Chinar On The Island — Restaurant in New York

We were invited to a banquet on August 27th to CHINAR on Staten island. We have been to this restaurant before but it never looked so neglected and dirty. First thing that caught my eyes was the front of the restaurant- very unkept and neglected...weeds were consuming the entire outdoor area.. some weeds were plucked and just thrown on the floor, cigarette buds and cigarette packs by the entrance doors. There used to be decorative ever greens in the big pots by the parking lot which died due to draught and not watering and now the pots were just used as a place for garbage which was very unappealing. The first impression was very untidy and unwelcoming. Another big area that was very disgusting was the women's bathroom... Very very dirty,old and outdated. Toilet seats were covered in blue stains from the cleaners and were no longer white but gray and all rubbed off, no toilet paper in the stalls, stalls were all dirty with brown stains and rusted and looked like they were not cleaned in months, floors were cracked and dirty, there was a huge brown hand towel roll just standing by the sink which was all wet from people trying to rip off the tissue with wet hands. it's not so hard to install a dispenser. The restaurant also seemed to be very understaffed. Usually each party gets a waiter or 2 who is there to serve the food and alcohol to the guests for that one party...we had no server at our party unless we called them. There were about 3 other parties and a few individual tables on the other side of the restaurant besides us. It was obvious the waiters were serving the other parties in the next hall as well and could not handle the amount of guests to provide quality service. The only reason I am giving two stars is because the food was absolutely delicious. Kudos to the chef! However the quantity of food was way less than we usually experienced. We had 8 people on our end of the table and the dishes that came out were only enough for like 3 people. For example, there was a fish dish with mashed potatoes which only had 3 small pieces of fish. If u stepped away to dance u did not get to try the dish because there was just not...

I don't know if this restaurant is related to the one in Brooklyn, but if it is it is giving its big brother a bad name. But let's start at the beginning.it was Sunday night and we were pretty hungry so we decided to stop by Chinar for dinner.

Expecting service and prices akin to similar places across the Verrazano Bridge we were pretty happy with our choice but boy were we wrong.

First off. Normally if you have a place that can seat you for dinner just as a visit but not a scheduled banquet one might expect to have a host(ess) greet you at the entrance and get you to the table. That was missing, the host were actually talking at the bar so when my wife walked in she just pointed at any table and told her to just pick one.

So we sat down. The girl that was servicing our table was nice and we decided to pick a sampler platter for four, which normally should be sufficient to feed 2 adults and 2 kids but this one was not to be. The sampler platter for four actually includes 4 kabobs, not 6 or 8 as one might have expected from a place like this but 4. 1 Chicken, 1 Lyulya, 4 lamb chops, and 1 lamb riblets (which basically have some fat but very little meat), So the platter which was basically the size of half of our table had that in meats and a mountain of french fries. I mean I love fries as the next guy but that is a side not the main course!

So we had to order 4 more kabobs, each one at a price point of something similar one might have at an upscale Manhattan restaurant but at a neighborhood place on Staten Island!

I mean the only saving grace for this place is that food is actually good. It is tasty, not overdone but I think that they should close down the restaurant and just have the...

Booked a banquet for a special occasion. For the per-person price paid, there was certainly a shortage of food. I thought it might have been just me as I was hosting/dancing and just didn’t get a chance to eat, but the following day most of the guests were complaining that the first time in their lives they left the "Russian" restaurant literally hungry. The manager was trying to convince us that our company were super big eaters, that is why nothing was left on the plates. How nice! Most of the people didn't even taste more than two dishes out of eight main courses on the menu, because everything else was eaten immediately being served in a very small amount. Personally I ate two slices of salmon, two spoonfuls of salad, mashed potatoes with a tiny piece of fish, and a lamb chop. I'm probably "the biggest eater" in the company. It is definitely not worth what we paid for a plate. Additionally, we bought a very specific type of champagne for one of our specialty drinks. However, the waiter brought out a completely different champagne that was cheaper and did not work with our recipe. He said that the other waiter mixed all the champagne bottles up, and he did not know which one was ours. Very cheap and unprofessional. The guests were also sitting behind the table with empty glasses as the waiters didn’t bother pouring, or even offering, any beverages. This is a common expectation from such a highly rated restaurant, which didn’t happen. When the waiters finally showed up, I was shocked to see them in blue rubber gloves, like they came to clean the bathroom, not serve food to people. Overall, very...