BETTY — Restaurant in New York

Are you ready for the 411? Here we go…stopped here to have lunch with friends to celebrate a birthday and was so disappointed. I have been here before and was not expecting what would occur today. We ordered our drinks and food at 12:15pm and did not get served the drinks…yes, I said the drinks meaning a sprite, ginger ale and matcha lemonade until 45 minutes later (approximately 12:52pm). They basically forgot about us. I had a 1:30pm so I had to leave my friends and since I was paying, I had to ask for the check. I was still annoyed because I was hungry and had no food to enjoy but paying for a check. In any case, I was asked how we enjoyed the food to which I replied, "I would not know since we did not get the food." He offered to comp our drinks and asked me if that would make us happy and my reply, with my witnesses present, was "I guess." In his next response I got he was not happy with my response because he basically asked me if comping it not enough, and again I had to reply, "I guess" and further add "I was not aware it was a Yes/No question. Here is the thing, why should I be happy you are taking off $6 off my approximately $95 check, when I still was not able to eat and had to go back to a meeting without eating lunch and had to get it to go which means I will probably not eat it for another few hours. $6 is not going to do anything for me but the fact that I cannot eat now for hours due to your workflow is my issue. The customer service and understanding could have been volumes better.

While they indicated they were swamped; I will not allow a business to gaslight my feelings when they are in the wrong. As I said earlier, we have eaten there many times even bringing our managers there and dropping over $800 for the bill and the service was FAR better. As a consistent Google reviewer, I rarely write poor reviews but even our favorite places have to know when they need to do better. The other server who felt he was too swamped to serve us our drinks could have alerted someone he needed help but to completely ignore us and then be like I forgot your drinks 45 minutes later started this whole downhill process. I hope this review will be helpful in Betty's looking at how they can do better, because it’s not about the customer sometimes, it’s how the business responds back to the customer's dissatisfaction and with that said it’s not always about a comp!

I still recommend people visit this location as it is a great spot otherwise. The food is delicious, especially the hangar steak, garlic shrimp and...

After some people in a neighboring group chat recommended Betty's as a "family friendly" place, I thought to check it out with my kid, after a morning activity on a Saturday. At the door I bumped into another family of 4 that were in that same activity, and the host put us kinda together since the place was completely empty. At some point, because our waiter apparently was leaving and wanted to close our order, they asked us to pay, to which I did of course. I said I will be paying with a card, and they came with the machine, no receipt whatsoever, and showed me a total amount in the screen. At no point they mentioned anything about 'large group mandatory tip of 20%', that was already added and I was pleasantly surprised when the 3 percentages options of tipping were so low on the screen. I thought to myself - 'finally, a restaurant that pays their workers a living wage, and a truly affordable, family friendly place, just as the people in the neighboring chat recommended'. So with this in mind, I happily put the highest, (10%) as a tip, and later they came back with the receipt which I put on my pocket because we were still eating. I was shocked when I realized that in the end I have given 30% tip, for a 'group' that was not intentionally meant to be a group to begin with. These are the kind of scummy, stealing tactics that only unethical businesses do. It's appalling how they so casually get to do these kind of things. When places find the opportunity to tax you more and 'punish' friendship, and neighborly cordialness, you know that this is the opposite of a 'family friendly' place. I guess they want us all to be eating miserably alone and they penalize you if you seem to have a social life or a tiny bit of fun. Obviously...

Service was terrible and the portions were tiny, but the place is cute and the food was good and reasonably priced. I had to awkwardly ask around to be sat even though it wasn’t particularly busy, it took over ten minutes of actively trying to flag down a waiter once seated (literally measured, not hyperbolic) to get service, and after I placed my order I did not see my waiter again until I eventually flagged him down again to pay. Did not check on me one single time.

And that was a problem because the portions were miniscule. I would have loved to order more food once I saw my meal was more like tapas but with the above service, that just wasnt an option. The $20 chicken plate was the smallest leg/thigh combo I’ve ever seen with a couple of fingerling potatoes and a handful of green beans. The chicken and potatoes were good but the beans were honestly delicious so there’s that. Im a skinny dude and not the biggest eater and I left fully starving and ate a second dinner.

Honestly a 1-2 star experience, but the place has more potential than that. If you know that a chicken dinner is not a dinner and have a waiter that is remotely doing their job, you could probably have a good experience. Also would probably be good for lunch. Just don’t actually expect to feed a reasonably hungry adult for $20 just because it says dinner. I will probably try it again at some point in the future, but I am in no...