Avli the little Greek tavern — Restaurant in New York

Terrible management and food quality is sub par. 6.24.19 was my daughter high school graduation, such a big day for her and my family! We had visited the Avli many times before; that was the reason she wanted us to go there for a dinner celebration after the ceremony. In the past 6 months I went there with my husband and the food wasn’t as good as before, the octopus was very burned! We shared that fact with the waiter but besides “ I am sorry “ there wasn’t any other respond. I try to tell her that the food hasn’t been the same quality as before but my daughter insisted; so we went there. I called the day before to check if I could make a reservation for 9 but the policy is no reservations. I asked about the back yard since she told me she wants us to sit outside. They told me that will not be a problem for my group I just have to come and wait. So after the ceremony we are there and as I am giving my name for the wait list for the back yard I was told that we can’t sit there since they don’t put groups of 6 or more there. I talked to the manager that night; Stephanie. I tried to explain how important that dinner was for my daughter and family. She did not care at all, no sympathy, no human reaction at all. Just look at me and kept on repeating the sentence “it’s a company policy“. Then I asked her if she could explain to me what are the reasons behind the policy, since if it was safety I would completely understand. Her explanation was “we don’t sit groups bigger than 6 people because they tend to sit longer and we need to turn the tables around faster” I was absolutely in dismay. The back yard was almost empty, inside too since was a Monday night, not busy at all. I could not believe the reasons she presented to me; completely ruining this amazing day for my family- making fast money and not caring about the customers at all, no humility or any sympathy at all! By the way the 2 people in our family were little kids, and 2 elderly people. So we had to stay even though my daughter was so sad just because it was already so late. We sat inside. The food wasn’t good. We got the octopus again, the grilled squid. Both had this rubbery taste that you can’t swallow it have to spit it out. I got grilled vegetables. They were almost not cooked at all and tasteless. My husband got the chicken, it was very dry. So the food is absolutely not worth it since the prices are similar to a nice restaurant. After the unprofessional and completely rude interaction with the manager that day and the lack of quality in food, once again, we will never go back again! Don’t waist your money and time on this poor...

[This review, strangely enough, got moved to the page of the co-business, Avli. I'm reposting it here now.] My time at Avli the Kafe was superb, especially for their opening night: the service was a strong point, I liked my crepe and tea, and to top it off, I'm glad they were playing, on the big screen, the Oklahoma City Thunder versus Dallas Mavericks NBA playoffs game.

I had the white chocolate crepe with raspberries, and I give the Avli staff props for presenting it beautifully an using fresh crepe batter and raspberries. I wish there was a bit more white chocolate in the crepe, since the taste of the berries was overpowering. I appreciate that two servers took note when I gave them this feedback, and I trust they'll make changes to the dish soon.

I ordered the chamomile tea, too, and I like that the staff seeped loose leaf tea. I got two generous cups of this tea (their tea mugs are large), and its subtle taste balanced out the more intense flavor of the crepe.

The service was great: I appreciated that my server was okay with my request for cold water in my tea so it wouldn't be boiling hot, and it's great that they asked how I enjoyed my food too.

My experience here shows that the staff here had a very strong night. Knowing that they just opened and are working things out about their food and business, I'm sure I'll have even more positive things to say when I visit again and update my review...

So I first want to start off by saying this is probably one of the most disappointing experiences I've had in a long time. This is one of my favorite places and we come here quite a bit. On December 24th we rented out the place and had a really nice lunch with family and friends. Well yesterday we found hair in our food. We took it to the waiter or the person who was responsible and instead of them replacing it they decided to take it off of our bill and didn't give us the option to just replace the dish. We had eaten maybe about a third of it. We noticed the hair as we were about to put the food into the to-go container. It was cooked into the actual food. We weren't looking for a refund. We just wanted our food .The purpose of us coming was we wanted to take our food home weren't given the option he just said sorry and offered dessert or something else. Not very good customer service. Won't be coming back for a while because if that's how you handle issues that's really not good...