The Pandorica — Restaurant in City of Beacon

For those not looking to read my entire story, I'll spare you: Tl;dr - food is good, place is cute, but the service and management need a rude wake-up call. INCOMPETENT.

For those ready for this saga, here's the story of the gross incompetence that is the management of The Pandorica: I placed a reservation for 12 for my birthday lunch on 10/14. I called the morning of and confirmed 12 (I had been between 10-12 people, but confirmed for 12 when I called at 10AM) They previously said 1:30 would be ok, but called me back and changed it for 2PM. That's fine, I recognize it's hard to accommodate a party of 12, and I'm flexible. I told them that seating us at separate tables would also be perfectly ok if it made their lives easier. We're not fussy people, we're just looking to check out the Doctor Who themed place and have a little lunch.

Day of our reservation, we arrive at 2PM, and are told to come back at 2:30 as our table isn't ready - there is currently 1 large party in the restaurant, 1 small party, and the rest of the tables are empty. I am confused because there are plenty of empty tables to seat us in, but I acquiesce and agree to come back at 2:30 because it is a small restaurant and perhaps they are overwhelmed in the kitchen. No problem for us, we walked around Beacon, NY, went to some shops and returned at 2:30.

We return, 11/12 of us are seated in the back of the restaurant under the exploding TARDIS (very nice mural btw), and I am offered to be sat at the bar....by myself.... 10 ft away from the rest of my party? I naturally said I wasn't interested in this seating arrangement where I would eat by myself and watch my friends from afar and asked if perhaps we could be split to the round tables in the restaurant instead, which there were about 10 of and all were EMPTY. The table that 11/12 of my party were sat at could honestly only fit 8 people comfortably and my friends were sitting in corners of the booth area and not even able to reach the table... Our request to move was denied. Uh. Ok. This is honestly not at all acceptable there wasn't even enough space for the plates and drinks, let alone 12 people to sit around the table too. They brought a tiny outdoor patio table through the restaurant and seated me near our party. It was weird.

I asked again if we could use the round tables instead, but I was told all the round tables in the restaurant were "reserved" for parties coming in. Oh, ok! I understand that they must have people who called earlier and are coming in at any moment now.

Only that was the first LIE and those people are imaginary. It took us over 2.5 hours to start and finish our meal (we'll get to how ridiculous that is later) and literally 4 people entered the restaurant during that time. I cannot make this up. They lied about having "reservations" multiple times. Nothing else was reserved, and I have NO IDEA why we weren't allowed to move to the round tables.

After about 30 minutes they take our drink orders and after an hour they returned to take our food orders. To be honest, I wanted to walk out and just get tacos but I am a nice person and honestly thought the "reservations" they KEPT MENTIONING were real and I felt bad for them?? They weren't real. These people are liars. They made up some sort of elaborate lie to watch us suffer in the corner for God only knows what reason. The manager must be telling their wait staff to make up lies about fake reservations for some reason. Why would you not let us use the rest of your EMPTY restaurant?

After drinks came the large party left and they cleaned their table. I asked could we re-seat ourselves to that nice long table that had 15 at it. LITERALLY was told "no that's reserved". It wasn't.

Nothing was reserved. 4 people came in over the course of 2.5 hours. The entire time they acted as if we were bothering them. Don't worry, I'll never bother you again! No one apologized, manager walked by us twice never even looked our way. RIDICULOUS. Photo attached is collage of 3 pictures taken at the exact. Same....

