Le French Diner — Restaurant in New York

Crossposting this from my Yelp review.

Avoid if you value your time and expect to be treated with basic respect.

After 12+ years of dining in NYC, this was hands-down the most bizarre and disrespectful restaurant experience I've had. I've never bothered to leave reviews before, but had to make a Yelp account just to post this given how rudely we were treated.

We arrived 25 minutes before opening (so 5:05pm for a 5:30pm open) and were the fourth group in line.

Despite being well within the 18-person first seating capacity (only 10 people ahead of us), we were told to wait 1-2 hours longer because our group of 3 didn't "fit" their first seating arrangement perfectly, so we had to wait for the next seating.

They made us step out of line, and instead wrote down my name/phone number to call back later. Then, they proceeded to seat multiple groups behind us with no issue. The entire rest of the line (probably 10-15 people deep at this point) ended up somehow walking in with no problem.

Apparently, if they sat us right then and there at the counter, there would be one seat open/leftover (yes you read that correctly, a single seat), which was the end of the world for them. Based on their actions, they clearly think that filling every single seat is more important than treating customers fairly or honoring a first-come, first-served system that they've instituted themselves.

They said they didn't want to make more people "wait" on a busy Saturday night, but for some reason, it was fine if they made the 3 of us wait another 2 hours because we didn't fit into their game of musical chairs?

At one point, I even offered to dine standing by the high table so two in my party could sit on the high-chairs (thereby leaving 2 seats open for another couple behind us) but they still refused.

Anyway, they eventually called us back at 7:30pm--2.5 hours after we arrived. We had already left as we absolutely were not going to be spending a dime there based on this gross disrespect, so we turned down their offer.

To the management team - if your business model is ruined by one empty chair for an hour, maybe clean up your finances instead of wasting your customers' time and treating them like second-class citizens, especially when they take time out of their day/week to wait outside your restaurant. Crazy concept I know, but it seems like most other restaurants (both highly/lowly rated) in this city can do it, so figure it out.

I'm not naive enough to think this review will magically change anything, but I do hope that any future new customers will be aware of how they may end up being treated. I would recommend you take your business somewhere they actually value and respect your patronage (and treat you like human beings at that).

Bonus: After reading some other reviews, this doesn't seem like a one-off--they just like to randomly power trip and arbitrarily treat you like trash if you're not a regular or industry insider (as this place likes to be known to serve), so expect to be treated like an...

I don’t even want to give one star. I am appalled. We went for drinks after dinner after being on the waitlist for two hours. The four of us stayed there for about an hour (got there at 9pm and left at 10:10pm). We ordered a whole bottle of wine and two dishes. They didn’t mention anything about minimum expected order of food nor a time limit to the table, but instead the whole time provided horrible service, as if wanting us to leave, such as trying to take away clearly unfinished food and drinks and aggressively leaving the check on the table. On top of the service, the wine was average and food was disappointing. We had ordered the escargot and they were so tiny, swimming in sauce, I couldn’t even tell if I had one. The bathroom was clogged the whole time and clearly unsanitary. Meanwhile, we still tipped them 15%, which is more than fair for the experience. As we were leaving, the server passive aggressively told us “may I ask you to never come back?” We thought it was a joke and asked them why and he started explaining how we were making them lose money for tipping too little, staying for too long and ordering the cheapest things (which is simply false).

First of all, let’s remember this is a casual wine bar like spot. AND this is New York, in the middle of the most competitive neighborhood. I have never experienced such behavior in my life. That is unacceptable disrespect. The way they expressed their dissatisfaction with their poor business performance to the customer is simply ratchet. This place is not worth a second nor a cent of yours and should be out of business for the sake of other respectful, delicious small businesses in the neighborhood. Please don’t even...

I dined at the bar with a party of 3, arrived at opening for dinner on a Sunday and didn’t really have to wait to be seated. Once seated we were asked to share one of the two menus our party was given, because the restaurant was ill-prepared to accommodate the full house. (probably 12 customers)

The menu looked great, short—but in the kind of way that you know all the food is going to be high quality—and though none of us were famished at 5pm, we ordered three $40+ starters, planning to order more food as our appetites grew.

The man taking our order made a big fuss over how we weren’t hungry and they had a lot of people trying to eat there that night (nobody was lined up outside). After some back and forth, he said this time was fine, so long as we ate and paid quickly. We asked if there was an amount of food we needed to order, or a minimum we needed to pay to dine at our discretion, he ignored the questions and just insisted that next time we come hungry.

Then he asked for our drink orders… When 2 of our 3 said water was fine for now he said “ugh you guys are killing me.” We apologized again, asking if he had a recommendation or minimum in mind. “Guys, I can’t survive like this, sorry. There are other people waiting to order dinner.”

Though he was wrong about people waiting to take the seats we vacated, he is ultimately correct. They won’t survive if they continue providing customer...