Off the Wagon — Restaurant in New York

I don’t post reviews here usually, but after what happened yesterday night (a Thursday), guess I have to.

I’m just visiting NYC for a week from France, and I work and study in North America. I planned to meet a friend living in the city yesterday, to get one or two drinks in what he told me was "one of the best bars in the city", though I arrived around 10 min too early at the place and since it was cold outside, decided to enter alone to wait inside and order our drinks in advance.

At the second I arrived, I saw the security team was pushing a guy outside the bar, (which isn’t the most welcoming atmosphere but anyway, I didn’t knew the reason of why this fight happened so I can’t really speak about that) and I gave them my ID: I’m 21 and legal so there’s no issue here.

I was wearing nice clothes, but I did walk in the city the whole day, and I extremely needed to use the restroom to pee, which is the first thing I did when I entered the bar : note I didn’t consume any alcohol during the day or before and knew perfectly what I was doing, I wasn’t causing any trouble, didn’t spoke to anyone at the bar and my friend wasn’t even here yet.

At the second I finished using the restroom and was cleaning my hands, a guy entered to the restroom, asked me to leave the bar, and began presenting himself as a security guy. I didn’t understood what was happening and asked him why (I thought he was some drunk customer that simply was making a bad joke for one second …). The only explanation he gave to me was that "people don’t use the restroom for no reason" (???), told me that he didn’t care about what I was saying and began pushing me, violently, in front of everyone, and told me that I’m not getting back inside, this just before he closed the door almost on my face.

I go out a lot in restaurants and bars, in different countries, and that is the first time a situation like that happened. I still don’t get the reason of why and I’m still speechless by this humiliating situation. Imagine you’re travelling to NYC, a city of dreams for all generations, all demographics, and that is how your first night is going. I don’t know if xenophobia is the reason, if the security guy (if he really is a security guy btw, but I assume he is since the people at the door saw the scene and didn’t said anything), wanted to impress someone at the bar, if he thought I was someone else, but whatever the explanation is, this whole situation is absolutely intolerable. I don’t know how this bar selects the people that are supposed to work as security guys, that are here to protect the customers from any trouble, but I’m really...

We were there celebrating our friends engagement. I was one of the few not drinking and was trying to get the tall female bartenders attention at the end of the bar, but it seemed like she didn’t hear me. Truthfully it seemed more like she was ignoring me because she was ignoring the majority of our group during our time there, whereas the other shorter bartender was super polite and friendly to us and never hesitated to take our order. So I lightly tapped on her shoulder when her back was turned and politely asked for a water whenever she had a minute. Instead I got a stiff hand, attitude and cold shoulder. So I went back down to the middle of the bar and was able to get help from the other shorter bartender. After a few minutes the tall bartender came back over and while I was mid conversation with a friend, she starts jabbing me in the shoulder, mocking me, “CaN i gEt A WaTer? cAN i GeT a WaTEr?!?” Initially I thought it was a joke because she was yelling it at me in front of our group with everyone staring, but she was dead serious and proceeded to berate me about it. The rest of my friends walked away as she proceeded to lecture me about how rude it was that I interrupted her changing the TVs (had no clue that’s what she was doing at the time) and how I had the audacity to lightly tap her shoulder when I thought she hadn’t heard me.

I apologized and walked away, refusing to spend any more money there. None of the rest of my group (12+ people) spent any more money after the interaction as it left a sour taste in all of our mouth so we decided to finish our drinks and close out. As we were closing, the bartender took it a step further, going out of her way to my girlfriend and her friends, telling them “tell your friend to NEVER touch a woman like that ever again. It’s completely inappropriate and It’s SUCH a pet peeve of mine”. I had already apologized and I thought we had moved on like adults. Going completely out of her way to make baseless accusations slandering me about touching her inappropriately to my girlfriend and her friends completely crosses a line. We will not...

New note

We visited the place on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. Our party took a booth and after we sat down a new member of our party came with the service animal. As soon as he sat down the attendant ran over yelling outside outside when we asked the attendant as to the reason why he’s telling us outside the attendance said that dogs are to remain outside . We exited the establishment and looked for a place to set. We were surprised to learn that there is no place outside to sit and that we had just been kicked out of the restaurant. We went back in and asked the attendant as to whether there is any outside seating, which he immediately said no. We said that the person who came had disabilities and his service animal had all the documentation to prove those disabilities, but the attendant said that the owner does not allow dogs of any kind and the establishment. We indicated that this is illegal behavior under the Americans with disabilities act of 1990 to which the attendance said that the owner has never been sued to denying service to person with disability so far. We were disgusted and requested the contact of the owner to which the attendance said that he doesn’t have the contacts and we should just simply go online. Our group feels that this would not be worth going to court with and indeed we don’t have the werewolf to sue the owner for this type of behavior. At the same time, we know that this behavior is illegal and feel that the restaurant should alter its policies and make amends. Should we get discouraged? Or...