La Bella Italia Laskin — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

The worst dining experience I have had in over 5 years! The food was horrendous-the chef and the manager on duty should be ashamed!! I visited the La Bella Italia near Dam Neck, VA on Friday evening, August 15th around 6:00 p.m. First, we ordered from the menu and then awaited our meal. Bread was brought to our table that was mediocre at best. I asked for some garlic to put on my bread to make it more palatable (I had to drip dip the bread in olive oil to make it taste better). I was refused the garlic, but was told I could purchase a garlic sauce they made. Of course, this was not on the menu, nor was it explained to me until after we ordered off the menu. Hence, I did not order it but ate it with my olive oil that was already on the table The menu stated fresh pasta. I asked if any salad came with the entree (very expensive entrees, I might add!). I was told no, just the entree. I ordered fresh pepper pasta with ring neck clams in butter garlic sauce ($18.00). My son, whom I was taking out for his birthday dinner, ordered Chicken Parmigiani ($22.00). When the entrees came out his was just ok-nothing to write home about, but mine was pathetic. The pasta, supposedly fresh, was old and clumped so hard I pulled numerous clumps out of it and set it aside. I asked for our waitress, and when she arrived I literally had her feel it with her fingers to show her how old, hard and clumpy the pasta was. On top of that, if there was any garlic butter sauce on that pasta, it had to be less than a teaspoon. She apologized profusely and took it back. She came back and asked if I wanted something else, but by that time my son was half finished with his meal and, quite frankly, I lost confidence in whomever was the chef back in the kitchen that would ever let my meal leave the kitchen in that manner. I waited hoping the manager would come out and speak about it, but he/she never did. After waiting 10 minutes I requested to see the manager. I waited another 15 minutes after my request to see the manager and still no manager arrived at my table. I guess customer service and customer satisfaction is not important at this overpriced, mediocre quality restaurant. The only saving grace was the waitress, who just recently started at the restaurant. She was pleasant and very apologetic about the quality of food and lack of response of management.

I rarely ever write articles about my restaurant experiences unless they are of the utmost dining delight or dining atrocities. In this case, it is the latter. Congratulations on hitting rock bottom. You can be sure that I will not recommend this restaurant to anyone, and neither will my son. If I were the owner, I would find out who the chef and the manager was on August 15th, 2014 and maybe "encourage" them to seek other employment, because a chef and restaurant manager...

The food was superb. The worst service ever experienced. So, let me start from the beginning. It's a Monday night. I made a reservation for 8 at 730 on the opentable application. Yay! We arrived 5 minutes prior. I explained that the group changed to only 5. No problem. We were seated in an awesome table in the corner. Our server came to the table, never introduced himself, and asked for our drink order. He seemed rushed. It was busy. He returned with our drinks promptly. Took our dinner order, that was the last thing that was prompt or courteous by him. Took a long time for our appetizer to arrive. He never came back to see if we were okay, needed refills, nothing, till our entrees arrived. Then we had to ask for refills. We noticed he was also serving in another room, where a large party had been seated. He was rushing back and forth to that room. He never came to see if our entrees were as they should be at all. I've never had such service ever. My husband had to go ask for containers from him as he was working on the other service guest checks. He came over to our table handed out 5 containers and we had to fill them ourselves. While other diners had theirs taken from the table and filled by their server. He still did not return to the table until my husband again had to go to the bar and request our checks. We were given our checks, and I asked him if he was handling the large party in the other room as well as our table of 5? He said yes and then it was separate checks he explained, taking up the majority of his attention. Okay, that I understood, but it still did not excuse his obvious distraction and no attention to his responsibilities as our server. We didn't ask much at all. I could understand a small bit of fluster if we were high maintenance guests. But we were far from it. Just asked for the normal amount of attention anyone gives when in the service industry. We received our checks at 9:22PM. My husband had to finally take our check and our dinner companions check up to the bar. The woman who seemed like she was a manager of a sort, told my husband that our server was to do that. My husband replied I'm not waiting any longer for him to do so. The time elapsed from when he brought our checks to finally processing them was 30 minutes. No excuse at all. None. The manager came with our server to deliver the payment portion of our checks. She said she took off our dinner companions appetizer from their check. Nothing was taken off of ours or any real apology offered. I'm not looking for anything from this other than this, to the staff of La Bella Italia, if these were your family being treated like this wouldn't you be upset? I loved this place. The food is awesome. Change your ways and I will bring my friends here again. My birthday dinner was not as I hoped...

I know Italian food as well. I went every single weekend with my parents growing up to an Italian restaurant in Richmond. It was owned by first generation Americans so they had the family recipes from the old country.

I met my roomie for lunch and had a taste for a meatball sub. This place was close to work. The window painting is nice but full of spring flowers - in January. Service - no improvement from other reviewers - slow. Soda is Coke but they only sell bottles - for $2.50 each. Uh no. That was my first clue that this place was in trouble. No linens on the chipped tables and my chair was wobbly and gave the appearance of being dirty. Upkeep people. They had a selection of lunches for restaurant week for $10. In retrospect, I should have had one of those. I am currently unemployed, pretending I am not, and decided to go for the $12 meatball sub that I had been thinking about. We had to ask for bread, which came before lunch, just barely. My roomie got one glass of water along with her Coke. She got no refills though I counted three passes of the water pitcher right on by our table. She had Spaghetti Bolognese with Pasta Fagioli soup off the restaurant week menu. I hate regular spaghetti so I won't include that in my review. The sauce was ok and full of meat. I could make a better soup with cans. It tasted like Campbell's tomato bisque with Cannelloni beans, some bit of green, and chopped spaghetti. Survivable but not great. The two slices of bread were good but we had another delay when we asked for butter. They serve it with oil and balsamic vinegar. I thought the meatballs were good and homemade, not frozen. All of the bread appears to be baked there. With the addition of lots of Parmesan, it was enjoyable. But the price y'all. Cut the sub in half (or 2/3s) for lunch and also cut the price! As much as y'all would like to think we are ok with paying $18 for lunch, we are not! I'd like to leave the owners with this thought. As many people have written about slow/bad service, isn't it about...