Clinton Hall — Restaurant in New York

Highly overrated restaurant. First off, the outdoor area (which constitutes 95% of the restaurant) is severely understaffed. I am pretty sure that there was one waitress taking care of everyone outside, and there had to be around 50 people. She was nice, but very overworked. She got my order wrong, which isn't surprising considering how noisy it is there. The service was very bad, it took a while for our food to come out, it was delivered by someone that wasn't our waitress (so he didn't know who's food was who's), and they seldom came to the table. If you have a party of five or more, it's a mandatory 18% gratuity, so expect to pay for the crappy service! It is pretty pathetic, you would think that a restaurant who employs ONE waitress could afford to pay her without requiring guests to pay her salary. If you want water, you must get it yourself from a cooler. This is the same for napkins (they only give you one each when you get your meal, so expect to get up). Naturally, the water cup is a 4 inch plastic cup, that probably hold 8 ounces of water. As a result, you must get up every single time the tiny cup of water runs dry (and I was quite thirsty, as it was a hot day). I am not one to mind a little walking, but it got to be ridiculous. In addition, it is not a simple walk. The outdoor porch area is super crowded. Other than that, our party of around seven people was sitting at a picnic table. Next to the bench I sat was a bench from another picnic table adjacent to ours. The two benches were roughly 8 inches apart. As a result, my back was nearly touching that of the woman behind me. Thus, each time I had to get up, whether it was to get water, or to get an extra napkin from the one that was provided, I had to awkwardly squeeze between my buddy's back, and the other woman's back. I am a skinny guy (around 135 lbs), and I still had to say sorry each time. If you are fat, do not eat here, it will be a very unpleasant experience. The outdoor area was breezy, but it also seemed a bit unsanitary, as a pigeon was hanging out under the roof. Pictured, there were some group games that could be played (giant Jenga blocks, connect four, etc.) At one point, some young girls at my table tried to use a connect four set that was not being used, and they said the manager yelled at them. I did not witness it, but I believe it. They had to sneak the Jenga set to our table. Also, while the games are a cool concept, picture the sound of Jenga blocks falling, but ten times louder. This is what I had to endure when this game was played. I did not complain because I did not want to disrupt their fun, but I had ringing in my ear at one point. I feel bad for the strangers in the room, every time the blocks fell, the whole porch heard it. Bring earplugs if you come here, it's so loud! The menu is two pages, and mainly consists of burgers. I ordered my burger, thinking that the high prices and crappy atmosphere would be justified when I taste my burger. I was wrong. The burger was mediocre. I asked for no lettuce and tomato, but they were still on the burger. However, even after taking them off, the burger was rather bland, and the patty was small. Don't expect great food, it is pretty mediocre (and the burger was over ten dollars, I do not remember the exact price). The dessert was okay, but nothing special. However, I will say that I found the Breaking Bad dessert pretty unique, and it worked pretty well. Basically, you are given small fried balls, that you inject with small syringes filled with fillings. It was quite creative, and as I stated, it worked well. After paying the mandatory 18% gratuity and high bill, we were rushed out because another group wanted our table. By the way, they have no system of getting tables, it's literally you sit or stand and order food. The whole outdoor area is pandemonium. It doesn't help that it's designated a public place. Do not expect to eat inside either, it appeared that there were only two tables. I also had the displeasure of using the bathrooms that are single person. Overall, do...

Underage drinking. I have to start here because this entire family ruined most of the night.

I live a block away and have come many times over the last 2 years and I only feel compelled to review a restaurant when I truly think there is something wrong. I did not receive half the service I should have and I will not ever return.

A big family of ~12 people came in right before we did and they had some younger family members in town who were drinking with them. I know they were younger and I know they were underage because the kid was wearing a shirt that said class of 2022. And to top that, it was a frat shirt. I was in a sorority at a school where Greek life was huge so I know that the chances of that guy being a 21 year old freshman was a lot smaller than him having an ego so larger than his age and being able to get away with a fake or never being carded.

I’m only 24 and I feel like such an old lady writing this review but I have to.