We stopped in here on a road trip because my friend is a big Dr. Who fan. I'm a vegetarian and when we read the menu online it seemed like they had a lot of good veggie/vegan options. However when we got there, the waitress told us that the menu was inaccurate and a bunch of the items had been discontinued. She gave us a QR code to scan for the menu, but since I have extreme motion sickness, I am unable to scroll so I asked her for a paper menu instead, Apparently they don't have paper menus at all, which was bad for not only me, but also for older folks who aren't good with technology, or people who are visually impaired. She gave me the framed paper menu that was in the window, which had a bunch of whiteout on it, but it served its purpose. I asked her if the gravy was vegetarian and for some reason she laughed at me? I'm not sure why. Considering the fact that they have multiple veggie options, it seemed like a reasonable question; I thought that was a very weird response, but I let it go. Apparently the gravy is NOT vegetarian, in case anyone is interested. I asked the waitress if I should get the cheese fries or the veggie burger and she told me that they pretty much taste the same. I was thinking, WHAT?? But I went ahead and ordered the cheese fries, because how can you screw up fries, right? WRONG. My fries came (along with my room-temperature glass of tap water with no ice) and I have to say that they were the WORST plate of fries I have ever had EVER (and that is saying something). Not only were they soggy, but they were utterly tasteless and the "cheese" that was on top of them was this weird white paste that I'm pretty sure was probably just Elmer's Glue. I gave one to each of my friends to make sure I wasn't crazy and they confirmed that the fries did in fact taste like soggy noodles with glue on top. I added a LOT of salt and pepper, but that wasn't enough to save them, sadly. My friends got the pulled pork sandwich (which had pasta coated in the same glue sauce on it for some reason) with a side of caesar salad (which was an upcharge of SIX DOLLARS and included tomatoes and artichokes for some reason??) and he said it was equally tasteless. My other friend got the beef cottage pie and she said it was so tasteless that she didn't even finish it. The portions are small and the food is bland at best. For three small lunch portions, two glasses of water and one can of pop it cost us $75, which is OUTRAGEOUS considering the food is basically inedible. I guess I should have known better when we walked in and the place had literally zero customers besides us. I guess I learned my lesson the hard way; I am writing this review so hopefully anyone who reads it will listen to my warning and save their money...

Even if you are a whovian, I would avoid this place. You can get the same quality of food from your local supermarkets freezer section.

This restaurant does an excellent job of setting a nice atmosphere, then failing to deliver on it. While me and my wife were seated soon enough, the waitress took quite a while to take our drink order, didn't ask us if we wanted an appetizer (which we did and I had to interject it as she was walking away) the appetizer was the pierogies. $11 for only 4 with a scoop of guac and sour cream is a but much for what tasted like something heated up in a microwave. I would understand if they at least tasted like a local made product, but this is just the begining of the dissapointment. While my wife and I were seated almost 20 minutes before the couple at the neighboring table, they recived their appetizers and salad at the same time as ours, and their main course at least 10 minutes before ours. The waitress asked us how our meals were, before they even arrived. Now I always get my drinks without ice as I have sensitive teeth and it hurts for it to be too cold, but something fresh out of a fridge or a normal soda fountain is typically fine. The soda tasted mildly flat and was room tempurature. The meals themselves were bland and overpriced, again reminding me of something that was recently frozen and defrosted, and nowhere near fresh. I had the hooverville fill up, a suggestion made by the waitress as i was going to order the hooverville pulled pork sandwich. The sandwich was $13 and the fillup was $16. For that amount of money for the quality of food, I was expecting a much bigger portion. I can understand a high price if the quality of food is at least fresh. This again tasted like something from the freezer section. My wife had the thymey wimey beef cottage pie for $18. Now it did come with a salad, which was the only thing that did taste fresh, but she complained to me that her cottage pie tasted overly salty and was mostly just mashed potatoes. When it finnaly came time for the check, it took over 10 minutes for the waitress to bring it back to the table. For a location that sets the atmosphere of a hip and trendy place, it fails to deliver quality food and competent service.

Overall, if you like doctor who, it's a fun place to stop by to see all the collectables they have on site, and it's fun to see how many references they cram in, but the quality of the food versus the price will prevent me from ever going back again. As a whovian, I'm sad to see that this place has such potential, but as the tenth doctor said, "No second chances. I'm that...