Matteo's of Howard Beach — Restaurant in New York

My wife has been dying to come here for years. I finally decided to take her here for her birthday which was today. We were early for our reservation and got seated promptly, which was a good thing. However, the waiter came over introduced himself, took our drink orders and came back 20 minutes later to take our appetizer order.

It seems like a family restaurant, which is great because it creates that feeling, unless you are not 'part of the family'. The waiter would go around to the other tables to check in to make sure 'everything was okay' but left us completely alone.

Myself and my family of 5 felt a bit out of place because of this. We asked the waiter for more bread with our meal, which we never got. I asked the manager to tell the waiter that it was my wife's birthday (and my daughter was excited to have the staff sing happy birthday to her mom, like the two other guests did), and when I brought it up to the waiter, he stated 'yea Mike told me, I can bring you a desert menu and you pick or whatever and we put a candle on it'.

We finally had enough of the unwelcomed feeling and asked for the check about 4 times and waited about 20 minutes to get it while the waiter was walking around to the other tables and conversing with the other guests. And we were still waiting on the extra bread we asked for with out meals.

When I finally got the check, it was an illegible hand written check with a hefty price. It seemed accurate because of the orders we made were a bit pricy, but one would never know to exact price.

I would say the food is 4 star quality. The salmon, chicken parm, chicken fingers, and shrimp parm tasted great. However, it may be a bit over priced. The service that me and my family recieved was about a 2.5...

I am very sorry to have to put a bad rating in this difficult time for everyone but it is important that the owners of this place consider this type of behavior. I went to dinner with my family, the food was good but the service was of very poor quality, they did not serve us bread or any companion for food, we waited long time for food, the staff was friendly but very little interested in our table compared to other Italian places in the same style. However we decided to enjoy dinner. When we asked the bill after long time of wait they gave us the bill charged with 20% of tip over the grand total. I understand that restaurants can adopt policies about big group tables to charge by them selves tip amount but this should be a consensus according to the type of service and restaurant, in addition to illustrating the consumer law before making a decision where the customer and their money are directly affected. The tip must be charged on the total before taxes, the percentage charged must be according to the service offered, thus charging 20% ​​to an account where the service was excellent and the team is professional with qualified experience is perfect. .. but after the poor service that they gave us and they give us an invoice with the maximum percentage is disgusting. However, when we asked the waiter why they charged us a tip in this way, his answer was "it's only 3 dollars difference, if you want, I'll refund the difference." I want to make it clear that it is not about the amount but the unprofessional behavior and the misrepresentation of the team to this place...

My mother in law had one of the worst experiences ever at this restaurant. Her and six friends had gone here because of it’s “amazing” food and service and being treated like family since they reside in Howard beach and are part of the community. They had arranged this dinner as a memorial for a family member who had recently passed away. At this dinner they wanted to honor her memory by keeping an empty seat and plate in her honor. That was too much of a request for this place, that their waiter and manager kept on trying to take the empty chair and plate every 10 minutes. They even took the flower from the vase on the center of the table to place it into someone else’s table while they were eating. As she was leaving she was trying to place an order to go for her husband who was feeling under the weather and the waiter rudely told her after splitting a check seven ways that it wasn’t possible for her to order another dish. Quite frankly I’ve been to plenty of restaurants and they’re all capable of splitting checks and adding an on the go order to one of those checks. If Red Lobster can do it I’m sure they can too. The manager and staff should really rethink their values and customer service skills possibly take a class on customer service. One would think because this place is “family style Italian favorites” they would actually treat paying customers specially those who were grieving with quality customer service and understand the situation by having some humanity and just letting the chair and empty plate remain at their table. We will no longer be going to...