Okay, I am about to reiterate a common theme here; decent food, ABYSMAL service. I also see that Paul "the owner" responds to negative reviews with a very heartfelt apology. Paul, do me a favor, don't apologize - FIX IT!!!
We came here with my kids and parents to celebrate a birthday. We were seated right away by a very attentive hostess. She was lovely. We got our menus from our waiter, placed a drink order and were ready to place our food orders. Problem...Where is our waiter? He is in the back, attending a staff meeting with the manager, listening to a speech on the importance of good customer service. Uh, Mr. Manager, the lovely speech your are giving is contradictory to the message you are trying to convey. The restaurant was filling up and there was no wait staff to take orders because you are making them listen to a lecture on the importance of customer service. In most normal restaurants (i.e. Manhattan restaurants), the manager has his motivational speech BEFORE THE RESTAURANT OPENS. Not while it is filling up with hungry diners.
I made the lovely hostess aware of this contradiction of words and actions. She had the meeting broken up but our waiter was not available to take our order - he moved on to a table who arrived AFTER us and was taking their order. Having 2 young children and my octogenarian father to feed, time was of the essence. My husband asked a waiter who's job appeared to consist of converting oxygen to carbon dioxide if he was our waiter and he rudely responded "no."
Just when I was about to fear a multi-generational revolution, our waiter appeared to take our order. The busboy brought over 2 baskets of rolls which briefly placated my brood. 30 minutes later a busboy, came to our table with 1 plate of mac n Jack (their version of mac n cheese) and placed it on the table. Seeing the size of it, we realized it wasn't ours - my girls wanted burgers and I ordered a side dish of mac n Jack. We quickly told the busboy that this was not part of our order, he took back the plate and brought it to the next table but not before my starving young children saw it and decided they wanted it in lieu of their burgers. Not good....
15 minutes later, our food arrived and it was good. I have no idea why it took 45 minutes to come out when other, more complex meals, ordered after ours came out sooner. At this point I felt like our waiter was punishing us for complaining to the hostess. I saw the manager roaming the room and but he seemed to be avoiding our table.
I requested our check and the waiter disappears for a very long time with my credit card which gave me time to recover from the sticker shock. $171 for 2 adult burgers, 2 kids burgers, a hangar steak, 3 sides and 2 glasses of wine. Are you kidding me?? This is Queens (granted Forest Hills) not the Upper East Side! Before anyone flames me for being cheap, please refer to my "I'm allergic to cheap" list and my reviews of Masa & Le Bernardin in my "Fine Dining" list. I am not afraid to pay good money for fine food, but I don't want to be taken advantage of either.
I left a decent tip (against my better judgement) because my kids made a substantial mess because they had to wait so long for their food. Normally I would have stiffed the guy.
Lastly, the bathrooms. They were clean but the music was so loud that a deaf person would have needed ear plugs. I figured the goal was to make the stay in the bathroom as brief as possible but my toddler told me that she would rather go in her pants than go back into the bathroom "with the really loud music."
The only reason why I gave this restaurant 2 stars was because of the lovely hostess and the food was tasty. Otherwise, 1 star it would have been. read more