Isla Cafe — Restaurant in New York

Not what I expected! I went there last week with coworkers. When I arrived, my coworkers warned me about the poor service but I decided to still give them a chance. So I stood by the bar waiting to order a drink. I waited, and waited, and waited...bartender never came. So finally, more staff comes in. So l became hopeful, not sure why. In comes this tall woman, obviously staff, and asks if everything was ok down on our end of the bar since she noticed the bartender was completely devoted to the other end of the bar(completely neglecting us). At that point I expressed how I was waiting to be served for over 20 minutes and no one cared to serve us. She asked for my order, I was like, "ok cool...finally I'll be getting my drink on". WRONG!!! I waited another 15-20 minutes...she never came back with the drink. So many things were wrong that evening...I'm not even sure why, the place wasn't even that crowded! It gets better! I decided to go join my other coworkers on a table, to possibly order apps. Since they had already finished their apps, the very same tall girl, who obviously wears many hats there, came to the table after yet another 30 minutes to kick us out of the table because the table was reserved. First of all, I didn't see a reserved sign on the table...That is no way to treat your customers ladies! If your goal was to only serve your regulars, then you truly succeeded. My coworkers and I will NEVER go there again! I will be sure to spread the word to all my fellow teachers...DO NOT GO TO THIS PLACE IF YOU EXPECT PROFESSIONAL SERVICE...the staff there is completely unable to perform! I'll rate them as ineffective! We ended up at a place directly across the street from them, Olivia's. They clearly know how to serve their customers...we ended up having...

DON’T USE YOUR CREDIT/DEBIT CARD HERE! After receiving just ok service my friend and I were paying with our cards. I told the waitress/bartender how much to put on one card then the rest on the other. After a while they come back with one card. I ask why did they only charge one card instead of both of them were told there was only one card in the folder. I looked around the restaurant and did not see my card anywhere. The manager comes less than 10 minutes later saying he looked at the cameras, there was only one card. LIES! Before leaving one of the bartenders that was serving us said on our next visit she’ll comp our meal. We exchanged numbers. I contacted her to let her know we will be coming by the next evening. I also asked if she heard anything about my card, since there was no suspicious activity it must be lost somewhere in there. She replied “The boss informed me that u had ur card all along. That u had found it before u left n told the waitress n manager.” MORE LIES!!! I didn’t speak to the waitress I gave my card to because she was too busy playing around with male customers which I’m sure is why my card was lost. I saw the manager outside smoking not doing anything about my situation, I did not speak to him after he lied the first time. I asked her if her offer still stood the next night to no avail. I guess cheap drinks equates to cheap...

While it was a semi-large party of six(four adults and two teenagers), the number of errors were too many to be acceptable. I will list them here in the order in which they occurred. No bread was served at all while we noticed other tables got it. one alcoholic drink, 1 lemonade and 4 passion fruit were ordered; they brought no lemonade and 5 passion fruit drinks. Two alcapurrias and 3 shrimp pastelillos were ordered as appetizers; the pastelillos were ground meat(not shrimp); All 5 items were overfried. While the very long wait (while annoying)was not an error; The mofongo CON chicharron came without chicharron. (on three orders) One of the kids ordered french fries with his chicken and they brought rice and beans instead. A street panhandler came in selling bootleg movies while we ate(not an error but annoyingly distasteful); The bill had the one alcoholic drink listed and charged twice. While the errors that were pointed out to the waiter were corrected (the lemonade, the french fries and the bill error); we did not bother with the other errors as we will not bother ever to visit this place again. We cannot give this place less than one star to publish, but it...