Luca Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Virginia

I will start with my positives. The food was good and the banquet room I rented was beautiful. I rented Luca's banquet room for my husband's surprise party. The room was rented for $75 from 6:00-9:00. The short version is that I had 58 guests, and management only scheduled 1 server. I ended up taking orders for 14 guests, refilling drinks, and clearing off dishes. I tried to make my guests comfortable and ensure that they were taken care of. It wasn't until food started coming out that I saw more servers coming to help by bringing the trays of food out and sitting it on a table. At the end of the night, I spoke to the owner and informed him that his restaurant did not give me an enjoyable experience because I paid to not be the host and ended up doing half of the waitresses job for her. I don't blame the waitress at all. In fact, he kind of did by implying that sometimes waitresses don't ask for help. So, his reasoning for my experience was that: he was not on site for most of the evening his son was manager that night, he can't find proper help, he is opening another restaurant and is spread thin between trying to sell a restaurant, open a new restaurant, and keep this one running. He asked me if I wanted a discount ( umm, if I'm presenting a problem to you and your making thousands of dollars from a party, why are you ASKING if I want a discount?) I truly was not coming to him for a discount. I had planned and expected to pay. I didn't plan to work and not be able to mingle and enjoy my night. My suggestions: don't just make your son a manager because he's your son ( I never saw him, if a party is bringing in $$$ I would pay close attention to them), have a couple of people trained specifically for large parties ( have a system, even if one person just gets drinks), cross train people ( there were 3 guys standing around upfront, He said they had different jobs ie: host, taking phone orders), focus on making sure the restaurants you have are running smoothly. This was not a "not enough staff issue." There were multiple servers to serve the other side of the restaurant. This was a poor management issue. I'm sure the restaurant runs differently on a normal basis, but if you can't accommodate large parties, don't advertise...

Let me start by saying my family orders delivery several times a year-we have spent a lot of money there. We also eat there in person. We love they Lucas and what they have done for their community. I believe we had two issues with our delivery, both of which should have caused Lucas to refund (driver could not find our home and just gave up)-. The first issue, they did refund fully. The second issue happened today 6/29/23. We ordered a pizza, my chef salad and my kids baked ravioli. We order delivery so we have no dishes and can sit and eat together without any work or dinner stress. The three items in our order was almost 62 bucks- including a 9 delivery fee and a 15% tip to driver. We did not receive my chef salad- my dinner. That meant I had to sit on my computer talking to Slice (delivery service) while my family ate. I also called Lucas. Luca's told me they could send another salad out or credit my account for the missing salad (my dinner). It has now been over an hour since they said my missing salad was on the way. My problem with this is Slice tells me Lucas uses their own drivers. So Luca's received my 8 surcharge for delivering and my tip to the driver. You tip for good service- of which we did not receive and a delivery that is incomplete. I hate calling any place of business to complain. It literally gives me anxiety and loss of appetite, as did this issue. Luca's could have made things right by delivering the salad stat and not charging me for the salad. I also believe they should take off the 9 dollar surcharge and the tip. Although, the driver was not at fault, Lucas was. I know this is a small world problem but it does have impact on my want to patron Lucas again. I will update this post after I hopefully receive my dinner. The driver still deserves her tip as it was not her fault but it should be one Lucas dime, not ours.

UPDATE- Lucas delivered my missing salad to someone else's house. We are not sure where it went. I once again called and spoke to Angel. He made things right for us but it was an awful situation to deal with. My salad was delivered roughly 2 hours after ordering. Hopefully this will never...

Due to recent social justice issues, I'm honing in on some issues of race when writing my reviews. If this isn't okay with you then don't read my reviews. I am a person of color, so this review is written from that perspective.

I enjoyed eating outside at Luca's. There aren't a lot of restaurants where you can do this during COVID-19. The waitress I had was wonderful. She anticipated my needs and got things for me without me even asking most of the time. There were a few loud white people who kept yelling across the eating area but I won't blame that on Luca's. It just shows that manners change when you're eating outside vs eating inside, so keep that in mind.

I only have two complaints directly related to the restaurant service. First, the food took entirely too long to get to my table. Both myself and my companion just ordered salads but we waited over thirty minutes for the food to arrive. Second, there was no outside trash receptacle. All my paper trash kept blowing around the table and I had to set stuff on top of it to keep it from flying away. This is a very easy fix so I hope someone will put a trash can or two out there.

The food was delicious. I ordered the Greek salad and I would definitely get it again. I've been craving another ever since I left. I also had the plain cheese cake. It was great. It was still slightly frozen, just how I like my cheese cake. I drank like a gallon of unsweetened tea because I was so thirsty. It was great.

Overall: clean restaurant, good food, slightly slow service, slightly rowdy white customers. Also, eclectic music playing, which suited my musical taste just fine.

Note for people of color: It does look like law enforcement frequents this restaurant so keep that in mind if it makes you uncomfortable. They didn't bother me so I figure they're good guys. But, I was also eating with an older white lady so who knows how that influences people's perceptions. I was still very uncomfortable with their presence while I was trying to eat. Also, there were very few people of color eating in this restaurant during the lunch time when I was there (12-2pm). I still recommend this...