Native Rochester — Restaurant in City of Rochester

This is a sad and unfortunate review. First and foremost, to note, this is apparently the off-shoot of Label 7 in Pittsford, which we love and admire.

We, my party of 8, embarked on dinner at Native for a Saturday evening night out after the theatre (Geva, part of fringe fest). We arrived for our 7:30 reservation to a lovely hostess who stated that it may be a few minutes as some tables are clearing .. we waited for 15 minutes and once I assessed the room, I thought .. it will be some time before we are seated. We decided to have a cocktail prior to being seated. This is when I met the one shining start of the evening .. Paul .. he quickly took my order (despite my many changes) and delivered accurately in moments!

An hour had passed and I noticed a back area open, I approached the front desk and stated that "I wanted to make sure that we are on her radar for my table of 8 for our 7:30 reservation that was now an hour delayed .. within 15 minutes she sat us, 75 minutes late, but we were all still in good spirits. Our server Josh, was polite but seemed nervous and overwhelmed, we tried to set him at ease and stated that he could take his time as we knew a table of 8 would be a challenge. We ordered starters and more drinks, but by 9:20 we were nearing 2 hours past our original reservations and some folks in our party had commitments that couldn't be changed.

Enter Paul, the bartender who took such great care of us earlier ... he was kind, pragmatic and sincere in his apology for the delay's. At this point, the entire table had asked to have their entrée's prepared for take out as we simply were out of time. All this to say, we certainly had our critics amongst us, as a whole, we were grateful for Paul's efforts and disappointed in the performance and execution of the dinner service.

What prompted me to write this lengthy review is the quality of my dinner. I arrived home at 10:15 PM after a 7:30 reservation with my dinner entrée to go. I ordered the Pork Chop special ... and was tired and hungry, but excited to indulge. When I opened this to-go box that I paid dearly for (and tipped generously as I knew the evening was not the fault of the server) I was greeted by a BLACK BURNT slab of dry protein. I cut into it to find the meat completely white, hard as a rock with a black burnt char on the outside. I was disgusted, this display of complete disregard for food was the proverbial slap in the face considering the evening we had just experienced. The most upsetting thing is that someone actually made the conscious decision to place this thing in the box, for this there is no excuse.

Bottom Line, awesome bar manager, cool atmosphere, HORRIBLE KITCHEN CONTROL, BAD SERVICE PLANNING, MY MEAL WAS HORRIBLE .. recommendation .. stop in for a drink after work, DO NOT EAT HEAR.

Great location, amazing bar manager (incent him) ... BUT ... Poor planning for service, need to elevate your food and please advise the individual who served a black piece of dry pork that this is a bad thing, or let them go, this is probably not...

Very disappointing experience. Obviously this new establishment is all smoke and mirrors with their trendy atmosphere and pretentiously named entrees. Our party of 9 arrived promptly at 5:45 for a reservation for dinner. Dinner orders were placed by 6:30-the majority being hamburgers. Our waitress was informed that we were going to a show at GEVA. A couple of appetizers were also ordered at this time. Appetizers were served in a timely fashion but the dining experience went downhill from here. The wait staff removed the remnants of the appetizers and it was literally an HOUR AND 15 MINUTES before our dinners were served! At this point I was seriously doubting that we would even be able to eat what we had ordered since the production at GEVA was starting in 20 minutes. The dinners arrived at the table in a flurry of confusion on the part of the staff. Burgers were all done medium rare much to the chagrin of several members of our party who requested medium well. Another friend had to get up and go find a server to get some of the sauce her order was supposed to come with. What was supposed to be a leisurely dinner with friends before a show became a race to eat as much as you could because we certainly weren’t going to be showing up at the theater toting to go containers. What struck a nerve with us even more so than the late arrival of the food was the apathetic, unapologetic attitude of the waitstaff. Several in our party have worked in this arena during our lifetimes and this type of customer service is unacceptable especially from an establishment that is touting itself as an upscale dining experience. Ironically as I look through the posted reviews it appears only those that gush about the wonderful experience they had get a response from the management. The other diner who left a review depicting a very similar scenario to ours has received no response. It will be interesting to see how long Native stays in business with such poor customer service. A word to diners considering grabbing a bite to eat hear before...

I came to this restaurant with my two young sons because this restaurant is very close to the strong museum of play so it seemed like a perfect spot to go for lunch. As I did not want to eat the cafeteria food at the museum.

When we arrived, we all enjoyed the ambience and the servers were really quite lovely. We were seated right away.

Once we were seated, I asked for the children’s menus only to find out that there aren’t any. I thought this was a little bit odd considering this restaurant is right by a children’s museum.

I ordered the lettuce wraps and substituted mushrooms instead of the shrimp. Unfortunately, I cannot have dairy so I had to get rid of the sauce that normally comes with it. I asked if there were an alternative to the sauce and the only suggestion I was given was soy sauce. I do appreciate the suggestion however I definitely think it was the wrong one. A salsa or something less intense than soy sauce would’ve made a lot more sense. I would say the lettuce wraps were only OK and not overly filling.

My son’s split a pizza. Luckily kids are easy to please and they were quite happy. However, if it were me eating the pizza, I would’ve not really enjoyed that Pizza. It seemed to be quite doughy.

I cannot say enough about the servers. They were completely lovely. And again the ambience is great. I just think the menu could be a little bit better and adding some selections for children would make a lot of sense given...