Jose F.
Yelp
This is my second review of this establishment. I've been here about 10-15 times and I usually love it here. My last review, I believe I gave this establishment 5 stars because the food is so good mainly. The drinks are good too and the happy hour is great, I love the shot and the beer for $8. Now, a few times I have eaten here for lunch and the service was slow but the food was so good and the staff was friendly so I looked past that and still gave 5 stars. But, now I have to do another review, mainly because I feel it's my duty as customer and an elite Yelp member. So, my last experience here was a few days ago, on Good Friday actually. First off, I hate to give this bad rating but I had to be honest and I also hate to give negative reviews to places in the Bronx because I love the Bronx so much but this is my true experience. We were doing a little birthday celebration for my wife, and we work for a big agency. So probably about 30-40 coworkers were going to meet us there. Which we done this many times in the past, and it was never a problem before. So I walk in and I see about 6-8 of my coworkers waiting by the small part of the bar by the entrance. Now, Almost all the tables were empty ,except for about 2 in the back, so we asked why don't you guys sit and they said they were told they CANNOT sit at the tables because we didn't make a reservation. So my wife goes to talk to the staff and they reiterated that we didn't make a reservation, so she ask, are all these tables reserved? They said no , so she ask ,who can sit there? They said , for the walk ins. So my wife said , well we just walked in , so we can sit there. The staff says , you can sit but you all have to be on one tab. That was fine with me, but a lot of people didn't like that, because some were eating , some were just drinking, some were planning on staying for hours and some for only one drink. So, a few more of our friends came and some sat at the tables and two of my friends sat at the bar. My friend at the bar wanted to buy us a drink and asked what we like, and the bar tender said he couldn't order at the bar , he had to sit with us and join our tab. My friend was so confused and asked why can't he just sit at the bar and order drinks and pay as he goes but they said no , to go join our tab, I guess because he spoke to us and knew we knew each other. So at this point the staff had very unwelcoming faces and they just seemed mad that we were there. The entire staff had a bad attitude and just bad demeanors. I don't know if it's because it was Good Friday and they wanted to close early or it was just because they just didn't want to deal with such a big group. So, we all decided to just leave to the draft house a few blocks away. When we all were getting up to leave , I just asked the staff, why they were acting like this ? I said there's about 12 of us here and about maybe 15-25 more people coming, so why would they want to lose all this business? They just looked at me , and literally did not care. I asked again, saying can you just explain to me why you want us all on one tab and why would you rather have us leave and lose money and they literally smirked and shrugged their shoulders, basically saying , we don't care. Then the bartender said this is how we always do it and I said I been here many times and you never done this,again he just smirked and shrugged his shoulders basically saying , I don't care. So before I left I said, I gave you a good review on Yelp before and the owner responded and I'm actually Elite on Yelp and I'm going to write this experience in a review and he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders again, to say I don't care. Then I left. Now, I know this is a successful business and they don't need my business but I feel that , they were very unprofessional and just disrespectful. They get a lot of business from teachers in the area and from lawyers in the area, but they definitely lost a lot of customers for life. I don't want to say , what agency we work for but it's way more of us than teachers and lawyers. It's sad because the food here is great and we love to support but I guess they pick and choose who they want to welcome in and who they don't want to serve. They made it clear that , we are not welcome. So sadly, me nor any of my literal hundreds of coworkers will ever come here again. This is a complete true experience. And by the way we had a great time in the draft house and spent well over $1,000 there, and they were more than happy to accommodate us. But ,like I said ,Porto salvo probably doesn't even care because they are so successful.