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La taverna


Jack Slade

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We stopped going there. Owner/chef has a bad disposition and can be very rude. The food can be great. But often it was awful, in our experience.

Why did the other thread on this topic get closed down? The moderator didn't say. Seemed to me the comments were typical of us after reading a negative report on a restaurant well known to many.

Lexy

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I've never had a bad meal there in 10 years. I've always found the owner to be delightful if a bit eccentric. He gets testy when someone wants ketchup or hot sauce to add to their food. Italians and French take their food very seriously and consider adulterations such as ketchup a sacrilege. So do I.

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We stopped going there. Owner/chef has a bad disposition and can be very rude. The food can be great. But often it was awful, in our experience.

Why did the other thread on this topic get closed down? The moderator didn't say. Seemed to me the comments were typical of us after reading a negative report on a restaurant well known to many.

Lexy

Maybe because it is very easy for someone to get on the board and do a business great harm without the standard of proof required in most cases or the accused a chance of rebuttal. The damage that can be done by nefarious parties can be serious.

IMHO, the outing of 9 guilty parties is not worth damaging one innocent one, to the owners of the board.

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Lexie wrote my experievce to a "T" in his old location on La Huerta Plaza.

"We stopped going there. Owner/chef has a bad disposition and can be very rude. The food can be great. But often it was awful, in our experience."

Of course newer people may have had a more recent experience.

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The owners have been out of the area for quite some time ,developing another restaurant on the coast. So how did the original alleged incident happen? I don't believe it.

....and therein lies the problem with this thread: lack of proof re that incident.

Personally, La Taverna is not on my list of favorites, but that's because I don't care for their version of "Italian". Someone who IS fond of it said it was "Northern Italian". I've dined in Northern Italy. The food's delicious. So, as in all things, it's a matter of taste.

Never had any interaction with the owners, so can't comment. The son, Allessandro of Yellow House, started out as a friendly host, but after having some bad experiences including burglary and some difficult customers, he swerved toward crankiness. Not everyone is cut out to become happy restauranteurs. It's a difficult job requiring great patience.

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You are far too forgiving.

Maybe. But as anyone who has had to do direct selling to the public in any capacity knows, it takes a special brand of patience to be gracious to the customers who yell, whine, are unduly demanding, entitled and sometimes, just plain rude....over a long period of time. Some are cut out to roll with the punches: some aren't. Those who aren't should probably not go into the restaurant business.....or any retail sales position.

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We have been to Taverna multiple times and have found the food usually better than average and the service is usually fine. The last time I was there, I ordered an entree sized salad and asked if they could please put a grilled chicken breast on top of the salad as they're was not a large salad that included a protein. The waitress seemed very hesitant, so I asked her if she might be able to check with the manager or the chef about doing so and that I realized, of course, there would be an additional charge. I am fluent in Spanish and I am also very polite.

She came back after several minutes and told me that they could do it. Interestingly enough, when I received my salad, the chicken breast, which was on the small side, was served on a separate plate. When I received my bill, they charged me an additional 100 pesos for the plain, grilled, unseasoned, ungarnished chicken breast. This is WAY more than anyone else in town charges to add a chicken breast to a salad.

I won't do that again. And we won't be dining there again anytime soon.

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When we last dined at their location at the west end of town , immediately after we were seated, we ordered a bottle of Italian Chianti. I happened to remember that I needed something from the car and as I walked through the upper part of the restaurant to the exit I noticed the owner (who had never been polite or outgoing in our previous visits) filling (through a funnel) a wicker clad bottle from a large jug of the cheap almost undrinkable wine that you see in every local grocery store. When I returned to the table.......guess what? Yes, there was the bottle that I had accidentally witnessed being filled by Sr. Italiano. Having witnessed his tirades previously I simply told the waiter that the wine wasn't what we had ordered and as our food hadn't arrived.......we left......to never return. From the opening post I would suggest that eventually someone, soon, will forcefully adjust the owner's disposition.

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He used to buy 10L boxed wine from a distributor in Guadalajara, as did his son. I have also seen both decanting into bottles. Actually, the boxed wine was better than more recent offerings.

Another local Italian restauranteur of many locations would mix and decant various wines and call it his own. Maybe it is a local custom. A typical mix is 50/50 Chauvenet and Padre Kino.

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