Luca Turci Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Winter Park

Tonight was my first time dining at Luca Turci, and I decided to order off the regular menu vs. the Magical Dining one. Both options were great though!

All in all, the food was delicious - well balanced, robust flavors and authentic Italian. The service, however, left much to be desired.

I ordered a salad and an appetizer to start, and not even 2 minutes after me ordering, my server asked if I was ready to put in my entreé.

He asked again less than 5 minutes after that. My appetizers hadn’t come out yet. I know there is a maximum of 90 minutes at the table. I’d only been seated for about 10, maybe 15 minutes at that point so I didn’t understand his eagerness in wanting me to put in my entree prior to the appetizer landing.

The restaurant were steady but not overly packed or super busy - no line at the host stand, a few empty tables still, so I asked him if there was an anticipated large party, if orders took extra long [like guy why are we rushing this?!]…he said oh no nothing like that the pastas usually only take about 10 minutes.[Insert me trying not to raise my eyebrow too high here].

The water he brought was tepid. At first I just assumed this was following a European format as ice cold drinks aren’t common there, but I saw other waters coming out that were chilled so that was odd. He never refilled my glass or cleared my dishes. His colleague did that for him while he stood on the wall and passed me twice seeing them empty plates and glass.

When I asked for a box, there was no offer to box it up and I was given a box that was clearly too small to fit the lamb shank I’d ordered and didn’t finish.

I asked someone else if I could please have a larger box and they brought me one with a dirty lid. The manager brought me a clean lid and apologized.

It was just an odd series of events and unfortunate to have low budget service in a place that’s upscale in all other areas.

The quality of cuisine and the ambiance would make it tempting for me to dine here again, but with a different waiter and a prayer that more attentiveness, personality and kindness from the employees would be incorporated into...

I went to this restaurant today. First, I have two points to make. I tried to make a reservation through Open Table several times and it didn’t work, and I was already on my way to the restaurant (I don’t know if it was an error in the app or something related to the restaurant). When it didn’t work, I called and said there was an error, and Laura said she couldn’t help.

Okay… 20 minutes later, I arrived at the restaurant. My wife and daughter got out of the car while I went to park. When my wife asked for a table, they said it would be 1 to 1.5 hours to get a table. Even so, she asked to put her name on the waiting list, but she was surprised to learn that there was no waiting list and that in order to make a reservation, she had to register an Apple Pay card and that was it, in other words, she could walk away as if the restaurant didn’t want to serve us. In times like these, if you don’t have Apple Pay, wouldn’t you just sit at the table? That didn’t make any sense. So she was going to give up. Even though I was looking for a parking spot and she was right in front of the restaurant, I called the restaurant again and told them that there was nothing like that, and how could my wife not wait for a table if she was there in person? And on the phone to me, they said that she could come back and that there was a table available. Even so, we sat down. The place is very beautiful, tidy and decorated, but our waiter was not friendly or polite. Which makes us feel bad.

Second point: FOOD: My wife ordered a dish that says “spicy”, but believe me, it is not spicy food. It is a food that even those who like spicy food will get sick. Her stomach felt so sick when she left that she still feels sick. It has no taste at all, you just taste a lot of pepper! I ordered the Penne Burrata, which is good, but the Burrata was so cold that it gives the dish a strange taste because it is so cold. Finally, I expected more from a fancy and expensive restaurant. The people (the hostess Laura and the waiter Guilherme) are not polite and seem to be working under pressure. I felt like I wasted my money...

The food at this place was okay, if anything, just basic Italian food. The service and the place where we were sat was the worst part of the experience. Me and my boyfriend went to this restaurant to celebrate our anniversary, and we had made a reservation several days prior. Once we got there, we told the host about our reservation and she took us to our table. That table, however, was terribly placed in the middle of two other tables, super close to a six-person party round table, which provided us with zero privacy and personal space during our dinner.

Following that, it took the wait staff about 15 minutes to come bring water and bread to start our experience, and we kept waiting awkwardly until someone came over. That was strange, given that other people, who had joined the restaurant later than us, already had bread and water served. After our waiter came over, we ordered drinks and an appetizer, and that’s when I noticed a party leaving their much nicer, couch-table, after they had paid for their meal.

So, next time the waiter came over, my boyfriend politely asked if we could switch to sit at that more comfortable and better located table. The waiter turned and said, in a condescending tone, that he couldn’t because those table had already been reserved. I then proceeded to tell him that I had also made a reservation to dine at the restaurant. After I stood up for us, he said that we could move to a table right next to the wall, which was better but not ideal. Throughout the rest of our dinner, I kept looking at the empty couch tables to make sure the reservations would show up but they never did, meaning that we could’ve been sat there all along. It was the wait staff’s unhelpful attitude that made it impossible.

Overall, super disappointed that a restaurant with so much potential had their reputation ruined by bad customer service and unfair treatment towards customers. Why should we even make a reservation if they are going to give better tables for some, and worse...