827 Washington St
(between 8th St & 9th St)
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 835-5585
Total Score
Food:
Ambiance:
Service:
Chrissy’s Rating
Food:
Ambiance:
Service:
Chrissy’s Review Coming Soon
Dave’s Rating
Food:
Ambiance:
Service:
Dave’s Review Coming Soon
EB’s Rating
Food:
Ambiance:
Service:
EB’s Review Coming Soon
Jake’s Rating
Food:
Ambiance:
Service:
Jake’s Review Coming Soon
Jean’s Rating
Food:
Ambiance:
Service:
Jean’s Review Coming Soon
Jen’s Rating
Food: 9
Ambiance: 5
Service: 3 (except for super nice hostess, who gets a 10)
We had an interesting time at Levende East. It is a new restaurant, so we expected some hiccups going into it. We had a 9:00 reservation and when we arrived we were told the people at our table before us were being very slow. No problem, we’ll sit at the bar for awhile. Half an hour later we were seated and the very nice hostess told us that dessert would be on them for the inconvenience. How nice!The restaurant is very pretty, with neat artwork and cool chandeliers. There is a DJ, which in our opinion was way to loud, but that might have been because it was late on a Saturday so they were going for more of a loungey feel. I’d be curious to see what it’s like during the week.The menu was very eclectic, and everything looked good. I finally settled on the guava BBQ glazed baby back ribs and sharing the mac and cheese with Dave. Both of these items were GREAT! The meat came right off the bone and the BBQ sauce was so good. The mac and cheese was super cheesy and delicious. I couldn’t have been happier with my food and it seemed to be served pretty quickly. I have a feeling the hostess told our server to get our food to us quickly since we’d already been waiting so long. And then we were pretty much abandoned. Our waiter was a total space cadet and I had to ask for more water 3 times. Our finished dinner plates sat in front of us for a good 20-30 minutes. I wasn’t too bothered, though, because I knew dessert was coming! We each got something and I tasted a little of everything. The peanut butter chocolate cake was EXCELLENT, that’s definitely what you should get if you’re going. The Key Lime Chantilly and the Banana French Toast were okay, but both featured large amounts of bland bread. The cheesecake had somewhat of an odd consistency (a little like pudding) but tasted pretty good.
After waiting around a bit we finally got our bill which, of course, had the desserts on it. We got our waiter’s attention (not a simple task, since as I mentioned before his head was totally in the clouds) and he said he’d forgotten and would fix it. Then a guy who I’m guessing was the shift manager came over and said they were taking two desserts off. We said we were told that dessert was on them so we had assumed that meant for the whole party. He gave us the distinct impression that he thought we were trying to scam him out of 5 desserts so we told him to just forget it, we just wanted to leave. (it was past 11:30 at this point) The very nice hostess then came over and apologized profusely and took the rest of the desserts off. Then we waited another 20 minutes while our waiter processed the bill. I saw him at the machine literally doing absolutely nothing staring off in space with the credit card poised above the swiping area.
So after 3 hours we were finally on our way home. The service and professionalism of the shift manager were fairly appalling. I couldn’t believe he would quibble over $30 on a $400 bill and practically guarantee that 7 people plus anyone they talked to about their experience wouldn’t come back. The hostess, who I suspect has a bit more sway than just being a hostess, was wonderful, and because of her and the great food we probably will go back, and hopefully they’ll have gotten their act together a bit more.
Matt’s Rating
Food:
Ambiance:
Service:
Matt’s Review Coming Soon
Mirna’s Rating
Food:
Ambiance:
Service:
Mirna’s Review Coming Soon
No comments
Comments feed for this article