Pen Top — Local services in New York

I was a guest at the hotel and upon checkin the concierge recommended the rooftop bar as a place to check out so that's exactly what I did. The weather was clearing up and just warm enough to sit outside without freezing so we decided to sit outside. The view is nice and there are two plastic domes that you can book if you have a large enough party but since we didn't, we opted for a spot next to the edge.

Being in the Peninsula, you would expect good service but our waiter felt more like a back of house staff who had been asked to fill a role temporarily until the real waiter was back. My husband received a phone call and he thought that was the perfect time to come to our table to take our order, luckily he had mentioned something he might order so I just got that for him. It was really awkward because he was standing so far away and asking me questions, I had to raise my voice.

Drinks are not cheap which is expected and they were very average. They used an orange wedge that was pretty bruised and ugly as a garnish.... Why would any bartender do that?

The busser was visibly annoyed when we were leaving and was intent that we walk backwards and out of the way so he could pass. Not asking to be get special red carpet treatment or anything but I am heavily pregnant and clumsier than normal. Finally upon signing the bill, the same un-trained waiter came running out to the lobby saying I didn't pay.

I had put the charge on our room and he failed to read the giant words we had clearly written on the receipt. Extremely embarrassing for everyone involved. What a waste of 40minutes of my trip to New York, it would have been better spent walking to...

Beautiful view from this older venue, we have been up a few times before, but a very poor interaction on this occasion with the manager on duty. I arrived w’ my wife for one evening drink at 11:30pm to this quite busy rooftop hotel bar, advertised as closing at 12:00am. I purchased two drinks ($55, normally worthwhile for the NYC skyline view and experience). We proceeded a few steps to the open air patio to sit at an empty table but we were immediately intercepted by the manager who informed us that the patio, although otherwise fully occupied, was closed and we would not be able to sit at this empty table but would have to go back and stand inside by the bar and finish our drinks. I started to walk away but didn’t see anywhere pleasant to stand in the smaller, crowded interior bar area so I quickly turned back and appealed politely once more to him that we’d just prefer to sit for 5 or 10 minutes to finish our drinks. After all, this was the whole point of going up there in the first place. His reply was that if he “let everyone do that, he’d never get home!” I replied that “I wasn’t so worried about his evening work experience at that moment as I was mine and my family’s, as customers!” That was that… We walked back over to the bar area and stood there in a crowded corner. Then he came back up to me and offered that maybe “I should start over with him!” Wow! I was astonished but continued to restrain my frustration and turned away. We finished our drink and left. This stands out for us as a rare, very negative experience after an otherwise...

I’ll try to make it short! 2 STARS RATING! The bar stuff were nice, the person in the blue suit who was walking around and seems to be the manager is also nice and does care about the visitors. However, if you are not at the bar and you are at the table, the servers who oversee the tables don’t seem to care much about you. Our server for example, did not make any eye contact with us while we were ordering, he looked other way at most times almost pretending he does not care about us, maybe its his style I don’t know, he even asked us to pronounce the name of some of the drinks for him from the menu that he gave us while he was not looking at us still! Maybe we were not very important to him :(. Most of the time we were confused as we did not even knew if he got our order right or not. If this place position its self as a high end place, then why not to do its best and act like it :). Sadly we left earlier then we originally planned because we got used to the views quickly and cocktail drinks on the menu were average and not a lot of choice, well maybe if the server was a bit energetic and offered some ideas, maybe we could of stayed. Anyway, there are plenty of other options, just google roof top if thats...