Green Kitchen 70th Street — Restaurant in New York

I've been anticipating the opening of this restaurant for a month or so. The optics are definitely there. The beautiful green theme, the welcoming seats, the bar. However I was extremely underwhelmed & disappointed with my experience. I decided to go for lunch with a coworker & it was packed. We were seated but after 15 mins nobody came to us. Not for drinks or food. I unwrapped the napkin around the fork & was disgusted at the clump of leftover American cheese on the fork that wasn't washed properly. We left because we didn't want to wait all day & we only had an hour left on our break & we didn't even have anything at all. Plus the dirty fork turned me off.

So after work, it's more calm. We decided to give it another shot & actually get to try something this time. So it's 3 of us now. We are seated immediately & the waiter comes to us & takes our drink orders within 5 mins of being seated & brings us water. Which is further than we got earlier that day when they were extremely busy. We ordered 2 "Jungle" drinks with rum & the watermelon drink with gin. Drinks were delicious & presentation 100/10! As for food, we all got something small: fries & mozzarella sticks. I received my fries more than 5 mins after my friend & I asked one of the other waiters about the order & as he went to check on it, I see our waiter coming out of the kitchen with my plate of fries & a fry in his hand that he ate before passing the plate to the other guy for me. Even my friend seen it & reacted the same way. I was taken aback & asked him if the guy was eating my fries & he said no. But I was skeptical after that. Either way it is NOT appropriate to eat customers food or food in the kitchen that is meant for customers while you are serving. It was very unclean & unprofessional to my party & I. We have decided it's not worth returning so far. I hate for this to be the first review but first impressions are important. Hopefully, they improve as...

Where to begin? We arrived at Green Kitchen at 7:25 PM on 3/15/2025. The restaurant was empty, which we initially thought would mean faster service. However, that was not the case.

We sat for about 10 minutes before receiving water, and it took another 10 minutes before our server even approached us—a total of 20 minutes just to place our drink and food orders. When the server finally arrived (our receipt listed his name as Enrique, though he never introduced himself), he simply asked, “What do you want?”—no greeting, no pleasantries.

As he took our order, he didn’t write anything down. Moments later, he asked us to repeat it—yet still chose not to take notes. We never received our drinks at all. The table behind us, which arrived after us, got theirs, but ours never came. Additionally, we ordered fries with one of our meals, and those were never served either.

When we asked for the check, we noticed we had been charged for the missing drinks. We requested that they remove the charge, which they did. However, when Enrique brought the revised bill, he practically threw it at us, with my card still attached—an unnecessarily rude gesture that added to an already disappointing experience. To add insult to injury he did not even acknowledge nor apologize for the missing food or drinks.

The food itself was fine, but given the terrible service, I would avoid this place at all costs. My employer had been considering Green Kitchen for a catering event, but as soon as I left, I texted my boss to steer clear of this establishment.

This experience was truly...

Atmosphere (5/5): The interior opens into the outdoor dining area. There a full bar ornately displayed at the back of the restaurant. There were umbrellas to block the sun during the day when seated outside. The noise level is really low which was nice. The outdoor dining was dog friendly! Service (2/5): The service was abysmal. Despite the bustling amount of staff, it took a while to get servers to get your order and then to get the boxes to go. Really only the hostess came to check on us (and that’s not even her job!) There were no coffee or water refills throughout our meal. Coffee (0/5): The hot coffee and the iced decaf were both horrible. The iced decaf was extremely watered down and had no flavor. Corned beef hash and eggs (3/5): it was pretty decent with a good amount of seasoning but not much portion of corned beef. The side of salad had a good helping of variety (tomatoes, arugula, olives, red onion, cucumber, green pepper) and a light vinaigrette. Rueben (3/5): served as an open-faced sandwich. The pastrami had a good flavor but the flavors didn’t blend well together. I wasn’t a huge fan of the sauerkraut, which had a more pronounced sour taste to me (but the bf liked it). The cold slaw was terribly bland. French fries were requested be cooked well done and helped for that extra crisp. Our whole breakfast came close to $60 (including tip)! For such mediocre food and terrible service, I would advise to go elsewhere...