081 Cafe — Restaurant in Ho-Ho-Kus

I went here for dinner with my wife and father-in-law this past Saturday. It was hands down the WORST meal I have ever had!! I ordered the soft polenta with pork braciole which was a special that night. When the waiter brought my dish to the table he held it out to me and waited for me to take it from him rather than place the plate down on the table. Call me crazy but aren't you supposed to put the plate down in front of the diner??? The polenta was lumpy, gritty, and tasteless. The braciole was 2 pieces of pork about the size of hard-boiled eggs. They were overcooked...hard as rocks and totally dry. My FIL ordered the branzino in a "light marinara sauce". Light??? LOL!! There was absolutely nothing light about the sauce. The fish was completely smothered in a thick & heavy sauce. My wife ordered the tagliatelle bolognese. The pasta was clumpy because it was undercooked and unlike the branzino dish which was drowning in sauce the pasta had very little sauce on it. The place is so loud you can't even have a conversation with the person sitting across the table from you. The restaurant is also very cramped because they have way too many tables squeezed into a space that is too small. The entire meal was a huge disappointment. Right across the street is St. Eve's. I found myself looking out the window wishing we had gone there instead. We decided as a group that we will NOT be returning...

If you like restaurants where they don't honor your reservations and the manager/owner does care any patrons then this is your place!

I've heard great things about this place and was looking forward to trying it so made reservations for a Friday night dinner two weeks in advance. When we came for our dinner the table was not ready (and looking around the room there were no tables that were near to be ready any time soon). The hostess told us it would be 5-10 minutes. 15 minutes later - still no table so I asked someone else how long it would be only to hear it would be another 15-20 minutes. At that point (it's 20 minutes past our reservation time) I asked to speak to the manager. The manager (or was it the owner?) comes out and asks what's going on. As I explain that we had made a reservation, a woman comes up and said that she has a reservation for 7:30, she was told it would be 5 minutes and at 8:20 she was STILL waiting for her table.

The owner/manager seemed very nonchalant about it and told us that even though they take reservations sometimes they can't honor them.. He was not apologetic in any way and his whole attitude was 'well, nothing I can do about it'. It was 8:30 PM on Friday night and this really messed up our plans because it is not easy to get a table at a different place at that point.

I understand the place is popular but this is NO way to...

As soon as we entered the restaurant we were shocked to hear how incredibly LOUD it was. They squeeze as many tables as possible in the restaurant. We had a reservation so we were seated immediately. The server took our appetizer order, which was fried calamari & mussels in a white wine sauce. The calamari portion was very small & the mussels weren’t served at the same time. It seems the chef must have forgotten about it. When the mussels finally arrived, the white wine was non-existent in the sauce. My husband ordered chicken parmigiana with linguine, I ordered a seafood dish with pasta in a white wine sauce, again the wine was non-existent! Again the chef forgot about our order. It took a long time and several reminders to the server to finally receive our dinners. My husband received his chicken parm with rigatoni instead of linguine which was VERY al dente! The server was not attentive to our situation without us reminding her about our order. To compensate us the manager offered dessert on the house. We only ordered cappuccinos which were barely warm & we couldn’t wait to get the heck out of there!!!! Upon witnessing the whole fiasco, the couple seated at the table next to us kept remarking how they couldn’t believe everything that was happening!! Needless to say, that was the first & last time we’ll be dining there! If I could give it...