Bernie’s — Restaurant in New York

Great restaurant snd food! Well worth the wait.

Since the restaurant is so popular they have rules to manage demand. PLEASE READ THEM BELOW. It may seem odd to a newcomer but it works since they bring in so much money every night.

For those of you who have not yet dined here the following rules do apply. Read them ALL to have a great time.

They do NOT take reservations. Instead you MUST show up in person to be seated OR to be put on a waitlist. Your WHOLE group MUST be ready to be seated or you will NOT get a table The waitlist from rule 1 does NOT begin until the all the tables are full from first seating You CANNOT reserve a time slot but don’t worry. IF you get on the wait list you are guaranteed a seating HOWEVER this can vary from 30 minutes to upwards of 2+ hours. At times this can increase to 3 hours+ if the restaurant is busy. Feel free to relax at the park or walk around the neighborhood. Due to rules 1-4 it’s recommended that any large groups arrive early BEFORE 4 PM to line up for seating/waitlisting. You can order drinks during extended waits and they have stools you can sit on. There is a VERY limited window for optimal times. Too early an arrival and you are having dinner at 4 or 5 PM. Too late an arrival and you will get a call back time between 8 or 9 pm. The restaurant does close at 10 so if arriving too late you may not be able to be seated or even waitlisted.

Trust me the FOOD is...

I used to love this restaurant. It’s in a great spot by McCarren park and my son absolutely loves the ribs there. The wait staff has always been amazing. Unfortunately we will no longer support this restaurant thanks to the GM (and he was happy to acknowledge that this review would be written because of his action). My son loves the ribs here, and they are amazing. He constantly begs me to take him there. Today at around 6:30pm he urgently had to use the bathroom urgently. My girlfriend took my son inside and the GM denied him access to the bathroom. He stated “well we have the park nearby you can use, we just always have so many people all day coming in to use the bathroom”. I can understand the perspective, but you chose a restaurant in the 2nd biggest park in Brooklyn for a reason: these families going to the park will very easily frequent your business because of your proximity to the park. The park bathrooms close at 4pm. Thankfully the very nice staff at Spritzenhaus beer hall let him use the bathroom. When he was re-approached about the issue he still did not care, and was welcoming that I would be writing these reviews. So this is for you, GM of Bernie’s. I’m sad we won’t come back support this restaurant, but we did learn that we will instead support the super nice staff at Spritzenhaus...

The atmosphere and capacity of this place is pretty shameful for such an established and popular restaurant in the BK area. I arrived with my friend on Saturday assuming that it wouldn't be too busy based off of what was stated online. Got inside and was immediately swarmed with a sea of people & tourist and had no host in sight to greet us or tell us how long the wait time would be due to her assisting a party of guest in the back. I ended up walking to the bar and was told that the wait would be 2 hours for a bar seat which is crazy, and for a sit at a table, the wait time was undetermined. Never had that type of experience before.The staff at the bar seemed to be very kind however and was super apologetic about the experience. Sadly this isnt my first bad experience with this place, my first visit back in October i was told by the host that i couldnt be seated even though it was only 9pm. When i asked why he said that they had the health inspector show up and told them to shut down due to unsanitary purposes. Not sure if it was genuine or a lie but i was stunned. With this places popularity growing pretty rapidly from social media, I'd suggest opening a reservation system so no one...