New York City Pizza — Restaurant in Hilton Head Island

So, Here's the deal. I live here on Hilton Head. I have frequented this restaurant many times. The first few times I went, I dined in. The servers are always nice and upbeat. And you definitely have to give them props for keeping up during the busy hours, especially Saturdays. ("Turn-over Saturday", when all the tourists check into the hotel and bombard the place for some good eats after a long day of travel) I always enjoyed eating here. The food is GREAT. Obviously nowhere besides NYC will have "real NYC pizza", but it is a close second for being in the south. ANYWAYS, lately I have been decided to come in and order Carry-out and have a few drinks while I wait. The "bar staff" consists of a "manager" and a few little girls that answer the phones. I put this in quotations because I have never seen such a poorly run staff. As other people have said in the reviews, yes, they are college kids for the most part, but that does not make them idiots, it shows how POOR THE MANAGEMENT is! And for having a "manager" behind the bar at all times, you would think it would be a little more organized! They won't even make contact with you when you come up to the bar, which is supposedly where you are supposed to order carry out. After quite a few minutes of waiting on THEM to finish THEIR CONVERSATION (which was actually them trash talking some of the other employees AND customers, and YES, the MANAGER was trash talking with them!), they decided they would help me. The manager was actually the one helping me. She was EXTREMELY rude, cold, and highly unorganized. And guess what? After she poured my drink, she poured herself one! In the time I was there, I watched her make herself a drink, I saw the pizza guys come pour themselves a nice cold draft beer, a guy behind the bar mix a vodka/cranberry, and a guy from the office (maybe a higher up manager) bring his fresh plate of food from the back, up to the bar, and grabbed himself a nice cold beer!! They were all eating behind the bar, texting on their cellphones, and browsing the internet (not to mention half the place outside smoking). One poor little girl, came up and asked the manager if she could have a slice of pizza before she started working because she didn't feel good, and the manager (woman), told her no, because the man manager doesn't like them to eat in the back, AS BOTH MANAGERS WERE AT THE BAR DRINKING ALCOHOL AND EATING! That poor little girl looked devastated, and actually quite pale and sick looking. I couldn't even believe it. I came in maybe 2 more times after that and each time was just as bad. The management there is absolutely insane. The owner really needs to reconsider who he has taking care of his business! They lost someone who came there many times, with friends, family and even by myself once I saw how it was...

I don't normally give such poor reviews, but when I do, I want to provide a lot of explanation.

I had high hopes eating here because we enjoy a good NY-style pizza. The one good thing about this restaurant was that the food tasted okay.

Unfortunately, there were several bad things about this restaurant. First and foremost, service was really, really poor. It took 15 minutes to seat us even though there were plenty of open tables. They had plenty of servers working there, so it was not due to staffing issues. It just seems like the servers 'hated' their jobs and did not want to serve customers. Several people left the restaurant while we were waiting to be seated, which was a bad sign, but we continued to wait until we got a table.

It took a long time to get our food once we ordered, and it was served piece-meal. One person's food arrived at the table. A few minutes later, another person's meal came. Then, the server brought a slice of pizza instead of a whole pizza (I didn't think they served pizza by the slice in the first place). Finally, the last meal was served about 30 minutes after the first meal. After asking about it several times, a server finally told us that another server gave our meal to another table by accident. There were no apologies or discounts on our final bill that we expected, so it seemed that they did not care about making mistakes.

Also, we always had to ask a different server to get our server because our server would not come to check on our table. She would not make eye contact with us as we tried to get her attention several times. We even had to pay a different server because our server would not come back to our table.

The grand finale of the dining experience was tipping for the meal. We were not going to leave very much tip due to the poor service, but we always leave some tip no matter how bad the service was. However, our server must have known that her service sucked because she charged a 20% gratuity on our bill. I find it odd that a party of 6 people would have an automatic gratuity placed on the bill. This makes more sense for a bigger group, but not for a small one. So, be aware of their automatic gratuity charge as it can lead to poor service issues (such as our case). Hopefully, the other server got some of our tip as she worked harder at our table than our own server did.

We would never eat there again, but if you have a hunkering for their menu items, get take-out to avoid the...

Late arrival for dinner after a long day at the beach. Our goal was Cajun yet a long line outside of restaurant led us to feed the monkies pizza which was three minutes from Cajun place. As you enter the parking lot, you can view the place was slow and that was good since the three Gremlins were HANGRY. The group entered and we were led to a small table by the hostess. I saw the empty booths and asked to be moved to the back. When I did this, the young hostess looked at me like I had stepped on her cat. I was pondering did I read a lot into her vexed look? Naw it's slow, approximately six tables with three servers so it's a slow evening. She sat us down and quickly departed to care for her injured cat. We waited...we waited..we took a nap and ten minutes later the server arrived to take order. We asked for our drinks and just placed order for two pies and Calzone since it was late and the monkies wanted to eat the napkins. After the order was placed, our server never returned until the first pie arrived 30 minutes later. He brought the order at different times and by 35 minutes we were ready to eat. At that moment I explained to young man we had been ignored 10 minutes and meal thirty five minutes later. He made excuses that he had the table added and the pies took a while. There was a slight confrontation but he didn't take ownership of a lack of customer service. During the wait, my wife confirmed the vexed look by the hostess. The server continued to stay away after our talk, eventhough the restaurant was practically empty. We noticed a man in shorts speaking with clients and we inferred it was management but instead of addressing the sole customers, he chilled watching TV. I'm glad Bar Rescues Jon Taffer wasn't there to see the failure of management and customer service. Well the calzone was large and plain flavor. The dipping sauce was generic tasting. The monkies loves the large pepperoni pizza and most of large pie. The meat lovers was ok average taste. The server and I had final words and I explained to him that the hostess and his failure to attend us and him not visiting our table for 30 minutes was a ripple effect of bad customer service. I explained he needed to visit a table like ours with updates, etc. As we left and paid $71, the place was empty as was our feeling as customers. For THAT price, Taffer better come in and evaluate management who trains servers and hostess. I don't...