Leese H.
Yelp
I've been one of those misinformed Yelpers when traveling abroad and reading reviews on A Le Tole. I admit that I am a noodle connoisseur and I absolutely love noodles. Just reading about A Le Tole's fresh noodles made me salivate all over my cellphone. However, when it came to my experience at the restaurant, I couldn't help but annotate all the things that went wrong:
1. My boyfriend and I came on Sunday evening at 9:00pm to hopefully get a table without reservations. The chef/ owner kindly informed us that they were booked that evening, and that we could come back the next evening. We made reservations to ensure we had a table. Because we were starving, we found Osteria Ai Do Archi, next door, which gave us fantastic service and food.
2. Monday evening comes, and I'm super excited to finally try A Le Tole. We were led into the back of the restaurant where we had our table reserved for us. (Side note: It appears that people who made reservations that night had tables in the back of the restaurant. That means, you could not see any kitchen action at all. In my opinion, the reservation seating was like the worst table in the house. You're sitting next the bathroom and behind a wall that completely obliterates your view from the live performance and from the restaurant.)
3. Service was awful. It took us forever to get menus, then I had to wave down a few waiters to actually order dinner. Meanwhile this is all going on, the restaurant's credit card system wasn't working at all. Servers were running around as if their hair was on fire. Basically, we all had to pay in cash for our meals.
4. The final verdict was obviously my food. The waitress enthusiastically recommended the black spaghetti with seafood. Meanwhile, my boyfriend ordered the fungi pizza. We both got our dinner at different times - which sucked. While he tried his pizza first, he admitted that it was really soggy compared to all the pizzas he's been having in Italy. I tried a bite, and I agreed. Then comes my spaghetti, and the first bite was so uncomfortable. You know when you chew pasta and you know it is still so hard? I just kept on eating because I was so embarrassed that I hyped up this restaurant to my boyfriend, but the food was so bad. I told him to take a bite - he just ended up spitting it out and said "I'm not eating that. I'm going to get a stomach ache because the food isn't even cooked." After he made that comment, I completely stopped eating it, too.
5. Trying to pay for the bill was almost close to impossible. Again, I waved at the waiters like a crazy person to signal and mouth the word, "conto!" One of them finally brought a little box out so we can put our cash in. We did, and we waited... waited... and waited... forever for them to take the box and give us change. Because we waited for so long, we decided to give them the exact change instead and leave. We only had so much time left in Venice that night, and I did not want to spend it waiting for these inept servers to get back to me.
6. On my way out, I felt this sudden need to tell the waiters about my terrible experience. I kindly said something along the lines that my pasta wasn't good at all. The noodles were really hard, and quite inedible. To my shock, one of them defended the noodles saying that it was always prepared that way! I said that it was not normal to eat pasta that hard. He continued to defend these godforsaken noodles, meanwhile I stood there embarrassed, tongue-tied (because I can't speak Italian), and just nodded my head... and walked away.
7. I would have walked away not writing this review but it wouldn't serve any justice to future patrons (future noodle lovers). I do have to admit that my review is very negative due to all the circumstances regarding our experience before, during, and after the restaurant. Nevertheless, I do think people should still give this restaurant a try by AVOIDING eating the black spaghetti and pizza. Also, if you have patience like mother theresa, then this is the restaurant for you.