La Pizza & La Pasta — Restaurant in San Jose

I was expecting so much better of this place because I have heard great things. I wanted to be understanding, hence not giving them the 1-2 stars I honestly feel the experience deserved, but my experience here was wild. We arrive at our dinner reservation, and we are 90% sure our waiter is high. And look, we're in California...plenty of us are high and functional and do a fantastic job. This man was barely existing. He went around to pour waters, missed a glass completely and dumped it out all over my friend's birthday card, didn't say a word, and just carried on like nothing had happened. We had to clean the table and blot off her birthday card with our own napkins. He also would just come to our table and stare into space instead of asking if we were ready to order or saying really anything, we had to kind of lead with whether or not we were ready or needed more time. We get to ordering drinks, and somehow my friend ends up with the drink she ordered AND the drink she had cancelled in favor of the current drink, meanwhile I get no drink at all. It's clear the guy must have crossed out my drink instead, which would be an honest mistake if we weren't already getting kind of annoyed. Then we go to order appetizers and are told they are out of bread. How on earth is Eataly of all places completely out of all kinds of bread? Fine, we order other appetizers, we move on. We get to ordering our food, come to find out they are also completely out of fettuccine. I'm sorry...this place has been open for years. They're a chain. How is your supply this out of order on a weekend when you know you'll be busy? So I make a quick decision to get the cacio e pepe pasta, re-order my drink, and figure all will be fine from there. Unfortunately, there was more disappointment ahead. Their caesar salad was the most watery, flavorless salad I've ever had, and for the price you pay, there should at least be some flavor to the dressing. I feel like I ate wet lettuce with bread crumbs on top. My friend ordered the gluten free version of the burrata pasta, and we came to find that they definitely give a smaller portion of gluten free pasta than they do regular pasta, so I figure that is worth noting. Youd think we'd had enough petty inconveniences by this point, but no, her pasta came out with no burrata on it, so they had to bring that out on the side after the fact. By this point, the only saving grace that had happened was our waiter graciously brought us 2 baskets of bread, I would imagine from the Eataly store or something, and didn't charge us for it. We were very appreciative of this small gesture and those are the little things that saved my night from being a 1 star experience. I have to say the cacio e pepe pasta and the prosciutto and burrata pizza were fantastic, but I'm not sure they were good enough to risk coming back for the same disappointing experience. Individually, each of these problems were petty oversights that I tend to be very understanding about, but last night was a mess and not a very good impression of what their service...

Overall a pleasant family dinner. Benjamin was our server and he tried his very best to be attentive and thorough. However, there were some misses and I don’t believe it is his fault.

First of all, when making reservation on Open Table, I made a point that I am celebrating my child’s big 12th birthday (8 total in the party) plus I check-marked the box “birthday”. At check-in… the host did not ask, nor confirm if we’re celebrating anything special (like many other restaurants do, especially when there’s a large party). So, I believe this information was not even relayed to Benjamin. However, when asked for drink orders, I made a point to say “hey Birthday Boy, why don’t you order first!” as a test to see if any information was relayed to Benjamin AND if Benjamin was being alert/attentive. I guess not, but that’s okay cuz he was overall very kind and surprisingly took our orders without having to write anything down. That in itself was quite impressive. Drinks came and they were yummie, especially the special limoncello sorbet cocktail! Kids got a strawberry spritzer and they loved it!

Next was the food. Now my boys and I come here weekly during the Nov/Dec months especially. So we know how the food tastes. It’s been 8 months since we’ve been here and the menu choices and some dishes have been removed. Kids pasta choices on the kids menu have dwindled down to 1-type of pasta (in the past, they could choose from about 5 different types). My birthday boy asked Benjamin if he can do butter tagliatelle, but was so sad to hear “substitutions are not accommodated” so you only get butter “generic pasta”. Not Benjamin’s fault, but disappointing to have a sad child and less choices on the children’s menu. The next item was the chicken add-on to my fettuccine Alfredo… not only did they remove the table side pasta that I could add-on truffle shavings, the fettuccine Alfredo was the next best dish. The pasta and sauce were great! But the chicken add-on was such a disappointment. Not only was it forgotten to go with my pasta, when it arrived it was basically boiled chicken with a quick grill just to give it grill marks. Disgusting. What happened to taking the time to grill the chicken properly?! This has gotten downhill. Then, also, my other child’s meatball add-on was also forgotten and we had to wait to ask for it. The meatball arrived, my child ate some of it and said it was “not good”. He remembered it was better in the past. Another disappointed customer.

Still, overall Benjamin was kind and tried his best (he seemed like a newbie, so my party cut him some slack). I hope management would make the right choices and correct these food disappointments. We will still come back to enjoy the ambiance and fresh pastas as you guys have a good thing going on… just don’t skimp on your cooking techniques and limit your pasta/entree choices, AND pay attention if someone is there for a happy celebration… just a verbal acknowledgement of “happy birthday” would be...

Went to this place once before and thought it was OK but overpriced for what you get... We went back tonight for the Taste of Napoli prix-fixe menu...... I had made a reservation for dinner specifically for this special menu (it asks when making the reservation). Waiter comes and asks if we're ready and we told him we wanted to do that prix-fixe menu and went ahead and ordered "small bites" from the menu while making our choices of antipasti and pasta. Waiter comes back and takes our order. He then says they don't have the one (most popular) pasta I was going to order (despite them specifically taking reservations for this "special event"!)... This should have been stated when they pulled up our reservation or when the waiter first seated us. Our first appetizer and one antipasti are brought out while we are still waiting on drinks. Our drinks finally show up along with the other food, minus one more appetizer.

Our water ran low and despite visiting the tables less than a foot away from our table and refilling their water, our waiter didn't bother to refill ours until we were almost done with our meal.

The pasta I swapped to from the special Napoli prix-fixe menu was brought out and it was basically an undercooked spaghetti that an amateur cook could have done better at, with barely enough sauce on it, and no cheese was offered even though we saw fresh ground cheese offered to other customers. I asked one of the staff for cheese and they brought it over. Meanwhile.... Between courses, our waiter had taken away our silverware and said he'd bring over more.... Our pasta dishes were brought out and we were still missing silverware! We got it only after I flagged him down to bring it over. The after we finished, we tried to order a special Gelato dessert advertised at every table on a small card.... We were told that they were out of it and the waiter walked away. He came back and I asked if they were out of all the Gelato or just that one... He told us that they weren't actually out of it, but that it's made to order and nobody on shift knew how to do it..... After our meal we went to the Gelato bar on the first floor and they had a wide selection of Gelato other INCLUDING the one that the restaurant didn't have!

The "Taste of Napoli" experience is a total dud when they're our of items and what they do have is sub par, there's not actually even really any entree options in the selection (except the one they were out of) and the service was absolutely terrible. Will not be coming back here again. With so much good food available in the bay area this is not a place worth wasting money on.

(I want to point out further that the waiter specifically left us a card with a QR code asking us to...