Adoro Lei — Restaurant in New York

Update: After reviewing their professional reply, I have attached the actual truth. Never inquired about a collaboration. No one was rude to the staff. People write a bad review when they have a bad experience. We had no problem with your service. I'm not sure what "generous" means for food/drink brought out...since you're charging for an open bar. Other restaurants include cocktails. Price came out to $157/per person roughly, for 1 personal pizza, and two shared plates where our guests had a few rice balls and a salad. Unprofessional response from you guys, keep it classy!

We've done birthday's all over NYC before and were excited to do this pizza making for a 30th birthday. We paid $500 to reserve the private room (it's in the basement, I don't suggest it). The reservation was for 6 PM, when we arrived, we were told the room is not available and we'd have to wait. Our guests of 20 were stuck lingering around the tight bar while servers passed by - tough for them and us to be honest. Once we made our way downstairs, we got to sit down, but its just a rectangle room with concrete walls with ceilings that are maybe 6.5 feet tall. It's more of a cellar. We've had private events in NYC with private rooms at zero cost or paid a reservation fee that counted towards the bill. The cost for this room, the look of it, and the fact we waited was not worth $500 at all. You couldn't change the music (unless you had an auxillary cord port or ipod nano). The ambiance of the whole thing was very poor. Almost like an underground elementary school cafeteria. The servers came out an explained how to make a pizza. They were probably the best part of the experience, as they were very nice and attentive. The last 45+ minutes of our reservation though we were told to hurry up and eat faster / get out for the next private party, which I don't think is really fair considering we waited for this room to open up with a reservation. I wouldn't recommend doing a private event here. While pizza making with your friends is fun (and likely you can turn any bad time into a good time), you can do infinitely better in Manhattan at no cost. The pizza's were somewhat burnt for half the guests, the appetizers were limited. We paid ~$3200 including 500 room fee, cake cutting fee of $63 (not sure, the cake was relatively small), and 20% tip for around 20 people. As a side-note, we aren't sure where half the cake went since everyone got tiny slices lol. We offered to the two waiters to enjoy as well. All in all, we paid much less for a much more beautiful venue with unlimited cocktails and a better diversity of appetizers/entrees at other places so this was really poor...

To preface this.. I've never before been so disgusted by management for simply not managing. I've been to Adoro Lei roughly 6 times or so for drinks, lunch and dinner seeing as it is literally a block away from my office. I stopped in last friday for a drink whilst waiting for the gf and proceeded to have a seat at the bar. To set the scene, it is ridiculously cold outside on this particular day.. Midway through a round of drinks we noticed they began setting up some tables behind the bar seating area (far from in our way).. Our bartender alerted us that an older lady(patron) had offered to settle everyone's tab at the bar in exchange for us to leave the bar.. She came by to offer some fake sincerity and suggest other bars in the neighborhood to frequent. Now, I'm from NY and I know that some folks are accustomed to dictating via financial means the actions of others. It was the restaurants duty to let her know that the space they were given was in fact suffice and they could not suggest patrons at the bar leave just so her party could have a bit more stretching room. When an establishment begins to cave to unreasonable requests from guests that affect everyone else's experience it is a sign that they either don't get it or are strapped for cash and will lick a hedge fund managers wifes taint to make rent. I humbly suggest we show these places in NYC that we are all equal in terms of right to service and no longer visit these types of establishments.. The sad part is the staff that evening were friendly and attentive yet as we all know bad managers have an uncanny way of messing up seemingly good places. Adoro Lei owners -- get rid of your manager that was on shift 10/23 at 7pm. I almost can't wait to tell everyone I know in the neighborhood how much I now hate Adoro Lei and the lack of backbone by management by making a simple call in terms of managing a decrepit old white ladies tantrum..

And with that I say...

I never spend time writing reviews on Google, but Adoro Lei has been by far the worst restaurant experience I’ve ever had. I would rate it 0 stars if I can.

I called to place a reservation for my boyfriend’s birthday dinner a month in advance on 8/29 for the dinner to be in September. They don’t take big party reservations online so I had to call them. The hostess I spoke on the phone with asked me for my card information at that time and I gave it to her to book that reservation for my desired time.

A week before my reservation, I called to confirm my reservation and I was informed by another host that my reservation wasn’t there. I expressed my frustration on what had occurred for the host to tell me that he will take down my number and have someone call me back in 3 minutes. For starters, the phone was extremely staticky and impossible to hear what he was saying. He hung up the phone after I had given him my number. I called back a few minutes later since no one had called me back yet just for the host to end the call on me without speaking. I called multiple times and they ignored my calls. Then I called on another phone and that’s when he picked up the phone again (probably thinking it was another customer). I told him that I want to speak to a manager and he again told me that the manager will be coming in soon and that she will call me back.

Its been hours now and I have not heard back from them. They are completely unprofessional and ruined what was supposed to be a celebration. It was extremely hard to find another restaurant who was willing to take a big party in such short notice and it was all thanks to the unprofessionalism from the staff at Adoro Lei.

Thankfully we dodged a bullet with the reservation as the reviews for this place are not that great. They have a history of being bad with their customer service so avoid them...