Pa'La Wood Fired Cooking — Restaurant in Phoenix

Came here for a birthday dinner and left genuinely frustrated. The food was mostly solid, but the service—specifically from our server Pablo—was a different story.

From the start, Pablo showed up late to our table (apps and drinks were already ordered) and immediately gave off an arrogant, condescending vibe. He spent way too much time trying to “educate” us on how the menu is “meant to be shared,” with overpriced small plates ($20–$30 each). We ordered individually like normal people, and it worked just fine—no reason for the speech.

Throughout the night, he was oddly absent. Basic stuff like water refills took ages, and when he did stop by, he had this tone like he was doing us a favor. Things got worse when we brought up the birthday cake we had dropped off with the hostess earlier. Pablo acted like it was some huge violation: “We can’t serve outside food in Maricopa County,” and “I don’t know where you're from…”—super patronizing and completely unnecessary. After several rounds of him “checking with the manager,” he finally agreed to bring it out, but not before trying to hit us with a cake-cutting fee.

It felt like dealing with a shady salesman, not a server. The final straw was when he brought the cake, made us wait another 10 minutes for plates, then smugly told us, “Don’t worry, you won’t be charged for the cake cutting,” like he was doing us some massive favor. Honestly, it was insulting.

We were also seated upstairs, right next to the jazz band—great in theory, but the AC wasn’t working. It was stuffy and hot, and we were all dressed up. No heads-up, no apology. Also, the birthday guest’s favorite beer (on tap) wasn’t available because the tap system was down.

Again, food was mostly good—the pork belly and NY strip were excellent. Drinks too. But the vegetarian pasta was awful: mushy, overcooked, and the pesto was painfully sharp. No decent vegetarian or chicken option is a miss for a modern menu.

For $100+ per person, this place should’ve been an elevated experience. Instead, we dealt with uncomfortable heat, weak service, and a server who treated us like we didn’t belong there. Pablo’s attitude tainted the whole night. Based on that alone, I wouldn’t recommend this place until they tighten up their service and train staff on basic...

My partner and I decided to set a reservation for 7:15 PM on a Sunday night.

Once sat, we were quickly asked what we would like to drink and shortly thereafter received our initial beverages.

My partner and I decided that we would commit to the omakase experience. We are both adventurous food lovers and were really excited by the idea of a progressive dining experience.

We were served a total of 9 dishes for our experience:

New Brunswick and Oishi Oysters Scallop Crudo Spanish Piquillo Peppers Woodfired Octopus Foie Gras with Palmiers & Pomegranate Gastrique Miso Black Cod Pork Loin with Kimchi and Italian Beans Japanese Sweet Potato Milk and Honey Flan served with ice cream trio

I understand that the typical, prescribed progression of omakase is to guide the palate from lighter dishes, next to richer, fattier dishes, and then to the main dish of intrigue, and finally something to wipe the palate clean. Knowing this, I think this meal had the potential to be spectacular, but due to the pacing of the meal, I felt too bogged down by the previous course to build excitement for the next.

I found the pacing of the entire meal to be haphazard. In my experience with omakase, the next dish should be served following the completion of the previous course. At one point, we had three dishes sitting on our table at once (dishes #6-8). This caused some of the food to get cold and led to a less than optimal dining experience.

Perhaps in the future, a stronger line of communication between the front of house and back of house staff would alleviate some of these concerns. Or maybe even a disclaimer to the covers for the evening.

I would love to give Pa' La a higher rating but the overall dining experience relative to the price point left some to be desired. For $150/cover, there are some non-negotiables that I would expect an omakase to deliver on that were not satisfactory. For this reason, I do not think I would ordering the...

The service was terrible. We had a reservation to celebrate my birthday at 7:30pm. I am a single mom and never get to go out so I was very excited to get dressed up and go out for a nice dinner and be waited on.

Arriving for our reservation people were crowded in the entrance waiting to be addressed by the host. The door was open bc so many people were jammed in so it was freezing inside. People were crowding the seated tables by the entrance as those poor people were trying to eat.

We finally got checked in by the host and still had to wait 10 mins before our host took us to our table.

When we got to the table we sat and sat and finally our server came over. He was avoiding eye contact, was wiggling a lot, staring into the distance, and just stood at the table didn't say a word. It was so awkward. My friend finally looked at me and said somewhat loudly "Do you know what you want to drink?" I said I do, and the server said "what can I get you". There was no welcome to the restaurant, are you celebrating anything tonight, there was no greeting.

The service remained this awful the entire meal. No silverware, messed up the food order and forgot to put in our main course (we just sat waiting), didn't refill our water or ask if we wanted more drinks, brought our coffee at the end of the dinner with no milk or sugar. Whenever we needed water we had to flag another server down. It was AWFUL. We both left the restaurant frustrated and I was sad because I was looking forward to this night for weeks.

The worst part is he never apologized for his lack of attentiveness even after we complained to the other server. He just came over to our table after the complaint and said "What do you need?". The whole experience was TERRIBLE.

The food was beautiful but no one explained it to us or checked in if we were enjoying it. It was not a fine dining...