Cha Bella — Restaurant in Savannah

I wish I could say that our wedding at Cha Bella was perfect, however, we ran into several issues that have been hard for us to shake. All of which I have reached out to management (Candice) about and received no response or acknowledgment of our concerns. It’s been 2 months since our wedding. She sent a brief “I’ll reply to you today” type of response when I followed up in November, but she never did. Given the lack of concern for such an important and expensive day for us, I am giving 2 stars for their events/catering and hopefully giving insight for others planning their special day. I probably would have ranked higher if they acknowledged our concerns and helped us feel heard.

The food we had during our tasting was incredible! Most of the food during the wedding tasted great! The Mac and cheese was not the same as the tasting, but it was still good. I also have to speak highly of Selina for knocking the decor out of the park and being patient with understanding my vision!

The cons: Our ceremony and reception were held on the patio and another large event was booked inside. There was no coordination between coordinators on how it would impact each other so we had to make a couple last minute changes.

They were extremely understaffed for our wedding dinner and struggled to get food out in acceptable timing. We chose family style for 63 guests because space was limited to have an easily accessible buffet. My main concern with family style is that people would feel like they couldn’t take as much food as they wanted because of portion size. I voiced this several times prior to the wedding. I was reassured there would be more than enough! Well, that was not the reality on wedding day. Not enough chicken was brought to each table, leaving some guests awkwardly waiting while others at the table ate. My mother was one of the guests that had to wait. The sides came out at awkward timing. My nephew’s kid’s plates were brought so late that we couldn’t get them to sit down and eat because everyone was starting to finish up their meals and stand. I felt so bad and was so stressed the entire dinner! I wish they would have told me they couldn’t handle family style for our menu choices and in hindsight maybe buffet would have been better, even if we had to rearrange our layout to make it work. Our vendors also didn’t get their food until end of the night in a to go box.

We paid per person for a bacon bar during cocktail hour and it ran out before everyone that wanted some could have some. We came into cocktail hour about 25 minutes after it started and the bacon bar was completely gone. I was told more was being made but they didn’t tell me they were only making a few pieces of bacon for my husband and I and it wasn’t being served to the rest of the guests. They brought us a small portion of bacon to share equal to about 2-3strips. It was delicious, but we did not get any of the other items that were supposed to be part of the bacon bar like chocolate covered bacon, stuffed mushrooms, bacon wrapped asparagus, etc.

I requested a couple times to pay BEFORE the wedding. In the busyness of the day, the venue coordinator and I both forgot to take care of it. I provided the venue with our day of timeline so they knew what the events of the night were. They waited until we were getting ready to do our grand exit to bring the check to us IN FRONT OF ALL OUR GUESTS instead of pulling us aside. Neither of us remembered to bring our cards to pay because obviously it’s a very busy day and we were supposed to pay earlier that day, so I hadn’t packed it in my venue bag. We ended up frantically figuring out how to get the card, had guests offering to pay (how embarrassing!), and never got a grand exit. They were also unwilling to waive the $100 late fee if we paid the next day. We went back to get the card, causing us to miss an hour of our after party where some people left before we got there. Overall, a very bad ending to our night with no flexibility or understanding from Cha...

I do not believe in writing reviews on public forums, as it not only hurts the small business but also everyone that works there. I emailed the owner directly twice and never received a response.

Thanksgiving dinner was one of the worst restaurant experiences that I have ever had. Being in the restaurant business myself, I am extremely understanding, especially on holidays, however our Thanksgiving dinner was beyond patience and understanding.

Upon arrival, there were a lot of very angry patrons waiting for their reservations and your hostess was on the brink of tears. I was kind and thanked her for working on a holiday and told her our group of six was ok to wait as long as needed in the bar. I ordered a bottle of sparkling wine for my family and was immediately told no by the bartender. She said they were not allowed to serve drinks to waiting patrons due to the bar having reservations and trying to control the chaos. This was ridiculous to me, as why would you not want to make extra sales, tips and calm waiting guests with alcohol? I asked for the manager, who happily obliged with the bottle of bubbles and told us we could wait at the open table in the bar once it was cleared off.

