Astoria Seafood — Restaurant in New York

What an experience. Both negative and positive and knowing this place has a lot of positive reviews, I’m sure a lot of people will not agree with mine. The food was AMAZING, absolutely cannot complain about that. Huge portion of salad (the small one is good enough for 4 people) and well cooked fish. So let me explain why the 3 stars: possibly some of the worst and most chaotic customer service I’ve ever experienced. Be also ready to have your orders messed up. I completely understand this place being very friendly/ not high end at all and that’s absolutely not the problem here, but the full New York style rudeness of the asian cashier and the waiters in such a rush that were stepping on customers’ feet left me speechless, literally running around when it’s absolutely useless since you are causing more damage than good. I went there with a friend for the first time and since everyone is just running around, the first thing we thought to do was to line up to get to the checkout, as everyone was there in line and no one told us what to do (if you think it’s straightforward, believe me it’s not). One step away from our turn we realized you first have to fight through the line, get to the back of the store, grab plastic bags and pick your own raw fish WITH NO GLOVES AT ALL, then line up again. This is where I started hating this place. Employees would come from the kitchen with big baskets of fish spilling water on top of you without caring about it at all, locals were pushing through to get to what they want regardless of the people around them, long story short: everything was extremely messy. Handwritten signs everywhere remind you not to mix different types of fish in the same bag, cause of the difference in price. Here’s the issue though: the place is so messy that shrimps were easily all mixed up to begin with. Which is what happened to me and when I got to the cashier, after some fake smiles to my friend, she welcomed me with a “don’t you know how to read?” and proceeded with separating the one shrimp that ended up mixed with the others. Again, for the price you pay and the quality of the food you get, this place is worth it. But if you want to sit down to relax and enjoy your meal, gosh stay away from here. To this day I don’t understand why waiters were running back and forth to the point where they were scaring customers away. This place is apparently always packed so I understand the rush, but literally seeing a waiter bumping against customers just because of how fast he wanted to run and then seeing those same customers just leaving the place (or course) left me speechless. If you have the chance, I’d recommend you to eat on their outdoor patio or take your food to go, as indoors is a loud mess. As of right now, I still don’t know how my friend managed to get us a table and I still wouldn’t be able to tell you how to order correctly as you’ll pass by a lot of food while lining up but there are no prices anywhere, once I was at the checkout I had to describe what I saw I wanted and my order was still wrong in the end. I’d come back here only on a quieter day/ if I can...

Arrived at the establishment and my mother a 60+ year old woman was trying to sit at the table while my father and I paid for our food. A foreign elderly gentlemen was screaming in a foreign language signaling that she wasn't allowed to sit there. She told him that we were paying and he once again did not let her sit. She is Hispanic American.

He allowed other people of white, Asian, and Middle Eastern, and other ethnicities to sit and wait for their parties to purchase their food. After paying I asked the cashier if we could sit at the table behind us and she said yes. As we sat down the foreign elderly gentleman approached us and yelled that we could not sit there and wanted us to not sit there. We said fine that we would move and he kept screaming in a foreign language in an obviously derogatory tone. The cashier came out and told him she said we could sit there and he proceeded to scream and have a fit.

He argued with both my elderly parents and called over a Spanish speaking worker who said that table was "reserved". Meanwhile this restaurant is known for not taking reservations. Then the cashier and another worker came out and told us we could sit at a different table then the elderly man approached us again and began screaming in a foreign language in a hostile derogatory tone. It was obvious that this treatment was related to our race -Hispanic and likely had to do with neither of my parents speaking English. So hurt by this I began to get emotional and through tears told the younger man behind the counter that we wanted our money back and did not want to eat at this establishment. It was one of the most discriminatory encounters that I have faced in my life as a Hispanic woman in NYC. Deplorable I will never return there in my life.

I would avoid at all costs nothing is worth the treatment that we...

I’ve been to this place few times, and I am sure I won’t go or suggest anyone to go anymore! The food is ok, just ok, I won’t say their sea food is fresh, especially I’m quite disappointed with their oysters! The worst experience is their service! Our last service guy was asking for tips in the middle of our lunch! That is sooooo wrong!!!! I called their owner to see us, of course, his attitude pissed me off big time! Without any apologies, all he was saying was it’s understandable for his waiters to do this because their restaurant always has people waiting for seats, so the guests need to finish their meals as fast as we can and get out of his place!!!! That’s why their waiters asking for tips at the point they think is proper! This is nonsense, unprofessional, rude and even considered uncivilized! I have no idea how they became one of best seafood places in ny! Their owner obviously doesn’t have any good quality to be qualified for a high rated restaurant!!!! Are people blind or you just don’t have a common sense what a good restaurant should be like!!!! Not talking about the environment of the restaurant, it’s nothing but like a zoo!!!! Dirty! noisy! ugly!!!! What a chaos! That is the worst restaurant environment you can imagine! Too bad I was too sick of it to take any photos to show you!! I honestly have no idea how they passed their inspection from NY health department either! Both my kid and I threw up twice and also with the diarrhea and high fever the same night we went there, I didn’t eat anything but their food that day, I can’t think of any other reasons but them! Anyway, their place is wet and dirty, there are cockroaches, possibly mice, no one cleans up the floor, the whole place looks like zoo with animals! It is called somewhere disgusting! I’d cut my head off if I have to go...