Assado Portuguese Steakhouse — Restaurant in Livingston

This place deserves 4 stars. But the reason for 2stars is primarily due to the treatment that our party got from the Manager (Fernando). We were a party of 30 people celebrating our parents 50th anniversary as a surprise celebration. The surprised couple walked into a reserved separate dinning room designed for such occasions, 2 of the grand kids blew a confetti bomb on them while the rest shouted "happy anniversary*. The next thing we know is that Fernando is shouting at his guests for blowing up confetti. He was extremely irate and my sister's had to walk him out of the room so that he doesn't spoil the moment. It took him several minutes to calm down and his complaint was that he was not alerted to the confetti issue . He insisted on his staff cleaning up the room which further aggravated the party since confetti' is extremely minor and you could see that he was over-reacting. During the calming down session with my sister's outside the private room. He offered them the opportunity to cancel the event (which had just begun) at which they calmly declined since they saw the big picture *celebrating the 50 yrs of marriage as opposed to looking for a restaurant in the heat of the moment ". Thank God for them since the sons were ready to pack it up. The rest of the event went well but everyone was on the edge whenever Fernando showed up in the room. His staff apologized to us for his behavior and they all communicated that he had over-reacted. Fernando kept on coming into the room even while the family had moments of prayer, we could feel him moving around and arranging plates while his own staff members read the room and moment by being stilll during prayers. My mother-in-law who is Spanish speaking could not stomach it any more and had to call him out in his own language privately. She personally told him that what he was doing was wrong and uncalled for at which he now realizes that he was being ridiculous. Besides Fernando trying to steal the show we ended up having a great time, the food was good and service was excellent. Fernando made sure that we out of the private by 5pm since he ordered his crew in at 4:40pm to start cleaning up and packing up. We all got the message My advice to him is that he needs to learn how to treat people with dignity and respect. Everyone at our party including our guests were disappointed with his behavior and treatment of us. His son on the other hand exercised better judgement than him, perhaps a change of guard would be welcomed inorder to save a local business. We choose this venue due to it's locality to our homes, ambience and wanting to promote our...

Cute restaurant for an odd location. I wasn't expecting much from a byob strip mall restaurant (liquor store few doors down). The main room is open and bright. We sat in a cozier room that can be used for private dining. Not busy for Friday night, but our waiter Fernando was amazing and upbeat, very attentive and personable, making us feel right at home. The menu looked great with lots of fish and meat options, a couple pastas but not much in vegetarian options. For starters, we had about 4 baskets of delicious dinner rolls and butter (yes they kept refilling our basket 😋) and shared the grilled portobello with mozzarella and balsamic glaze, & the shrimp in garlic sauce. Both were wonderful. Portobello was large enough for 2 ppl to have a couple bites. Entrees! I had the Paella Valenciana, 2 in our group had the skirt steak with shrimp special, and one had the chicken francese. Fernando ran to double-check that the chicken had no shellfish since my friend is highly allergic. We were surprised when it did come out with shrimp mixed into his sides, but Fernando quickly took it away and brought some hand cut chips until the order was corrected. This didn't take long as we found out the runner had accidentally picked up another tables chicken order, and our dish was still being finished. Other than that glitch, dinner was great! My paella was tasty and perfectly cooked (no rubbery seafood), and the steak was moist and tender. I didn't try the chicken, but my friend said it was good. For dessert, I had my eye on a few things, but we were there for a birthday and so had brought in a birthday cake. Topped it all off with a nice cup of coffee. Will definitely be coming back, maybe with a larger group so I can taste test more of the options I had a hard time choosing between 😄 As a pleasant surprise, I found extra dinner rolls and butter in the bag with my leftovers! Special touch from...

Went there for an early dinner (5pm) with my husband. I wasn’t crazy about the small two-person table they were giving us outside, snack in the middle of everything and asked for a 4-person table in the corner. He refused saying they had a lot of parties of four coming in later… Mind you the place is huge, lots of tables and was practically empty so I then asked if we could sit inside at a cozier table, to which he replied why do you want to do that? I didn’t want to argue, So we sat at the two person table and ordered. Service was fine until our entrées came and a horde of flies and gnats started circling. It took me 10 minutes to find someone to ask if they could light a candle or turn on one of the outside fans. After a few more minutes and a few more gnats in our food I asked them simply to just pack it up as I stated it was no longer enjoyable as they were flying all around and landing in our food. They did not offer to re-seat us indoors they simply just packed up our food and gave us our check. I understand with outdoor seating you run the risk of flying insects, but a restaurant this size should take proper precautions with fans turned on and candles on the tables to try to ward some of that off as there are shrubs and bushes all around as well. While the little bit of food we tasted was flavorful and presented beautifully in the plate everything else just failed miserably. I live in Newark not far from the ironbound section where some of the best Portuguese restaurants can be found. I have visited many of them and had hopes for this restaurant but I will not be going back. Needless to say in the 45 minutes we were there not a single party of four showed up to take any of the many surrounding tables we had asked for. Lacking in...