Bryant Park Grill — Restaurant in New York

After having a deafening Christmas party here a few years back I was expecting the food to be as good. As it was the food was okay but not as good as at the aforementioned party.

But the main problem we had was the service. From the start, when we asked for a table, the greeter wasn't terribly warm and said that there was a half hour wait for the main dining room or the outside seating. I'm assuming that was down to pre-booking as I could see free tables in both areas. So we got seats at a table by the bar area.

Before sitting down I noticed the lack of cutlery at our table and other tables around it. Should have been my first sign that there would be a problem. The second red flag was when no waiter came to the table for about 10 minutes. I could see the rest of the tables around us weren't getting too much service either.

Eventually, the waiter did arrive to give us some water and sort of apologized for the wait and stated that they were busy. We told him we were ready to order. He then went off for a few minutes before coming back to take our order.

10 minutes later the waiter came back to tell us that the bread basket we had ordered to start had run out. On a Sunday for brunch? This place is really starting to look incompetent.

Our food did at least come out reasonably quickly, though the food was only okay. And when the waiter asked whether there was anything we needed I mentioned we needed some cutlery...

We decided not to attempt to have dessert as frankly we'd had enough of the service after that. Some serious quality issues with the service at this place. I'm guessing, like Tavern on the Green, it's next to a tourist spot and the management don't think they need to worry about quality. Though the food at least was better than Tavern on the Green, but that's not saying much.

Only go here if you don't have anything...

Some individual parts were good but when put together the plates didn’t make sense. Food came out within minutes of ordering, all had clearly been sitting under a heat lamp for awhile. Both my partner and I also had negative stomach experiences after eating here. Bourbon n foam - My partner and I both found it undrinkable. There is a paper lady cutout they put on top that “drowned” in the egg whites. The egg whites didn’t hold texture and were chunky. The blackberry liqueur is way too strong and completely took over the drink. Very medicinal. Our waiter saw the untouched glass and said nothing. Jumbo lump crab cakes - Flavors don’t make sense together. The honey mustard sauce is too strong to pair with crab and entirely over powers it. The salad was covered with way too much olive oil and no flavor. Cauliflower Frits - The pesto was incredibly oily and lacked flavor. Romesco sauce was good. Didn’t included toasted almonds as listed. Good thin fry on the cauliflower. Slow roasted half sour honey duck - The flavors make no sense together. The stir fried vegetables have a strong ginger flavor and would have been good on their own. The duck has candied cranberries on top, incredibly sweet and didn’t pair with any other flavors. The duck itself was dry and has very little flavor. Also there were no shiitake mushrooms, just a badly cooked and slimy portobello cap on top. We were not informed of the substitution. The rice was not seasoned at all. The service also left much to be desired. My partner finished eating and the waiter saw his plate cleared and took mine away without asking, I literally had my fork in my hand and had just taken a bite. He stacked another plate on top as I said something so it was too late. The location is nice but not even close to worth it. We...

Wish I could give the service alone a 0/5 stars. Our server Yohanna did absolutely nothing to serve us besides take our order, we sat for atleast 15 min before she greeted us. Our plates were never pre bussed, dirty plates in front of us for over 20 min, all of our water glasses were empty, she was not to be seen, and when we did see her she’d walk right past us, it wasn’t until my sister and I both had to wave her over with our dessert menus and she looked at us in complete shock proving to us that she 100% forgot about us, never gave us fresh utensils, we had to ask, and even forgot to ring in one of the desserts we asking for. It was honestly the worst service we ever received and I was a server so I know that this service she gave was completely unacceptable, don’t take so many tables if you can’t give the service that’s expected at a restaurant in nyc most popular park during the holiday season. We were even more shocked to find out that the gratuity was automatically added after the card was ran, but wasn’t added to the total on the original receipt. We made sure to leave a note to remove the tip because she did not deserve it. We had no problem leaving her an outstanding tip if we had an enjoyable experience, the tip is a reflection of your service, it’s not to be expected when all you did was take our orders, couldn’t even grab us refills, didn’t pre bus the dirty plates in front of us that sat there longer than we had to wait for the food, didn’t bring us fresh utensils for our dessert before they came out, didn’t bring one of the desserts we asked for . Really unfortunate, we wanted to leave a tip, it truly just wasn’t deserved. You are almost making a fool out of us by treating us the way you did and...