The Vanguard — Restaurant in Harrison

Sorry, this is a longer one. DON'T GO TO PLACES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL UNWELCOMED.My husband and I brought my mother and aunt out to The Vanguard today, Friday at 6 pm. We were hoping to treat our relates to a good meal and a happy holiday decor. We had been there before with friends on the previous weekend with friends. When we got there the restaurant was empty. It's two big rooms had maybe 4 or 5 tables. The hostess was flustered and asked if we had a reservation. We didn't. She said she would look to see where she could seat us. We were happy to wait, but I was surprised given how empty the place was and the fact that when we were there the previous saturday from 7-10 pm it was NEVER even at half capacity. We waited about 7 minutes for the hostess. The hostess then walked us to our table, all the way at the end of the second room right by the kitchen where we mostly got a view of the staff working and the music from the kitchen instead of the xmas ambience. Again, this restaurant was EMPTY. I asked if we could please sit in the first room, which had some people in it and felt livelier, or at least in a nice table in the second room. We were told this table was the only one they could "squeeze us into" because of reservations. I still don't understand why they could not seat someone who came in later in this table? I spoke to the manager. She also insisted this was the only possibly available table. I did not want to ruin the evening so we stayed. Most food was pretty good and our server, Khadija was very sweet. We had two drinks each, appetizers, and desserts. We were there from 6 pm to 8 pm. AT NO POINT WAS THE PLACE MORE THAN 50% full. In fact, most of the tables they "could not seat us in" remained empty from the time we arrived to the time we left. Best case scenario, this place is badly managed and has a terrible reservation system that discourages, rather than encourages, business. I hate to play the "I was a waitress and bartender"card, but I was; and this is BAD. We will never know of course, but worse case scenario (and what it, at least, felt like) : this place saw us, decided we didn't look like the hip, younger crowd they want to feature, did not think we would be drinking and spending, and did not want us taking up their prime, visible tables. I took several pictures of how the restaurant remained empty during the two hours we were there. They are below. At the end of our meal, the manager came over with a free dessert. We had already ordered another dessert and dessert drinks. They had clearly seen us taking notice of how the restaurant remained empty and realized we had amassed a high check. This was disappointing. The place is decent, but clearly just another basic spot caring more about appearance than guests. I know it's nice to have a place in the area, but there are better, privately owned places with nice drinks and soul which...

Came here with a bunch of friends to for the Christmas pop up and right from the get go they told that we had a 2 hr limit since we’re a “big” party even though there were only 8 of us and there were hardly any other customers in the place at the time. Figured that was policy so we went ahead and dined there anyway. However the service was so slow that it took about min 15 mins each time for someone to take our order between appetizers and the main and even the mains came out after 20 mins of having placed the orders. Then after we had just placed orders for desserts, the manager came by and told that our time limit was almost up even though they hadn’t even served the desserts that we ordered, meanwhile the place isn’t even packed with lots of available tables around so it felt like we had to quickly eat the desserts when it came just to vacate the table. The foods were overall okay, nothing special. We ordered the creole mac and cheese which might been the best thing off the menu but the quesadilla and sliders were mediocre at best because it lacked seasoning. The molten lava cake however tasted like it was over baked and hardly any “lava”, tasted like something you can get from a frozen aisle. The drinks were good and the festive glasses they were served in were cute. However the biggest issue that we had with this place is that when we tried to get another round of drinks, since some our friends still hadn’t finished theirs but we had to vacate the table. They told one of our friends that he was cut off from drinks and the reasoning that the same manager that came to tell us our 2hr limit was up while waiting for the desserts, “he’s slurring his words” however our friend always has a lisp when he talks that amplifies when he’s drinking and is excited. So we tried to explain this to the manager however he took it as a threat and decided to keep our friend and his wife for attempting to explain his situation. The manager was very proud to say that he’s the manager and he makes that rules, completely disregarding someone’s impairment and writing it off as someone who is “drunk” because he thought our friend was “slurring” his words. The funny thing is that we weren’t even disrupting any patrons, just a bunch of healthcare workers trying to have a Christmas gathering together like how they advertise for holiday parties at this place. So disappointed and...

Visited The Vanguard this past Sunday and we were severely disappointed. I met my cousin and sister in law for a 2pm lunch. We ordered some mimosas and appetizers. The brisket fries were good but the spinach and artichoke dip tasted like warm cream cheese with little flavor. For our entrées my cousin ordered the antipasto salad, SIL the club sandwich and I the cheeseburger. When the food runner brought the meals out he asked who had the grilled chicken sandwich. My SIL replied that she ordered the club in which his response was, "we don't have that". What do you mean you don't have that, it's on the menu. He again said, we don't have that and we asked how could you not have it if she ordered it? Did you run out of turkey? And if so, someone should have told her instead of making an entirely different sandwich. The waitress came over and again told us they didn't have the club. How?! It's on your menu. Either a mistake was made and the waitress put in the wrong order or she decided it was easier just to give her a grilled chicken sandwich. My cousin's antipasto salad had goat cheese, it was supposed to have fresh mozzarella. We both despise goat cheese. We checked the menu. Definitely no goat cheese in the antipasto salad. Now we had a new waitress and I asked her, why was there goat cheese in this salad, did they run out of fresh mozzarella? She confirmed they did and again I asked, why you just throw on some random white cheese without asking the customer first. My burger was a standard frozen patty, no flavor what so ever.

I really wanted to love The Vanguard. The decor, vibe, and food seem great from their social media but it's just vintage decorations and low standard chain restaurant food. I was supposed to host my husband's birthday party there this past December but they canceled on us because of COVID which I totally understand. We wanted to finally try it because it really looks awesome. I've worked in restaurants since I was 14. If you don't have an item you tell the customer and let them decide the new meal. You don't just arbitrarily select a new meal or throw in a random ingredient. The menus are paper. If you no longer carry the club sandwich,...