Astoria Provisions — Restaurant in New York

This was, without question, the worst dining experience I have ever had. I almost feel like I must have been pranked, because how this restaurant has more than one star is beyond me. Between the terrible service and the even worse food, we will never be returning. You can stop reading now, but full story below.

Upon arrival: the restaurant is very crowded and we see two waitresses running around. No one greets us, so we stand awkwardly by the door. Finally we're able to flag down the coffee barista who tells us it will be a fifteen minute wait. We see an open table, but assume someone is still using it. 15 minutes later, they realize whoever was at that table was, in fact, gone and slowly bus it. Once they table was bussed, we had to ask if we could sit down because no one told us to.

We sit down. Another 15 minutes go by as the waitress runs around us. No water put on the table, nothing. She finally arrives and tells us she is so sorry, they must be the only place open (New Year's Day). No, it's just a heavy brunch day- we thought this was common knowledge, but apparently this restaurant didn't know. Ah, the slowness starts to make sense. She takes our order: Coffees, Chorizo Baked Eggs, Cheddar Grits, Tortilla Soup, and a CUP of the Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese. A bit all over the place, but it was our first time and we wanted to try things!

45 minutes later, burnt/too strong coffee, no food, and no one has checked in. I asked for more water at one point and she forgot about it.

Food arrives: The Buffalo Mac and Cheese has unseasoned fried chicken on top, but looked bigger than cup size- exciting we thought...until we tried it. Bland chicken, a weird tobasco flavored cheese sauce and undercooked pasta. The Chorizo eggs were so over done, they seemed to have a plastic film over them- inedible and the whole dish tasted like canned tomatoes. The Tortilla Soup didn't seem to have any flavor- did they use plain water as the broth? And the grits were soupy and had no seasoning whatsoever. Inedible.

We didn't eat much of anything and we flagged the waitress down for the check because we just wanted to get out of there. She asked if we wanted boxes and when we said no, she was shocked. We told her we did not like anything and she kept saying that people normally love the food. How?! She was very sweet and comped the Chorizo Eggs. On the check, I was charged for the BOWL of Mac and Cheese, so I had to ask her to change that. (Apparently the large cup was the bowl portion, but how would I know?) It was all very awkward and terrible....

Parking around here is ok... not the best but ok. U cannot park in front as the parking regulations don't permit but the streets around are not super hard to find parking

Their restaurant looked like some sort of retired butcher store, plenty subway tiles and ope concept kitchen.

Because of the Pandemic, the inside sitting is limited, however one thing that is interesting and a little annoying at the same time, was the fact that all the orders were o be done by app. I kind of get it, understand why that needed to be done, but it is an extra step to order as if it was to go

All the food came in to go containers.... but that was not he biggest problem, the problem was to get service if we needed extra stuff, once the food came that was kind of it....

They are understaffed for a Saturday I felt.

CHAI WITH COCONUT MILK- it as pretty delicious, I definitely recommend however, at the moment they are serving all drinks in paper cups so gif you are a person who appreciates a good porcelain mug or a glass, avoid ordering coffee here at the moment.

FRENCH ONION SOUP- I must say I am pretty impressed with the soup. It had the right amount of flavour and the perfect amount of salt, it was pretty hot when it came out and the little cast iron bowl keeps the temp pretty nice and hot. this is a good soup for sure.

FRIED TRUFFLE MOZZARELLA FRITTER- This was pretty impressive looking for sure, There was plenty of béchamel sauce all around, this one is literally not one that will lack sauce if you are a sauce lover. However even tough I am a cheese lover and a béchamel enthusiast I can safely say that finally I found my match here, this was way too much cheese, so much that I was not even able to realise the flavour of anything else, the truffle flavour was faint and very much masked by all the sauce, the bread was ok but way too fried and the panko it gt pretty hard pretty quick, as it was so cooked. The panko did not need to be there, it does hurt me a lot to say this, but, the béchamel is way too much, they can cut back a little bit so the truffle flavour can shine through..... yes, this dish has plenty of potential is these changes are made for sure. The great part about this dish is that it is listed as a appetiser but the serving is great for a meal.

Overall I cannot say f the meal would have been different if proper plates were used, but I will come back eventually to update this review.

The food looks good and has potential, if you try it...

Gf and I went for lunch on a Wednesday and it was not busy like the weekends. This review goes straight to the venue in the hopes that they can take this feedback and build on it. We started with two bloody Mary’s and definitely hit the spot, the mix is made in house and is a must have. We were deterred from ordering it because it was “sold out” on the qrcode menu. If we didn’t ask the bartender/server/barback/busser if it was possible to order we would’ve missed out. For our mains we got the breakfast skillet and the Cuban sandwich with home fries. Gf was definitely satisfied with the skillet and our server was able to accommodate her protein substitution. My Cubano was delicious but it lacked meat, being a Miami native it’s tough to find a good Cuban sandwich in the city. My advice on this dish would be to add 4-6oz of meat to your portions, both the ham and pork were really tasty but they felt lost with the bread and mustard. A good cubano has a ton of meat and it’s then pressed so that the bread gets toasted on the outside and moist on the inside with all the yummy goodness from the meat. Key takeaways from this honest review: staff your venue properly even during the slow days. Perhaps just an additional set of hands would speed up service and improve your staff performance, cleanliness, customer satisfaction. QR codes are brutal. They take forever to load, are not updated, not easy to navigate on small screens, take away from the experience and everyone is stuck on a screen all day. (Have a graphic designer create a proper menu that adds to the atmosphere and feel of the place) work on that cubano plz it would be awesome to have the 2.0 improved version keep that bloody recipe...