The Greenwich — Restaurant in Denver

Service was good, food was also fine but my friend got the meatballs and they are very overpriced.

What is really shameful, is the 20% Service Charge they added to the bill, not leaving it to me to decide if I felt a tip should be given. Furthermore, they also try to push an additional tip on you for the front of house, I mean, why don't we pay your rent on the premises, in fact, we should all club together to pay the entire overheads for your business!

If that is not unacceptable enough, they brought out a tiny dish with a bit of vinegar as I noted I like vinegar with potatoes so instead of offering it as a simple condiment, they put a bit of vinegar in a dish and charged me $6 for it, again, never informed me if this until the bill arrived. If that wasn't enough, they brought a second tiny dish with more vinegar as I had ordered a second dish of potatoes and even though I said I didn't need more vinegar as I still had it from the first vinegar dish, the girl just smirked and made a shrug and left it on the table and as you see on my bill...they charged me $12, so $6 for each tiny dish of vinegar.

Beyond shameful, embarrassing and all I can say is, I will never visit again.

Continuing my review after the owner's response to the above:

You wrote that I should contact you to get a refund for the $12 you charged me for two dashes of balsamic vinegar!

I was, of course, never informed that there would be a charge of $6 per dash of vinegar, and it's disgraceful to even try to suggest there should ever be a charge for any amount of vinegar. I mean, why don’t you just separate every single ingredient and charge for them also—like salt, pepper, oil, etc.?

Furthermore, you wrote that vinegar is on the menu as a pizza extra!

Nowhere on the menu is balsamic vinegar listed at all, never mind as an extra for pizza!

It’s just ridiculous to even try to suggest that charging for vinegar is anything but a disgraceful way to overcharge your customers.

The lowest price on your menu is $6 for ice cream!

Try listing “balsamic vinegar – $6 per dash” on your menu and see what people say. Maybe that will get the response your business deserves from your customers.

The fact that you and your business were—let's just say—willing to charge $6 per dash for balsamic vinegar shows exactly how your business operates.

This whole rubbish about how you say you write on your website and menu or elsewhere that you charge a 20% tip on the bill, although maybe not illegal of course, is just disgraceful on so many levels.

Of course, people can ask you to remove the charge, but it’s clear most won’t, so it’s just a way to pressure people into paying more.

Your response about paying your staff wages is just staggering.

If you really cared about your staff, you would pay them a proper salary so they wouldn’t need tips to live on. And if you offered your customers great service and great food, they might offer a tip. But to operate this way—it’s just shameful.

You write as if it's somehow a burden for you that the government now requires you to pay your staff a living wage—an 87% increase, you said, from what it was!

Don’t you realize that just proves you were making them work for you on a wage they couldn’t live on for however long before that?

Your response reveals that you’ve been benefitting from their hard work to make yourself wealthier all this time.

I’ve no wish to have any further contact with your business, and I hope other people do the same—not just for what you did to me, but also for...

