Four Twenty Five, a Jean-Georges Restaurant — Restaurant in New York

The room and ambiance are beautiful, classic, glamorous. The restaurant holds 89 seats in an uncrowded fashion. The service was good, but honestly not up to the expectation of a Jean-Georges restaurant. The sommelier was outstanding. Friendly, professional and knowledgeable. The lead server was good but did seem to disappear for awhile. We shared our feedback about the food with both the server and the sommelier and they both seemed genuinely interested in what we were saying. The menu (1): (see photo) It had three glaring typographical errors and the same word is spelled two different ways. How does a Jean-Georges restaurant misspell "prix fixe"? PRE-FIXED! We joked that "pre-fixed" meant that all the food was prepared in advanced, frozen and then microwaved for serving. The som did say some of the typos were noticed before service. I would've run to Kinko's with a corrected menu and done a reprint. This lack of detail flowed through to the meal itself. The menu (2): It was an "interesting" decision to have all the options in the second course include seafood. No one understood why this would be done. It's limiting to some guests. The food: If there was seasoning on a dish it was applied very heavy-handedly. With the steamed black bass, the fish was prepared perfectly but the flavor was lost as it was in an overly acidic broth. The wagyu beef ... the meat was perfect but the crust was a salt lick. The same for the duck ... the protein was perfect only to be marred by the sauce. The veal chop was the winner of the night. Generally the food, like the menu itself showed a lack of attention to detail. Matthew Schneier of New York Magazine compared Four Twenty-Five with the Grill Restaurant. I ate at the Grill the night before and, based on my experience at Four Twenty-Five, there is...

Love the atmosphere, very calm and serene. Beautiful room, and windows and curtains all reminiscent of the original Four Seasons restaurant nearby. Ate here within the last month. Sommelier was breath of fresh air, not arrogant and haughty like many. Young and friendly. Waiter as well. Hostess who seated us however had messy straggly brown hair, looked like it hadn’t been combed in a while, it was down and in her face. Because she hopped in to do some serving or grab items off the table, it was off putting unhygienic and not what you’d expect from a restaurant of this caliber. Also her brown suit—was ill fitting and insipid. The associate and I suppose main hostess at the podium upon entering however was very well dressed, presented and coiffed. Being obsessed with uni sea urchin, I had to have the sea urchin with pasta. But I must say it was sadly disappointing. It was very dry and the lemon zesty “sauce” was just tart and not tasty. I picked the uni off it and left the rest. It could be so good! JG please change the “sauce” on this dish. Needs a little cream or even olive oil and less tart lemon. My lunch mate wanted to order the veal chop, I suggested we ask the thickness/thinness of it. Waiter held up fingers to demonstrate about 1”. He did say it’s not too thick. He was right—but we do like a large thick veal chop! However it was nicely prepared. The cheese puff gougeres that came with the soup should be served on the side and as a separate bread service at the table they are that good by themselves (better than when soaked with the soup). We had a delicious bottle of pouilly fuisse 1er cru au vignerais. Love Jean George’s restaurants on the whole, for many years, and would def go back—they just need to fine tune some things, especially to warrant a Michelin...

The food was great but the service still needs to work out the kinks. Staff needs more training. The pros: The food was delicious, the flavor pairings were thoughtful. Only knock is that the pasta came out cold (meant to be served hot). The steamed black bass was awesome. Highly recommend. Our server was attentive (Brook, I believe was her name). Did a great job.

The cons: We made a reservation well in advance, arrived on time only to wait for over half an hour to be seated. In that time, not one staff member came over to update us on status, apologize or offer anything. We had to ask twice what was going on — really not a good start to the experience. When I asked, what is your protocol when you have had guests with reservations waiting a long time for a table? No one could give me an answer. You’d expect that a JG brand restaurant would have the playbook ironed out.

When we were seated, no one even offered a standard word of apology for the wait. And no one offered us a menu. Again, we had to ask. Really, I had higher expectations.

….So far, not feeling like a Jean Georges restaurant experience at all. We came for a special occasion to check it out but even if you’re there for a corporate dinner/lunch, the wait and general lack of urgency would have been an issue.

At the end we said something about it and they sent us home with a box of cookies to placate — pretty lame. I would have preferred that they made the experience enjoyable from the moment we came into the restaurant, instead of us having to ask for service.

The restaurant will do fine with the corporate crowd, given location, but it is challenging for me to recommend it after the experience we had. Made our evening feel strained and unenjoyable from...