Kanella — Restaurant in Philadelphia

Kanella Grill and Kanella South used to be my two favorite restaurants in the city - so much so that we arranged to have our wedding reception at Kanella South through a brunch buyout of the entire restaurant, to be held in May 2018, after months of searching for the perfect space as we are not typical “wedding people.” We placed a deposit of $1,200 in October to reserve the date. In January following the holidays we made reservations to eat dinner there and to get in the mood for the final lead up to the wedding. I received a hasty voicemail only hours before our reservation stating that they couldn’t honor our reservation because the restaurant is temporarily closed, and, as an aside, as they reopen we would be the first phone call they make regarding our buyout. Naturally with the wedding only a few months away, we began to investigate alternatives and requested our deposit back. That voicemail was the last I heard from them despite several emails and attempts to get my deposit back. The space is up for rent - and still no communication or apology from Kanella. It was only through filing a dispute with my credit card company that I finally received my deposit back. They never even offered to transfer our buyout to their other location. (That wouldn’t have worked for our guest count, but they had an opportunity to try to keep their money.) I have seen from Open Table that other guests have shown up for reservations that were made after the restaurant closed. I firmly believe that had we not had the buyout arranged we would not have even received the aforementioned phone call. Needless to say, we will never patronize Kanella again, and I would especially caution anyone considering doing a larger group event there (we’ve seen a number of rehearsal dinners and other...

This is my third and last time in this restaurant. During the previous ones I was happy with the food but upset with the service, however today it was really bad. We reserved a table at 2:00 pm and it wasn't ready until 2:40. 40 minutes waiting with no apologize. Finally we were able to get a table and the first notice it was: "the kitchen is closing in 5 minutes". I ordered a lamb burger with mint but I have to say that I wasn't able to identify that lamb taste, it could be lamb, pork, calf... but the most astonishing was that in plate they only put the burger with bread and mint... and that's it... nothing else, no vegetables, no fries, no nothing!!! At the end they put the bill on the table rushing us to pay as quickly as we can with and obviously a 20% mandatory gratuity...

I will never go...

Went to Kanella for brunch on a Saturday morning, and the place was pretty empty! That surprised me. Even though it was dead, service was great. Food was delicious, but as a cucumber and parsley HATER, I was disappointed to find it in almost every dish. My friend is allergic to parsley (I know, weird), and they were very accommodating to his needs. The bloody mary was a very interesting concoction with beet juice, cucumber juice, tomato juice and some other different things than you would normally find. I could barely pick out the differences of the different juices, which made me happy since I like neither beets NOR cucumbers! The lamb burger...