This used to be one of my favorite restaurants in the city, saved for special occasions like birthdays and graduation dinners. Raoul's was the first choice for a night out when the pandemic hit NYC; I was anticipating restaurant closures and knew it would be the last night out in a while. Unfortunately, it was one of the worst dinning experiences I've had in recent memory. Our reservation was at 7pm, which I arrived on time for and checked in, but since my entire party hadn't yet arrived, I was told to wait outside. No bid deal. Just shy of 7:10, we all arrived and were seated.
Once seated, the hostess came back to inform us that our "lateness" caused a problem with the table arrangements, and another reservation was moved to be seated at our table at 8:15. This is ridiculous as 10 minutes late by restaurant standards is essentially on time, and it was clear that they had overbooked and were hoping to rush us out by claiming that we were late. The hostess said she was sending our waiter right away to take our entree orders. This was all within 2 minutes of sitting down.
When the waiter came, he tried to rush our entree orders, but we had barely had a minute to settle and said we'd like a few more minutes but needed assistance with the wine menu. We were running down the list, asking for recommendations, and the waiter kept pointing to the cheapest options at the top of the list and without saying much more. One of my friends can be a wine snob, so she started speaking him more specifically about the choices, and brought up a bottle she had had there before. He looked at her confused and told her that that bottle was around $300.
My friends and I are in our early 20s, went to good schools and make good money in our fields. I understand that we look young, and have been treated as such at restaurants before, but we are all regulars at Raoul's, so it was a shock to experience this there.
We awkwardly went with our wine choice, and our serve didn't let any of us taste it before pouring our glasses.
We put in our appetizer and entree orders together, which annoyed me to feel so rushed, but we didn't want to be a total nuisance.
Everything came out together, entrees and appetizers, and the table was so full of food it was genuinely uncomfortable to dine this way. By the time we got to eating our entrees, they were totally cold from having been sitting at the table for 15 minutes while we ate the appetizers. In addition, our server checked on us every 5 minutes, which only added to us feeling incredibly rushed and not at all welcome.
At that point, it was passed 8:30, and there were tables open, so the whole rushing aspect was totally unnecessary. Still, we were treated as though they wanted us to leave. Asking for the dessert menu was incredibly awkward.
To top it all off, at the end of the night, we decided to head upstairs to the tarot card reader, who none of us had ever actually been to before. It's $40 cash for a reading. Me and two of my other friends decided to have our cards read, separately. So while one of us was getting a reading, the rest of the group was sitting across the room on the couch.
After we all went, we spoke outside and we all pretty much got the exact same generic reading. Basically: "don't get complacent at work, keep up with your hobbies, and love will find you when it's right" a disappointing read on its own, but finding out that everyone got the same was especially annoying.
I love Raoul's. I frequent for a reason, and I've only ever had amazing experiences dinning here. Unfortunately, It'll be a long time until I feel that I can give it a second chance after this. read more