Josh O.
Yelp
We came back to Trattoria Sbandati after such an amazing experience on our honeymoon two years ago. It was so good, that we ate at the restaurant two nights in a row during our honeymoon. The food was excellent, and the owner's wife was very hospitable and kind.
So we came back to Bend to visit a few family friends, and invited them to join us at the restaurant. When we arrived, it was a day that was 100 degrees at 5 pm. We had made for the reservation outside, not knowing that there was strict policy that once you decide inside or outside there would be no exceptions. It was four adults plus our infant son, and knowing 100 degrees would be terrible for a baby, we asked to move our table indoors where we saw several open tables. We were told by our waitress, Joanna, that it was not possible. Adding to this, one of our family friends was not feeling good from the heat, and even though Joanna noticed this, it didn't faze her to keep us outside.
Fast forward to our experience - that family friend ended up throwing up in the parking lot from the heat, and our son was also not feeling good. We had just received the food, and asked for it to be boxed up to go because we could not stay longer. Upon leaving, Joanna said good luck to us. I gave her a 15% tip by default mistakenly, because she didn't deserve a tip - the service and experience were just awful. We rarely dine out with a young child, so when we do, we want good service, but didn't get it. The food was excellent two years ago, and was also excellent again: the charcuterie board was still excellent, and their bolognese pasta is something we could eat daily.
Now you may be thinking, why didn't we leave from the start? Because the restaurant has a policy, or at least with Resy, to charge $30 per guest for not showing up, and we thought this would've been applied had we left at the start. Crazy policy if you ask me, but I'm not surprised after the service and experience. Maybe the owners can correct us if we we're wrong, but they had our credit card information to make the reservation and could hence charge us. I also think the restaurant would do all of their guests and potential guests a favor by refusing to do outdoor dining when the temperature is too high.