Papadakis Taverna

Last weekend I had dinner with a friend at Papadakis Taverna in San Pedro. We were greeted warmly at the door as soon as we walked in by one of the owners - hearty handshakes and big thank you's for joining them that evening. Large groups were in the restaurant celebrating birthdays, I suppose, which added to the jovial spirt of things. They had vegetarian entrees on the menu - of course my eye went immediately to the spanakopita. I was a very happy camper.

My friend, on the other hand, was not. She had been having a rough time at work. The restaurant was pricier than she had anticipated (which I concur with; meat entrees ran about $25 and vegetarian entrees about $16). And she had her heart set on this pasta dish made with ground beef. Except this restaurant did not use ground beef. The dish was made with ground lamb, which my friend was not interested in trying.

Our waitress was polite, but I could tell she was irritated that my dining companion would not try the dish with the ground lamb (they could not substitute ground beef). Then my friend asked for hummus - which was not on the menu and the restaurant didn't serve. Hummus, our waitress informed us, is not Greek food. It's Middle Eastern. Her irritation was growing.

Finally my friend settled on a pita pizza - pita bread topped with Greek cheeses and sausage. But she wanted everything separate: plain pita bread with the toppings on the side. I took this to mean that she wanted an unassembled pizza. Which is how I think most people would have interpreted our request.

So the food came. My spanakopita was delicious. I had a nice glass of Greek white wine. And my friend seemed to be enjoying her dinner as well. It was getting late, our waitress said she was leaving for the night. We thanked her. She left. We finished eating. And then the bill came.

There were a lot of items on that bill. What the waitress had done was charge my friend a la carte prices for each item on the pizza: the pita, the sausage dish, the cheese plate. Which totaled more than double the price of the pizza. So she called over another waiter, since ours had left for the evening, and eventually the owner came to sort things out.

Now, I just finished reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, and this man was a living embodiment of the principles in that book. He apologized profusely. He wanted to know what his restaurant had done wrong so that this mistake wouldn't happen again. He took all the a la carte items off the bill and did not charge my friend for the pizza she originally ordered. He hoped that we would come back and give them another chance.

I would definitely go back there again. The food was really good and, despite our slightly perturbed waitress, the customer service was excellent. Plus they have this flaming cheese dish that is really, really cool. Opa!
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Papadakis Taverna
301 West Sixth Street
San Pedro, CA 90731
(310) 548-1186