Tavola Restaurant + Bar — Restaurant in Springfield Township

Reserved for a party of 4 a week in advance for my friend's Bachelorette dinner. They said outdoor seating could not be guaranteed in advance. We had a fantastic day and looked forward to ending the evening here. Other than the live music this restaurant was a s*it show. I do not leave this review lightly having my Associates in CA. We asked to be seated outside upon arrival and were told it was booked (the entire time we were there until we left there was a plethora of available seating a party our size was even seated outside when we got our drinks). The menus were disgusting. They were flimsy, sticky, and the ink was wet sticking to the plastic making them difficult to read. The lights flickered on and off in the dining room all evening. We could tell right off the bat our waitress was frazzled. I will not name her here as I understand people clock in to work with things going on in their life and to say the industry is high stresss is an understatement, however her service and attitude was far too terrible not to mention it in this review. As well as the overall staffs. They messed up our drinks and food twice, two of the us got our food before the other two members of our group. The Bride asked who we later found was the manager Susan if she could have avocado as it's supposed to be in her Cobb salad. Susan came back and said "Girlfriend it's avocado ranch not avocado." The Bride's mother and I were livid at this point. Refills of our drinks were requested once and we never got refills on our water. Nor were ANY of our plates cleared without me asking for them to be taken as they came by, the visits to the table were all to fix mistakes. They brought one of our appetizers out twice. We waited over an hour for our checks and that is not an exaggeration. After we finished we for the first time asked for our checks and waited 30 minutes to recieve them. Which I made distinctly clears there would be three checks. One with the Bride and her mother's food, one for myself, and one for the Bride's sister in law. They did the check wrong twice. At that point I complained to the staff we wanted to pay and leave and the experience was terrible. They offered to take items off the check. The manager Susan asked if she could do anything and offered a $25 gift card. I told her we wanted to leave and we would give the Bride the gift card; that the Bride is non confrontational and to just give her the gift card not make a big deal about it as it would embarrass her. Which is exactly what Susan did and brought negative energy and attention to our table. Then the third iteration of the checks arrived and were still wrong! Nobody in sight - after another 20 minutes the mother of the Bride left cash on the table that covered her/the Bride and we walked out. We will never be back here. I have never experienced worse service. On top of it all, the food was overpriced. We would have had a better evening buying wawa and drinking wine in the Bride's backyard. Save yourself the misery. *Update as of today 5/27. See the photos attached. Phone # blocked out as a professional courtesy. Add har@ssment to the list. Trying to pay us again to come back after being explicitly told to never contact me again. I regret being the one to place the...

I went for "outdoor dining" in february 2022. THis was my first time at Tavolas. They did not have outdoor dining - they have a fully enclosed tented area (with high ceilings and, what felt like, reasonable air circulation) that is technically situated outside the main edifice. It seems likely that they open up the flaps on the tent during warmer months. But we assumed we'd be getting outdoor dining since the website says "outdoor dining" and that is totally a thing that people seek out during a pandemic...right? Maybe it is just me & my wife.

Our waiter was nice and attentive.

The food wasn't great. It took a long time to come (people who came after us, and ordered food that was almost identical to what we ordered, got served before us) and when it came, the hamburger had too much salt (it tasted like a mouthful of salt...as though the chef got distracted when seasoning the meat), the caesar salad was overdressed and the cheesesteak egg-roll was overly greasy and had no discernible cheese on it. The fries were good.

They gave me a replacement hamburger that also took a long time to come and was not cooked to the temperature that I initially requested. The waitress comped the burger without our having to ask. We tipped her appropriately (while we're here, can we talk about the fact that tipping is an antiquated means of paying a human being? the situation with the food wasn't the waitresses' fault and yet, if i'm disappointed enough to not tip, she loses out. that's not right. America is one of the only countries in the world that does this. Can we not?)

No one was wearing masks properly - which is - i don't know the word for it. Every person on staff either had their noses uncovered OR they were using their masks as chin guards. I mean...if that is the attitude towards masks - just don't wear them and do so with the understanding that we are all taking a calculated risk in choosing to dine in a shared space. The flip side of that is that employees of the establishment are not appropriately protected from each other. I mean - we're two years into the pandemic...we're all tired of wearing masks. It just feels like - why bother with a policy if you're not going...

I think I’m still shocked at the lack of attention, lack of caring, and overall dismissal of our party today. We were a table of 4 who came in for a late lunch of salads and a cocktail. We placed our drink orders. Approximately 15 minutes later, one of us went to check on our order. It was two glasses of wine, a mock tail and a cocktail. Our waiter quickly came over and told us he put the drink order in 5 minutes ago. When we went up again to check on our drinks, the bartender said they just got the order. One of us ordered sparkling rosè. The waiter delivered a glass of regular rosè. He said “that is our sparkling rosè”….it wasn’t sparking, and come to find out, there isn’t even one on the menu. I ordered a lemoncello spritz. I was given a pint glass full of straight lemoncello. When I returned to the bartender to ask if she put any Prosecco or club soda in my drink, she rolled her eyes and said “do you want more Prosecco?” Well, since there was not one bubble in the drink she said already had Prosecco in it, I certainly didn’t want more flat Prosecco in the drink. My friend later returned my cocktail to the bar and had her remake the whole thing while she watched (still served in a pint glass, not a proper spritz glass). Being watched, it was a completely different drink.

We ordered our salads. One of us ordered a quinoa salad and asked for salmon to be added. I also asked for a quinoa salad. The waiter asked if I would like a protein to be added, and I declined. The other two ordered their entrees as well. When the food runner delivered our salads, I stated mine was the quinoa salad without salmon. She had two plain quinoa salads. When our server followed up, he stated he didn’t put the salmon in with the order because the salad doesn’t come with it. We did not get the salmon.

When he delivered the bill, he was proud to point out that we were not being charged for the salmon.

I am just flabbergasted at how poor this experience was. I’m not sure if it was a training issue, or just total lack of awareness. I think we were there for nearly 2 hours for a simple salad...