LAVO Los Angeles — Restaurant in West Hollywood

I’m leaving this negative review because multiple things went wrong when our group of 4 dined at Lavo last night on Saturday.

It was my wife’s birthday, and we had a 7:30 reservation. Waiting for a reservation sometimes happens, but we weren’t seated until after 8. To me, if you’re waiting over 30 minutes, then it wasn’t truly a “reservation.” There was basically no communication. A friend in our group had checked in with the hostess, who had mentioned a free drink, but this never materialized. Fine, moving on.

When ordering, my wife changed her order from the pappardelle to the penne vodka, which the waiter acknowledged and said was good. When our meals finally arrived, the pappardelle arrived. Waiter was able to switch the dish to correct the issue.

The other friend in our group ordered a pizza that arrived way before any of our meals came. Waiter said something’s along the lines of “oh that’s weird; I don’t know why they’d do that.” Waiting 101: there isn’t a they and a you. You all represent the restaurant.

On top of all this, we were seated next to a semi-private party (room was separated by a translucent curtain) which had non-stop flash photography. Multiple photographers were taking bursts with flash, and they were shooting for at least twenty minutes and the majority of our meal. The amount of photos was obscene. Burst photos were essentially a strobe light in our face the entire night. Someone must of said something to make them leave by the time we got the bill, but the damage was done.

The bill came, and of course it had both pastas on it. I pointed this out to the waiter, and his reaction was “Thank you, sometimes people mess things up and these things happen; I’ll fix it right this away.” No, don’t thank me for pointing it out, just apologize! He asked me if everything was alright, so I mentioned the photographers and the response was essentially “yeah, that annoyed me a lot too.” I was surprised that not only was there no true apology for anything, but that nothing was comped despite all of the adventures above. Would have been very easy, and it would’ve been a drop in the...

We had a special birthday dinner at Lavo last night and we were VERY disappointed. We had a reservation and despite this, was kept waiting for around 40- 45 minutes to "wait at the bar" (it wasn't that busy at all) The hostess staff were collectively so rude we honestly considered leaving. More than rude actually - it's a sense of entitlement that is really off-putting. The bar staff (despite having a very limited wine selection, no beers, prossecco that wasn't chilled etc...) are also rude and dismissive. The man behind the bar actually said "people who come here don't tend to drink beers!". This all felt so awful we complained and that's when I realized what the real problem of Lavo is - a complete lack of on site management or experience in handling customer service. We spoke to the "manager" Eli - who while he was nice - seemed lost and unable to manage or fix pretty simple issues. We carried our wine to the table ourselves - and then a gentleman named Jeremiah came to our table and said "so sorry about your experience" we explained how it felt, what had happened and then he said he would "sort" it. He didn't do anything. All very strange. Then a very rude bar person showed up and slammed - a bar bill on our table and told us " we should have paid at the bar before coming to the restaurant side". It's like they don't all work for the same place. Then the good part is THE SERVERS - Michael and Viola were fantastic. Warm, helpful, knowledgable and very seriously let down by their management team who leave them to hustle, turn it around and keep us happy. The food menu is great but all the food is SO salty it really lets it down... Thanks to Michael and Viola we had a good night in the end - but really a terrible experience at the beginning.... At the end of the night we get the bill and they can't figure out the use of multiple credit cards - seriously! On a small positive the design of the restaurant...

My mentor brought his colleague to meet me and suggested this restaurant, having been to Lavo when it had just opened. My mentor is 89 years old and is a retired business man.

When we arrived 10 minutes early, we asked if we could kindly be seated and were told that restaurant policy only allowed seating after everyone had arrived. Our table was ready, we were told. There was no one else waiting. But we weren't allowed to sit. For me it's difficult when arbitrary restaurant policy intervenes with general kindness and being empathetic to an older man vs having him stand in the louder bar area. The 20-something Maitre d' was firm and cool about this, like they can be at the Apple store.

We were seated and ordered. Our waitress was outstanding. The group seated next to us was celebrating a birthday (and in influencer style). They had brought powerful LED lights to shoot their entire dinner and the lights were flooding our table like when an SUV with high beams pulls up to your campsite in the middle of the night. It wasn't pleasant. At one point their waiter was holding the LED high above their table and we were blinded. This went on after multiple requests for them to be more considerate or dim their LED's. It started to feel like Chuck-E-Cheese for influencers. My mentor realized that this place had changed a bit so it was our bad for not realizing that sooner.

The food itself was mostly pleasant, when it would show up. I had the shrimp crudo which had a fresh zesty sauce that everyone enjoyed. The filet was somewhat normal and maybe forgettable and had cooled in waiting. The wine was good. But the food came in 45-minute increments. Our understanding waitress was tracking it and apologized by offering us complimentary dessert for having to wait more than 2.5 hours for the courses to complete.

Could have been...