On top of this guy being underage, his family got service beyond ours. Our waitress had 3 tables that we could see. The frat family table, our table of 4 and a table of out-of-towners that was ~15 people. It was obvious that our table was the least important to her, but regardless of how much required tip there was in it for her due to party size, I guarantee ours would have been a greater percentage of the whole bill had she just cared about us at all.

We sat down 15 minutes before she greeted us with water. 5 minutes later she came back to take our order. THIRTY MINUTES LATER, we had our drinks. An hour and a half after we sat down, we received our food. This is all while the frat family who had barely sat before us had received their entire meal and drinks before us, but also the table behind us with the out-of-towners had received half of their drinks moments after we received our food.

Our waitress did not bring us our drinks, but she brought the other two tables their drinks. Our waitress did not bring us our food, nor did she check up on us after receiving it, but she checked on both tables multiple times before, during and after they had eaten.

In addition to all this, the only thing I had ordered was the pretzel and more than half of it had come inedible. It was already hard and impossible to break. I also had to stand by the kitchen window and ask for a second cup of cheese because they did not give me enough and she had not checked on us by the time I had needed it. Had I waited, it would have been 15 minutes after I needed the cheese and the entire pretzel would have become inedible. ALL THE WHILE, the manager had seen me waiting by the window for something but was too busy chatting with his friend while the friend drank. He also was too busy hitting on two younger girls while we were waiting for our drinks and it was impossible to grab his attention. And, he was busy chatting up the out-of-towners right behind us but then conveniently did not hear us call to him before we had received our check.

It was Sunday night, it was not busy and we were an easy going table of 4. It should not have taken us 2 hours to eat our meal and I should not have left this disgruntled considering I worked in 3 restaurants as a teenager and multiple retail stores. I know customer service is hard especially when understaffed or busy, but I can guarantee this was poor customer service, not a workload they simply...

I visited this location for the first time yesterday and I am still shocked at the poor treatment my friends and I received at this establishment. If there was an option for 0 stars I would’ve chosen it.

Firstly, I’ve never been to a restaurant where your waitstaff doesn’t even greet you appropriately or introduce themselves. So I don’t even know my first waitress’ name. She took forever to take the order and forever to bring out an order (before i even arrived, my friend waited 30 minutes for even a drink).

Once I arrived we were there for an additional 15 minutes before I had to flag down a waiter who wasn’t even serving our table. The gentleman was completely nice. As for his work associates, I cannot say the same. The young woman didn’t come to our table at all only to tell us that they were switching shifts and asked us to give a card to keep at the bar, which I thought was kind of weird since she didn’t ask anyone else around for a card. I’ve never had that happen to me at any other restaurant where I’m eating & they switched shifts. Nonetheless I gave her a debit card with no problem, my friend asked her not to charge the card because we were paying with cash.

Once the shifts switched, our next waitress Bianca (I only know her name because of our receipt), came over & asked if we wanted anything else, we asked for water & another drink. Things were okay until we asked for the check and I asked her to bring my card as well. She took a very long time to bring the check. When i looked up she was whispering to what was either her coworker or manager and she finally brought the check, but no card. Again, I asked for the card and explained to her I would not be using that card for the bill. To my disappointment, she took long to bring my card and then yet again, I spotted her whispering to her coworker/boss before bringing my card.

When Bianca finally decided to bring my card, I held my hand out to receive it from her. She stood at the table, placed the card on the table and held on to it as she waited for us to give her money or another form of payment. She didn’t look at us, she stood there and uncomfortably looked away, biting her lip as if she was nervous. I took my card from her & she said nothing, walked away quickly & went back to speak with the same woman who she had been conversing with. She then hovered around our table until we placed the payment down & quickly processed it. That was literally the only quick part of my whole 2 hours at this location.

The food wasn’t seasoned well, the drinks were weak, & the service was disgusting. The only good thing about this place were the games.

I just wanted to know if Clinton Hall trained their waitstaff to be passive aggressively discriminatory? I didn’t even want to speak to a manager there because I’m certain Bianca’s manager was the one who told her to hold on to my card and hover over our table for a $90 bill. And to be very clear, my friends and I were 3 of 4 black people at this establishment. The 4th black person was with someone who was not of color. So I have no misunderstanding of why we were being treated and handled so poorly. But I’m...