Vivian L.
Yelp
My friend and I planned to walk in to sit in the courtyard. When we arrived in the morning the host told us that they were not accepting walk ins until later in the afternoon, so we could not put our names down. We were expecting to wait, but were not expecting to be turned away without being able to put our names down especially since we arrived in the morning. We walked around soho and returned at the time the host told us. However, he again wanted to turn us away until we reminded him that he said we could come back and he would put our name on the waitlist for the afternoon. He told us it would be another two hours. Since we had already waited for so long, we decided to stick around. When we finally sat down in the afternoon, we were seated in the outskirts of the courtyard. There were plenty of open tables in the middle of the courtyard so we asked to sit in the main courtyard, however the host said that the tables were unavailable. There were more than five tables available and we saw the host consistently turning other people away, without even letting them on the waitlist, so to find out that there were consistently empty tables was unbelievable. In addition, some tables remained unoccupied while we were there. Regardless, we were seated so we ordered our food, drinks, and dessert. Since we had to wait so long, they were no longer serving breakfast or brunch. We ordered and asked to be served the food first, and the dessert after.
The cherry blossom latte came quickly and was very pretty. We got the caesar salad and club salmon and the food came quickly too but was overpriced, small, and tasted at best average. I ordered a tea but it didn't arrive while we were eating. Throughout the meal the waiters were blocking our view and taking their own pictures and videos on their phones. By the time we were finishing our meal there were more than ten empty tables in the main courtyard so we asked our waitress if there was any possibility to be moved to the center courtyard for our dessert. She was very kind and agreed. However, after we moved to the main courtyard another waiter approached my friend and was rude to her about sitting in the main courtyard.
Our desserts came, but my tea still had not arrived. I asked the waitress and she said she forgot to put it in. We ordered some macarons, the isphan, and the lemon meringue tart and the desserts were all good!
Overall the courtyard is very pretty and the desserts are good, but it was not worth the long wait and the bad service. I have sat in the courtyard multiple times over the year, but this time the service was one of the worst experiences I have experienced which is really unfortunate for such a cute spot.