Barbara I.
Yelp
I want to apologize beforehand for this lengthy review, but I felt that everything needed to be said.
I with a friend of mine this past Friday night to Garden Grill to celebrate Oktoberfest, Smithtown Restaurant Week and to see our friends Tom and Sal (2 of The Big Revival Band) sing. We were both looking forward to a good Oktoberfest meal which was on their price fix menu.
When I made the reservation, I specifically stated we wanted to be seated where we can see and hear our friends sing and I specifically asked about the price fix Oktoberfest menu. The woman that took our reservation said she would not be there Friday but would make a note next to mine name (reservation) music. When we arrived at the restaurant, I gave my name and time of my reservation to the hostess who seemed extremely surprised. It didn't appear to be there. She was going to seat us in the dining room which is not what I requested. She then proceeded to sit us in the bar area which my friend and I had to squeeze through the bar at the main entrance to get to back bar for the music. Luckily no one was sitting where we had to walk past, otherwise we wouldn't have fit. She proceeded to sit us way in the back where we couldn't see anything. Told her we wanted another table and grudgingly she sat us at small round table with 3 chairs. It was ok we could see our friends and put out pocketbooks on the extra chair or so we thought, until she made me move my chair over and took away the 3rd chair leaving nowhere for our pocketbooks except the floor.
Finally, she brought the menus and that's when I noticed the restaurant week price fix menu with some Oktoberfest dishes wasn't among them. The waitress came to take our drink order and after giving it to her I asked for the restaurant week price fix menu. She took so long in bringing us the drinks and the menu, that I asked the bus boy for one and was told I will check to see if there is one. When the bus boy come back with the menu, he told us that the manager said we cannot order from that menu and had to go to the dining room. We already ordered our drinks and didn't want to change tables since I was not told this when I made the reservations. I asked to speak with the manager. He grudgingly went to get the manager. The waitress finally came with the drinks and the menu (which we already had.) I told her to hold off with the drinks because we weren't able to order from the price fix menu and were going to leave. The waitress told us we can order from that menu, she took care of it and so we stayed.
Quite frankly we would have been better off leaving. My friend and I both ordered the potato pancakes as an appetizer, my friend ordered the sauerbraten for the entree, and I ordered the German wurst sample platter. My friend ordered apple strudel for dessert, and I ordered the German chocolate cake. The potato pancakes were way to thick and had very little flavor, my friend said the sauerbraten was terrible and that it didn't taste anything like sauerbraten. The wurst platter was ok, nothing special. My friend thought the strudel was very good whereas I on the other hand thought that the German chocolate cake had almost no chocolate flavor. The taste of chocolate was coming from the chocolate syrup that decorated the plate.
To make the evening worse, a woman came up and sang with our friends, a man took a video of them and pulled over a high bar chair and sat right in front of our table and a table of 6, blocke our view of our friends and the woman singing. When they were finished singing, I got up and thanked him for blocking our view and sat back down. He then came over to our table and in a very loud voice proceeded to ask why I didn't say anything before and why did I wait so long to say something. He continued on about how he was taking videos & posting it on Facebook. Funny, he wasn't taking any videos of our friends until the woman got up and started singing with them. He had finished taking the video and then sat in our way to post it to Facebook. He could very easily sat off to the side. He didn't have to pull over the chair and sit in front of us. After that he then had the audacity to turn around and in a very loud voice tell me that he paid for our friends to be there and that I should thank him for us being able to see them at Garden Grill. He was extremely loud, rude and obnoxious.
Now we get the bill and our shock when we see that they charged $10 for a soda (not a mixed drink,) the same price as a beer (a bit pricy for the beer as well.) We were so disappointed with food, and the service was horrible that it reflected in the waitress's tip. Normally we would tip 20% or more of the bill but in this instance the waitress was lucky if she got 10%.
We will not be going back to Garden Grill, it's not worth the trip from Riverhead and if you live in the neighborhood, I don't recommend wasting your time and money to eat there.