Great Gold — Restaurant in Truckee

Update: It's interesting that my original review was no longer visible publicly. I wonder if the restaurant owner found a way to have Google remove my original review???

Anyway, I am attaching a copy of my receipt to show the 6% surcharge of "Employee Healthcare Benefits". Hopefully, this will make my review visible by the public again.

Original Revew:

Food tasted great! Service was decent, not above or below the typical service that we've experienced in other similar restaurants.

The 1 star is for the restaurant owner's practice of adding a 6% surcharge to a dinner check.

Upon receiving the check, I saw a surcharge of 6% for "employee healthcare benefits". This practice is wrong in two folds. First, it blindsides customers with a 6% surcharge on a check. Second, it guilt-trips customers to NOT complain about the surcharge by labeling it as "employee healthcare benefit".

How can any decent human being complain about providing healthcare to those who need it???

As a business owner myself, I understand that a business wants to provide more benefits in order to retain employees. Absorb those extra costs with a smaller profit margin. Or, just add those extra cost to the prices of menu items.

DO NOT pass on those extra operating costs to unsuspecting customers on a check, AND labeling a surcharge in a way to guilt-trip customers to not complain about it.

If passing on extra operating costs to restaurant customers by way of adding surcharges on a check is truly a good business practice, why not label a surcharge as "Restaurant Utility", or "Janitorial Services", or "Employee Bonus/Salary", and so on.

This practice just leaves a bad taste in a customer's mouth. I will NEVER go back to that restaurant because of this surcharging practice. In fact, I'll tell my friends NOT to go there because of this.

I hope the restaurant owner see my comment and decides to stop this surcharging practice.

Just add 6% to the costs of menu items. It's such a simple, open, and transparent approach that will NOT leave any customer feeling misled. If a customer has no issue ordering a $28 pizza on a menu, is the customer really going to back off if it lists for $29.68 (i.e., 6% more). ...

Ordered pizza from here while staying in Truckee, and was initially surprised how long it was estimated to take to make, but when I went there to pick up, I totally understand how time consuming the pizzas are to make, especially with limited staff. Pick up process was pretty simple, and the staff I interacted with were nice. Trust the estimated time! If it says it'll take 2 hours, it will take about 2 hours.

We ordered a margherita pizza, a funnel sausage pizza, and a caesar salad with chicken.

First off was the caesar salad. Wow. Best caesar salad I've had! The breaded chicken was also an interesting change of pace from what's usually grilled chicken at other places, and the breaded aspect gave the salad a nice crunch, without being mouth bleedingly crunchy.

With the pizzas, I loved the crust! Such a nice texture and the right amount of bite without being too chewy or crunchy. The fennel sausage we liked, but we were a little meh on the margherita. Felt like it needed just a little more basil and cheese. Had one slice that was mostly sauce, which was good for what it was, but not what I was going for.

Overall, pretty good, and definitely worth checking out! Also seems like it would be a cool place to eat at once the dining room...

The food here is great, pizzas are very rich and some of the appetizers were amazing , like the potatoes dish and the non-traditional caesar's salad. However, the restaurant is pricey for the type of food (almost $40 for a pizza, $26 for a tomato appetizer, etc) so expect to eat Italian food at steak dinner prices. Also, service speed wasn't so great - took about 20 mins from when we sat down just to get water, beer took about 15 mins, and some other things also took a while. I will say the the waitress was friendly just very slow to get some of the asks. The atmosphere is nice BUT there's no a/c so on summer evenings expect to be very warm, and the acoustics are really really loud in the middle of the restaurant - we could barely hear each other and there wasn't any music playing. Also no wifi for guests and at least T-mobile has no reception here. Last but not least they charge 6% ON TOP of the cost of dinner and tax for "employee insurance". Which is absolutely absurd, and very cheeky. Why don't they add the cost of electricity to my bill? Maybe part of the rent? Ludicrous. The things this bussiness does to upsell the final bill should be illegal. They should just increase the (already expensive) cost of the...