Georgia S.
Yelp
Maybe the Manhattan location is as excellent as they say, but we went here for brunch and it was just...bad. We got the sense they were having growing pains from just opening, but it was overwhelmingly mediocre food (and service). As context, we're all locals, and decided to try the restaurant because someone in our party had booked a massage at the hotel for their birthday and we figured we'd go to the connected restaurant for brunch, despite being fans of the many excellent local eateries in the area. That was a mistake.
The good: we were a larger party and the staff didn't rush us when two of our party showed up late. And everyone was generally pretty nice. The space is beautiful. The drip coffee is okay. And the toast is good.
The bad: Where to begin. We ordered the American breakfast, the avocado toast, and the scrambled eggs with truffle. The first two were mediocre but not offensive -- just very bland. Like continental breakfast quality. The scrambled eggs with truffle ($28) were just offensive. The table next to us had ordered a side of scrambled eggs and they were the same size as the truffle egg entree, which came with two scrambled eggs and a tiny amount of sprinkled truffle flakes (not the nice large slices you would expect for the portion). All the other egg entrees came with toast and this was just a small plate of eggs. When we flagged for the waiter and asked if we were missing something, he assured us that we must have gotten the side order instead of the entree, and then came back looking somewhat guilty to confirm that this was, in fact, our entree. When we ordered toast to supplement, it came out burnt--like, black burnt. The espresso drinks had a weird metallic taste. The poached egg on our avocado toast was cold. You get the picture.
As an aside, we thought they were appropriately handling a dairy and berry allergy, but then the servers placed the only berry dish in front of the person with a berry allergy, and then looked confused when we asked them to confirm which American breakfast entree was dairy free (since two identical ones were delivered to the table).
At that point, we were eager to just get out of there, but I think we were all somewhat disappointed that our friend who was celebrating a birthday got no acknowledgement from the staff. For a luxury hotel like the 1Hotel, that was pretty surprising and was the final nail in the coffin.
So: the headline is, go to Colonie, go to Boutros, even just go get a pastry from Breads around the corner and walk along the promenade. Go anywhere but here.