Dallas BBQ Chelsea — Restaurant in New York

My mother and I went to BBQ on W. 23rd St. and 8th Avenue July 19, 2025 around 3:10 PM. We had a bad experience. We ordered the 2 early bird specials that consisted of rotisserie chicken and you could have a choice of a baked potato, rice or french fries. My mother also ordered the vegetable tempura as an appetizer. First of all, they never gave us any water and the vegetable tempura never came. Next thing we knew our entree arrived. The food was lousy; it was horrible. We couldn’t enjoy it. The taste was horrible and my rice was awful. Chicken was half done. The butter was frozen for the cornbread and the cornbread was not even hot or warm for the frozen butter. We asked for the waiter to come over because we were displeased with the food. We also asked the waiter about the tempura. The waiter was not even aware that we did not get the tempura. We also told him that we were not enjoying the food. This is when the waiter got an attitude and he said “well let me get the manager.” My mother also asked about the water, the fact that we do not get any and the waiter said “well you said you wanted to wait for your drinks, but those were drinks not water! They are supposed to automatically give you water at the table. The restaurants that I frequent automatically bring your water. The manager comes over. His name is Mujeeb. We start telling him about the food and my mother mentioned they never bought water over to us and he starts going into this thing about when Bloomberg was the mayor… (by the way Mayor Bloomberg was the mayor in New York from 2002 to 2013 it’s now 2025 …hello!!) That was over 10 years ago we don’t need to hear about that and that has absolutely nothing to do with us not getting water. My mother asked the manager for the vegetable tempura, “Can we get the tempura …well guess what the manager says “we’re not gonna like the tempura.” He caught an attitude because now he just doesn’t want to serve us. Then he said “well I’m not making you pay for the food” but we wasn’t there trying to get a free meal. How dare he insult us like that! ….and we were still trying to spend money in the place by asking for the vegetable tempura. Now he comes out and says we are not gonna like the vegetable tempura so at this point, I told my mother let’s just go because they don’t appreciate us being there so we don’t have to stay there and take their crap. If you don’t like the food speak up because you don’t have to patronize that place and be subjected to food that does not taste good and the fact do not care about their customers. Not once did the manager offer an apology for any of their shortcomings. We are not going back but if you happen to go there and you don’t like the food, you should definitely speak up because the place is gone down over the years. It is not good and they are serving subpar food to people who are just sitting there and eating it and taking it without saying anything to the manager but the audacity of this MANAGER is the problem and for him to say that we’re not gonna like the vegetable tempura. “You may not like it’s no need for me giving you more food.” But we have the right to tell a restaurant if we do not like the food if it’s not good, and again we were going to pay for the vegetable tempura so we requested it. Also just to let you know we did not eat most of the food. A lot of the food was left on our plates, including most of the chicken, the cornbread, the rice. We only ate a little bit of that stuff. That’s how we know it wasn’t good. For him to assume that we would not like the vegetable tempura is very unprofessional. It’s also tacky and it meant he did not want to serve us. His whole demeanor wasn’t good; the way he treated us as customers. He never apologized for the bad food, for the fact we never got water. He never apologized for the tempura not coming out. He said it would just be another free meal. We never got a free meal because we did not eat any of the food. He was very insulting. Also the place had an unpleasant...

Really good. We enjoyed our visit to Dallas BBQ Chelsea on our recent visit to New York in February 2025. I'd go as far as to say that it was the best value and most enjoyable evening meal that we had whilst visiting the city.

We happened upon it more by chance than planning. We were walking back from Pier 57 & Little Island back towards Times Square and really fancied a good steal and some BBQ food. Checking out reviews we found several places that offered good ratings (we don't generally dine at anywhere less than 4 to 4.5 stars) but appeared quite pricey with $$$ & $$$$ ratings.

So when we dropped on Dallas BBQ, saw how busy and popular it was, combined with the reviews we decided to try and get a table.

As soon as we entered it was warm, the staff were friendly, very polite and showed us to a table towards the back. There were lots of families dining with young children, couples and friends dining, so a good mix.

Our waiter was helpful and his service was prompt.

We didn't have anything entrees, just mains. My wife had a steak, cooked perfectly rare, as she wanted, whilst I had the double rack of pork ribs, a really substantial and tasty rack that took some finishing. We accompanied our meals with an iced cocktail, a great choice and recommendation by our waiter.

We stayed for about 90 minutes and enjoyed our evening meal, the atmosphere and especially our drinks. We came away feeling that we'd had a good meal, with excellent service, with the best value meal that we'd had in the city.

We'd definitely eat here again. When we returned to the city two weeks later we looked to eat at Dallas BBQ again but sadly ran out of time. Maybe next time 👍.

I would add that it wasn't just the waiter service that was good, i was really impressed with the staff who cleaned the tables after guests left. Their attention to detail, not only at laying the tables, cleaning the tables but also in cleaning under the tables and chairs, was very good. It was reassuring to see that, a good attention to detail and reassuring to see, especially when it came to cleanliness 👏.

Really good, relaxed dining with healthy portions and excellent service.

Level 10 Google reviewer with over 1,200 reviews with 2 million views plus 14,000 photos with more than 60 million views and still going strong 💪.

Check out my other reviews 🌟...

Not impressed by any means…. From the service to the food everything was much less than satisfactory! I’ve seen people talk about Dallas BBQ on many forums about NYC so I was very hesitant to step into this restaurant this evening but against my better judgment I did…. I never should have. When I first walked in the place just had a very dated Dennys type vibe. I asked the hostess if this was a local or national chain as I didn’t really research and she couldn’t answer because she had no idea what I meant… so after asking her 3 times she finally asked the male server that was standing there and he said it’s local…. Which I try to give local places a chance over national chains so I decided to stay. I was seated and then waited about 10 minutes before my server acknowledged me….keep in mind that they were not busy…at all. So I ordered the full rack of baby back ribs, a baked potato and added a side of coleslaw. Some time passed and I got my food, the ribs looked pathetic and after tasting them they did not taste fresh, the baked potato was nothing special and not even prepared with the fixings…had to do it myself, the corn bread was ultra dry and tasteless but….the coleslaw was very good, but there was wayyyy too much of it, could’ve shared it with 3 people! My waitress never came by to ask if everything was ok until she just saw me sitting there not touching most of my food after about 30 minutes. So at this time she asked if everything was good… I looked up at her, probably with a smirk on my face and said that the ribs were probably the worst that I’ve ever had, probably a couple of levels below major chains like Chili’s or Applebees…. So that should tell you how bad they were. She asked what was wrong with them and I told her… then she just rolled her eyes and said are you finished then and I said yes. She did ask if I wanted something else but I wasn’t proceeding any further at this place… so I just asked for my check and left most of my food and basically threw away $30. I ended hitting another restaurant about an hour later with much better results… My advice is don’t go here if you...