Fumo Harlem

On Wednesday March 16, 2022, i invited two friends to Fumo for lunch. I had been there once before and felt it was a chic place offering a good menu. Still do. We were each working and i felt that with the day being sunny, the Hamilton Heights location by City College offered a great view to accompany the menu and the company.

We get there at 1:10pm and order one fried (spicy) sauce calamari, two branzinos, 1 arugula salad (added shrimp), a diet coke and two glasses of white wine, which i deferred to the waiter to select.

After about waiting for 15 minutes we get two diet cokes, 10 min later one glass of white wine and the calamari. We try to alert the busboy that we wanted two glasses of wine and ONE diet coke but he left too fast to noticed so we figured we’d wait until the waiter came around. Except that the original waiter didnt.

We waited for about another 20 minutes before someone came back to us- they pleasantly brought the wine and said nothing to the extra coke. In retrospect, the person only focused on getting us the wine and paid no extra thought. No foul. It was appreciated.

The time was now 2:10 and no one had come by once to alert us whether there was some issues, a need to step out and perhaps buy the fish, nothing. We had somewhere to be at 2:30pm and never thought that lunch would take so long to be served.

Finally, at 2:13 pm we give up. We alert the busboy to please pack our food to go and bring us the bill. Another 5 minutes go by and nothing. A senior busboy comes by and apologies but nothing on the food. The other busboy hadn’t communicated that we would be leaving. We voice our frustration and he sends the waiter, another one now. Our original one never came back to us-not at this point that was.

We ask that waiter how long for the food to which she says 6 minutes and apologies.

We tell her that we just cant wait and she made the extra effort to go to the kitchen. That was too appreciated. But too late unfortunately. Finally, at 2:24 PM the packaged food comes.

We were charged for the extra coke despite having not drank it ($3.00). The bill ($132.83) wasnt the worst part-it was having paid knowing that yhe original waiter, who was pleasant at the beginning, seemed to have been out off by our wanting to return the coke in the first place. She never came back, neither to apologize or offer some explanation.

I was a fan of Fumo but no more; not this location at least. They seem to be struggling as a small business that caters to the delivery service vs on-site customers. There is no way that lunch should take as long as it did much less should no communication be an acceptable practice. The customer service really was sub-par and not even to somehow try to make things right was an added turn off. By the way, the food was good.