Rae E.
Yelp
I've been to this restaurant a few times over the years and each time was a bit underwhelmed / disappointed, but wanted to give it another chance since I live in the neighborhood. This Valentines Day was the last straw, I'm never going to come here again. I've literally never written a yelp review before but I can't believe how unpleasant this meal was.
First of all, in order to hold a reservation for 2/14 they made us send a Venmo of the full cost of the meal to a random number, which is super weird no? I've never seen another restaurant do this, even on Valentine's Day. The rates were different depending on the space in the restaurant where you wanted to be seated (also weird!). We picked the fireplace room which was one of the more expensive tickets ($230!) but we assumed that the vibe in a space called the "fireplace room" would be cozy and romantic. We arrived and honestly immediately started laughing at how weird the ambiance was in that room. First of all, the lights were BRIGHT, like cafeteria bright. There were over a dozen lamps turned on in this room, and a bright chandelier. We noticed some of the other couples around us taking it upon themselves to turn off the lamps closest to them. There was technically a fireplace but everybody was seated so far away from it that it was actually cold in the room. Most of the tables were long tables with wooden benches, like you'd use for a big event, and we were seated at a table that already had people on the other end. We asked if we could switch to one of the smaller tables by the window and were told that those tables were a different price, even though they were in the same room. Weird!
But honestly by the end of the meal we weren't even talking about how bad the vibes were because the quality of the food and the service were also so bad. We weren't offered water or drink menus until we asked, and for our 8:30 reservation we didn't get water until 9PM and didn't get our drinks until 9:30PM, which was after the soup had arrived. We noticed that everyone else around us in the room were having a similar experience of waiting for their drinks and water for ages, or having to ask multiple times for these things. Honestly if we hadn't already paid for such an expensive meal in advance we probably would have left at this point, but we felt like we had to see it through to try and get our moneys worth.
The first two courses took a really long time to arrive, and they messed up our salad order (which feels like it shouldn't be possible for a pre fixe meal where they made us check off our choices with a pen on the paper menu), and again we noticed that other couples around us also got their orders messed up. After the first two courses the rest of the food came out at a decent pace, but the quality was underwhelming. The soup wasn't hot, the canapés felt like they had been sitting out, and generally most of the food was just sort of flavorless and unexciting.
Throughout our meal the service could be best described as bad and weird. The servers were very kind but just didn't seem very well trained and seemed overwhelmed and frantic, like they were maybe understaffed and/or hadn't been prepared for how to handle this night. They were constantly running in and out of the room (like sprinting), disappearing for a long time and then lingering close to the table very suddenly, snatching up our plates the moment one of us was done even if the other one of us was still eating, taking our plates but not replacing our silverware so we had dirty cutlery sitting on the tablecloth, bringing one item at a time even when we had ordered two of the same thing, etc. Just sort of unsettling especially when you're charging so much money and it's supposed to be a special valentines meal.
In the end we ended up paying over $400 for this meal (the $230 ticket plus two drinks each, fees and 20% tip which was automatically added) which is by far the most expensive meal for two people we've ever had in Greenpoint, with some of the weirdest vibes and worst food and experience.
Again, the staff was very very nice and I don't blame them at all, this seemed like an issue of really poor management. I've never complained to a manager before in my life but I was very close to doing so after this meal because it felt like such a rip off.