La Buca — Restaurant in Portland

As a 20 year veteran restaurant worker I'm giving you, the customer, a WARNING: There are red flags everywhere at this place… They automatically add a 20% gratuity to takeout orders without notice!! They upcharge EVERYTHING!! The food is careless. Above all, they have absolutely NO respect for the customer!!

I hate leaving negative reviews but do it when it's necessary and this is one of those times. RANT INCOMING:

I was looking for a new Italian place to try and this spot came up on the Portland subreddit. I placed an order for an appetizer, two main pasta dishes and two kids meals. I live in Cedar Hills, about 20 minutes away. When I got there he ran my card and handed me the signature copies with the check. He then said (AFTER running my card) that they automatically added gratuity to all pickup orders. At least he told me I guess... To my shock it was a standard 20%!!! FOR PICKUP!! I understand the need to do this at the height of the pandemic when literally no one was going out to eat and servers needed to pay rent. But now?! It's March of 2024, we're WAY past that point.

My bill for those items was over NINETY DOLLARS. I left with food in hand and pretty upset. Unnecessarily added gratuity aside, there seemed to be an upcharge for everything! The kids alfredo had a base cost of $9 and with added Chicken cost of $6. SO this is just cream, butter and parm with maybe 3-4oz of chicken for FIFTEEN DOLLARS. It gets worse as my son ordered Penne with Pesto (no protein mind you) off the kids menu and for just noodles and sauce it was ALSO FOURTEEN DOLLARS - they charged me $5 for pesto! It was such a small amount of food that it fit in the SMALL common brown-box/paper takeout container (like the smaller size at New Seasons). A mile down the street I almost turned back to ask for a refund but since I had small children at home that were hungry so I decided to count it as a loss.

I've worked in the restaurant industry most of my adult life and I find this money grab tactic to be abhorrent and downright disrespectful to the customer. I've worked in all parts of the house: line cook to server to bartender to general manager in very well known and respected restaurants in both Philadelphia and Brooklyn, NYC. I understand restaurant life.

I live in burbs but still within city limits and sometimes drive into the city for better food. My point is that I drove 40 minutes round trip to get food from your restaurant and you're going to charge me almost $20 on top of the food order for putting 5 items in a bag?! I would have absolutely tipped but you're not serving me, I'm not taking up real estate at your establishment, I took up MAYBE five minutes of your time. You did NOTHING for me other than put 5 boxes in a single brown paper bag. Is that worth a few bucks or more depending on the size of the order, absolutely!! I am a notorious OVER tipper with my history in the service industry. BUT to charge me close to TWENTY DOLLARS to pick up a standard family takeout order is 100% BONKERS. As a server if I got a twenty dollar tip on a takeout order I would have been ecstatic and maybe even comp the customer an appetizer or something!! I was so happy with $5!! This was a MONEY GRAB, possibly even illegal and just a shady, greedy policy used by the front of the house.

I'm sorry but I won't be back. The food was just C-tier Americanized Italian anyway. Such a shame… Everything mentioned is a red flag of a failing restaurant. They’re cutting...

I’ve never left a negative review before but I was treated incredibly poor here. It was really disappointing. I am a bartender and obviously have an OLCC license and the woman server I had came up and ID’d everyone. She didn’t know that the year for serving is now after today’s date in 2000... and asked me what age I was turning because my ID said May 18 1999. Okay no problem, I told her I was turning 22 and she said she’s never seen an ID like I had before. (It was an Oregon Issued Drivers license haha). Okay I look young and I’ve worked customer service all my life so I didn’t think too much of it.

When I got my drink she commented on my “smile” I was giving my brother, told me she sensed I was weird and said “okay honey I’m pulling your drink”. (Calling me a pet name and ushered to touch the rim of my drink and then set it back down, where my mouth touches....) I was going to leave had I not brought my brother and his girlfriend there and didn’t want to make a scene like some crazy customer. I said “I am a bartender. That is very weird. Do you want my ID again”. And she said “sure” and stared at the very much regular state issued ID I had. She then said “I’m just trying to see how to go about this. I don’t want to get in trouble. Something very weird is going on” she then gave me my id, did not pull my drink, went inside while we watched her talk about this situation to her coworkers. So Unprofessional. Never apologized for commenting on my SMILE and calling me weird.

To tell a customer that you’re going to no longer serve them because you’re uncomfortable with their facial expression is beyond unprofessional. To never once apologize and then go and try to tell me my “vibe” is weird was so humiliating in front of my brother and girlfriend. To not know the date of the year that is of legal age is also unprepared for but honestly not that big of a deal.

I have never once been treated like this just because I look young and I hope that the staff become aware as well that if they really thought they were serving someone with a fake ID that you do not just pull it and get them something else... you have to make them leave. That is breaking the law. I have never been so insulted by someone who doesn’t even know proper OLCC policy and never even tried to make amends for excluding me based off her own personal judgement of how I look. This was a huge shame. Obviously won’t be returning. Again, I have never written a negative review before. This was a really bad experience and I went out to celebrate my new job so thank you for that ambience you provided :/ I’m sure you’ll take this as a grumpy person complaining but this was so inappropriate and boundary crossing and you need to train your staff on how to be kind inclusive individuals to those that may “look weird” to them.

Also, the hostess was very nice and I sincerely...

I’ve never left a review for a restaurant good or bad. But my last experience here was so absolutely disheartening and disappointing I felt I had to. I’d first like to start that 2 years ago I patron this restaurant with a friend of mine. The food and service were fine, and we had a enjoyable evening out. So when my friends and I went here last weekend I thought it was a safe bet. Everyone at my table find the food akin to the Olive Garden, we were shocked by the prices for such underwhelming, overcooked pasta. But to make matter worse we not only had a waitress who while taking our order represented the salads as sides that went with the pasta we ordered (we were all pretty surprised when the bill finally came). But she also terribly embarrassed our table. For starters (while my party was on the younger side, we are all adults) the whole evening we where being undermined by our waitress and treated like children. One example being, our waitress felt comfortable enough to talk down to us with “pet names” like honey or sweetie. Second (a far worse offense) the waitress was rude to my friend, accusing her of lying and trying to fool her (the waitress). She made such a scene that the tables around us where able to hear and that of course added on to the embarrassment. (It’s already bad enough to go out and than have your server insult and accuse you, without making a public scene.) She did not try and make amends for the outburst she made, but instead spent the whole evening like we had inconvenienced her! Than only after we asked for the bill did she muster a small apology, while still finding a way to make it sound like the whole situation was our fault. Either way, she put a bitter taste in our evening out. And it was enough to make all of us not want to patron this...