was unpleasant. The server brought bread & butter to the table, but no napkins or silverware, despite our asking twice. When her salad arrived, we pointed out that she really did need utensils and finally received received them. I ordered linguine and clams as a first course and sole as a main, while my wife ordered lasagna. Hers was was acceptable, but nothing special. My linguine and the sole were delivered at the same time, rather than one before the other. There wasn’t even room on the small patio table for both, so the host removed the sole and left the linguine & clams. The clams had apparently been chopped into small pieces, instead of being served whole in their shells. I finished that and there was a long wait until we could flag down the server to get my main course, which arrived cold. Rather than go through the whole process of sending it back and a longer wait, I decided to accept it as-is.

The restaurant had few other customers at this hour, so there was no good excuse for the service we received. It seems like La Piazza would like to position itself as classy, trattoria-style Italian restaurant, but the food doesn’t live up to that and the waitstaff and management don’t really seem to care. Especially given the menu and wine list prices, we...

I like trying best food about 40-50 miles, so I go Lot Of best places around Bay Area. Now I want to tell for sure and truth This place is really in bad hand, these owners use to be Owners of best lasagna place called Four corners and they completely destroyed name of 50 year old restaurant. service is good as always this place use to be slightly under staffed eahhh .. may be my feeling. Restaurant around this area is usually expensive but this is little more expensive and they think they are THE BEST CHEF IN WORLD!!! I can feel there is change since my last visit and now. I can still try once more long I don’t see these...

SLOW, low energy, sloppy service. We were there for 1hr49 min and decided to walk out without our meal. Atrocious. They were busy but took down orders from guests out of order from arrival. We had two small kids who were without food for almost an hour and a half. The food we did have was mediocre (table bread, salad). The additional garlic bread we ordered was the only notable thing. They use pesto. It was better than average. They were apologetic but it doesn’t make up for the pace or the low energy of the staff.

Would not recommend and certainly would...