First Republic Lounge & Restaurant — Restaurant in Elizabeth

I recently celebrated a birthday dinner at this restaurant. I had prior experiences with the customer service not being the best in the past, however I decided to give them another chance. However, I regret celebrating my birthday here at First Republic.

When I arrived with my friends, despite having reservations our table was not ready. We had to wait approximately 30 minutes for our table to be setup due to a prior group of people celebrating birthdays. We were advised to sit in the VIP room to which we opted to stand at the bar due to the VIP area being dark and cold.

As we were waiting the be seated, we noticed the waitresses literally moving tables from patrons who were still utilizing them and had not had a chance to get their belongings and leave the restaurant (this is bad customer service.

When we were finally sat down at our table, we were close to the entrance door which patrons and staff constantly left open throughout the night that resulted in us being cold.

One of the waitresses that served us (dressed in a Jean jacket and had her hair styled in a bun) gave us an attitude throughout the whole night. There were times in which she forgot to bring out items we requested and had an attitude each time we reminded her. When she did bring our food out, she inappropriately touched one of my friends to get their attention while she brought food to our table.

To add insult to injury, one of my friends discovered gum on her chair that got stuck to her coat. When she went to our waitress to tell her about this, the waitress responded by blaming my friend and said to my friend: "Well you saw me initially clean the tables before you sat down, there's nothing I can do about it."

After we ate and received our checks, we asked a young gentleman (I think he was one of the managers) to take our group's picture. While we did this, the same waitress yelled at us to move our belongings and to hurry up to leave because they have other patrons who were coming in to the restaurant. By that time our table was visibly annoyed and upset. She had the audacity to rush us when we had to wait 30 minutes to sit at the table. It also was not appropriate to speak to us in that manner considering that we are customers and also we supported the restaurant and their business during that night.

When we did move from the table, we complained about the poor quality service that we received to the same young gentleman who took our picture. He was nice and tried to diffuse and rectify the situation by offering for us to sit in the VIP area again and also offered a free drink for my birthday. That free drink never arrived and we ended up leaving shortly after due to the VIP room not having any lights. Before leaving, there was a woman who asked us if we wanted bottle service, however we refused to spend any additional money with how we were treated. If anything, we should've been given free drinks due to our experience.

Overall, this restaurant needs to do better with training their employees/staff with using friendly communication skills because they have lacked in this area for years. Also, please note that they don't take online reservations. Reservations are required to be made on the phone which is inconvenient because you don't know whether or not they will remember your reservation in their system.

Furthermore, they do not seem to do anything to acknowledge birthdays. Other Haitian establishments I've been to at least bring a dessert or put on a music when a patron is celebrating their birthday.

All in all, this was a disappointing place to celebrate my birthday. Wouldn't recommend celebrating events or even...

My Fiancé and I decided to have our engagement party here and it was the worse experience ever. I called to schedule a party and left multiple messages for a manager to call me back and they never did. Once we told a friend about our experience (She is close with the owner) we received a call back from a manger to book the party. By this time I was so annoyed with the lack of professionalism that I was looking to have the party elsewhere. But because my fiancé is Haitian, I thought this would be the best way to represent his culture for our party. So we decided to have the party there. Once we met with the manager she was very rude and gave us short answers to the questions we had about our event.

Fast forward to our party... Our party started at 1:00pm and we agreed that my family can get there at 12:00pm to begin setting up. At 12:15pm I received a call that no one was at the restaurant and the doors were locked. When we called the manager she claimed that she was unaware that the restaurant was closed and she was on her way to open up. I was beyond upset! I would assume if a restaurant is having an event, there would be bartender/cooks there getting everything ready prior to the event. On the day of the party the temperature was 85 degrees. Once we got to the place the air was not fully circulated and was hot and uncomfortable inside the restaurant. When we expressed how upset we were about what was happening, we were told by management to relax and that everything is now fine.

And lastly, the service was terrible!! As we were blessing the food, the bartenders were talking so loud that we had to pause our prayer to tell them the shut up. I am beyond disappointed with the service that we received from this place. Even though the food was great, it is not enough for me to EVER support this...

Me and my two sisters called in our order separately over the phone for a to go order. ALL OF OUR ORDERS IN TOTAL WERE ABOUT 170 DOLLARS and on top of that we tipped because we were expecting top quality service. One of my sisters ordered the tour of Haiti and the legume it was repeated over the phone back to her.. She was told 15 minutes. We came from far for our food and arrived in 40 minutes which should have been more than enough time. When we arrived two of our orders were ready one of which was a huge plate of rice but NOT enough shrimp(6 pieces ) for 26 dollars and the smallest side of macaroni. When we tried to get our other order of the tour of Haiti and legume. THE ORDER WAS NOT IN THE SYSTEM so therefore now we had to wait another 15 -20 minutes for that order when we were told 10 mins. 20 minutes later she comes out with half of our order and NOT THE COMPLETE ORDER. When we inquired as to where the rest of our food was she told my sister that she did not order the legume and that there was none in the restaurant. Which was incorrect because we were all standing there waiting for the order to be filled while our other orders were getting cold. The music was entirely too loud when she was taking our order and also we are wearing masks so therefore it was even harder for her to hear us due to the level of the music. At the end she did say sorry but by then we had already been waiting for 30 minutes. No accommodations were given to us at all even though our order was put in wrong twice. We were not offered something else THE CUSTOMER SERVICE WAS NOT UP TO PAR AT ALL my sister will not be coming back due to this inconvenience and I am very unsure if I will return. We are trying to support our fellow Haitian brothers and sisters but unfortunately we were very disappointed with...