Once we were sat, the manager said he was going to be our server. We ordered immediately in an effort to assist him with a timely experience. We ordered a bottle of Sancerre and a bottle of Pinot Noir in addition to all three courses of our dinner. After 45 minutes without beverages I had to get up to ask where our wine was… the response was they were trying to locate the bottle of Sancerre. When he finally brought the Pinot Noir, he said he was chilling the white wine. I let him know that my intention was white before red for dinner and ordered a bottle of Mer Soleil from your wine list. He brough us a bottle of Washington Chardonnay. When I said it was not what I ordered, he informed me it had been replaced with the bottle he brought. At this point we were desperate for drinks so accepted the bottle.

After two hours at our table and no main courses, I got up again and asked the bartender to speak with the owner or general manager. I was told the general manager was on expo. The bartenders were visibly upset. I asked if this was the first Thanksgiving that the restaurant had offered and was told no, it was the 5th and it was extremely disorganized and the reservations went from 200 to over 300. As I did not want to pull the GM from expo and cause a longer delay on food for everyone, I sat back down and our food finally arrived.

The food was mediocre at best. There were dirty, unbussed tables all around us. We had to bus our own tables, putting the first course dishes on the dirty table next to us. The eight top next to us was sat before us and did not receive their entrees. They were so angry they told their server they were going to leave. Ironically, a guest at the next table was also a restaurant owner so we all commiserated on a ruined holiday with our families together.

Your staff was clearly not supported and extremely stressed and upset to the point where they had simply given up. No one communicated to us during our meal or apologized until we asked to speak to management. We were very grateful to them for working on a holiday and enduring so many angry and upset guests. All in all this was a horrible dining experience and your team lacked leadership and ownership support.

If this happened in one of my restaurants I would be falling all over the guests with complimentary beverages, apologies and thanks for patience and understanding.

It is sad that the owners of this establishment clearly do not care about their patrons nor their staff- and ruined so many people’s holiday (those dining and...

I will forever remember this Thanksgiving dinner. I honestly wasn’t going to write a review, but the entire experience was so absurd that I had to share here. Hopefully management can learn something from this and perhaps give up on serving Thanksgiving dinner in the future (since they clearly didn’t learn from their apparently failed Thanksgiving dinner from last year).

I just wanted to preface that my boyfriend and I traveled to Savannah for Thanksgiving so we don’t live in the area and haven’t eaten here on a normal night. Maybe it’s better on a regular night? We made a reservation for 4pm ahead of time since the restaurant didn’t allow walk-ins. This means, they should have anticipated the total number of covers and prepared in advance. However, we learned that the restaurant had planned for 250 covers and ended up taking 350 for some reason.

With the extra covers and the lack of employees (we also learned that there were people working that night who weren’t actually employed by the restaurant since they were so understaffed - like WHAT?!), it was a hot mess. The host looked frazzled when we walked in (bless her soul - she was the only host working), and we were seated 30 min after our reservation time. A dinner for 2 lasted close to 3 hours, where we waited ~45 min for each course to come out. The cooked food was honestly okay, but it didn’t even match the menu.

We were given rolls that could have been from my own pantry, corn bread that looked like it was half eaten, and butter. Not the flavored butter listed on the menu, but just regular butter. My hen was supposed to be spatchcocked, but it was not. At least it was cooked well, but it wasn’t cooked as described on the menu nor did it look that appetizing (see photo of the shades of beige). My boyfriend’s beet Wellington was okay, but the puff pastry was mostly raw. The sides were great though, no complaints there. Dessert was fine, just very weirdly sized portions.

With drinks, I had ordered this hot apple cider cocktail, but we also learned there was a fire in the bar earlier in the day so they couldn’t make any hot drinks. So fine, I was ok with a cold apple cider cocktail. However, my first cocktail had no alcohol, but then my second cocktail was only alcohol. Maybe it was their way to quell a potential riot? Who knows, but they did ultimately comp one round of drinks.

Look, I get it. Thanksgiving dinner can be tough. That’s one of the reasons why we didn’t cook ourselves. So I do appreciate the effort given at this restaurant. I’m giving 1 star to the people working who really tried their best and a second star for giving my boyfriend and I so many laughs and the memories for this...