This was a very interesting meal and I'm unsure if we ordered wrong but it wasn't a slam dunk for us. I think more guard rails from front of house might have steered us to a better meal. Nothing was sloppy nor badly done, but (assuming everything was deliberate) it was a really intense set of flavors (specifically acidity, herbacity and bitterness) that made for a sort of exhaustion by the end. Nice space, a bit chic industrial, though the price is fine dining, I think the space and service was more casual, but overall very pleasant and no complaints. The alphabet city cocktail was intensely flavored, the acid phosphate was very sour and the mescal was smoky and I enjoyed it all, but these same flavors would eventually kind of tire me out. Winners for us were the coal roasted tuna whose aoli and giardinara balanced out the bitterness of the char and the fat of the tuna, the roasted clams which were not new, but very well done with a nice herbacity to the broth. The char on the bread again added bitterness that balanced well. And finally, what we probably liked the best, was the warm french lentils which were filling and umami contrasted really well by the mint verde and the roasted macadamias. The nuts were not mentioned on the menu but seemed a really essential part of this dish. (I should note the lentils were sent out by the kitchen and we did not order them, perhaps indicating they knew that the two veggies we ordered would unbalance the meal, which they kind of did.) The roasted brocolini was overly assertive. The brocolini was charred to crisp, so very bitter and the nduja added a lot of spice. It also seemed like there was lemon or some other acid added to it so it was bitter, crunchy, spicy and acidic. With a steak or some other base umami savoryness to balance it, maybe great, but on its own, it was hard to eat. We also got the fregola salad which listed blackened spinach and brown butter walnuts. These seemed like it would be a base starch, some iron-ish, bitter greens and savory buttery nuts. Instead this was again an incredibly acidic and herby dish and really a cold pesto salad with what came across as just toasted walnuts on top. Across these dishes it just seemed like certain essential item ingredients were left out (the macadamia nuts, the peso and oil) and so our order was just really poorly balanced. The kitchen may be intending to provide these incredibly assertive and intense flavors, but the overall meal was just too much acid, herb and bitter. Service could be blamed but in the generic sense it was quite good: extremely professional, prompt and efficient. It was not at all personal (I don't know our waiter's name) and they did not intervene when we ordered all these items together. Not really their responsibility, but at this price point, I guess I expected a bit more. We had the cheesecake for dessert. In an excellent application of the acidity and herbacity we saw thruout, they added olive oil and salt to the dessert which took a well made cheesecake to something really delicious and unique. One note, but such is the nature of cheesecake. Overall, I didn't really love this meal and it wasn't worth the price, but I'm not sure its because the kitchen lacks intention or skill. I would probably suggest they move past the laconic and incomplete menu descriptions so diners actually can understand what they are ordering and/or empower and train servers to help people create a...

Maybe it was my fault for having too lofty of expectations, but when I saw that Denver had a restaurant that was trying to channel NYC vibes, I was pumped. My wife and I had lived in NYC for half a decade and we have extremely fond memories of our time there, especially when it comes to food. Whether it was saving up for months get a three-stared dining experience or getting Halal food from our favorite corner vendor--not to mention the pizza. So needless to say when I learned about The Greenwich, the decision was made for us: we had to try it.

There's an old New Yorker (seems only relevant) essay where David Brooks describes a character as being "good-looking but not one of those men who are so good-looking that they don't need to be interesting". In a way, I think this perfectly captures our experience at The Greenwich. It is, undoubtedly, a cool spot. It is thoughtfully designed and chicly styled (although if they really wanted to lean into the NYC vibe something smaller and less polished would have done them favors—can't blame them for skipping this). I especially enjoyed the line art adorning the dinning room wall and bathroom wallpaper. Perhaps it is because of this "cool-ness" that it felt culinarily uninteresting. I have no complaints for the technical abilities of everyone in the kitchen: the food that was served to us was cooked well (the cabbage and chicken standing out as highlights from a technical standpoint)--the problem is you can cook food well without meaning. Apart from the pizza inclusion on the menu there was nothing about this menu that felt like NYC to me. The owners could have just as easily called their inspiration "New Denver" or "Modern American" or "American World" and every every dish would still feel like a fine inclusion. (And for the pizza we got, we were let down: our margherita lacked the necessary balance between sauce, cheese, and crust. Was it good? Sure. Would it compare to the historical entities in NYC? No.) But it's just as possible that I came in expecting too much. When I think of the culinary offerings of New York, admittedly Greenwich Village doesn't come to mind. The neighborhood, home to NYU, always struck me as more style than substance—you put up with your $3,500/mo studio in Greenwich Village just to say you could live in Greenwich Village (not to mention great access to subways whenever the L decides to run). The historical artistic nature it once had having been eroded over the years as a corporate Cool(TM) moved in. (A better and more thoughtful writer would probably be able to expand on this, noting how Greenwich Village is roughly 80% white despite the fact that New York City as a whole is only about 33%.)

And perhaps that’s the heart of my issue: what I wanted was a restaurant that aimed at capturing NYC; what I got was Greenwich Village. In that regard, I find myself waffling between three and four stars. On one hand, it seems unfair to fault The Greenwich for misguided expectations. Yet on the other hand, similar to most nights when I happened to find myself walking NYC’s Greenwich Village: I don’t think I’ll plan to go back.

EDIT: Bumping this up to four stars for the thoughtful and reasonable response from the owners. Still stand by what I say, but good people...