Oregano — Restaurant in New York

Horrible. Let's start with the fact that I took the time to make a reservation for an outdoor table at 7pm on a Friday. I made the reservation a day in advance so I was very confused when me and 2 others arrived and they didn't have an outdoor table. We were ushered inside and sat right up against the kitchen. In the 10 minutes we waited for the last person in our party, the server asked us 3 times if we wanted drinks as an upsell. I came here because of the vegan options so I'll cover that in my review.

I asked for a bottle of sparkling water - it arrived room temperature and nearly flat. Not sure how thats possible. We ordered the roasted cauliflower, Potatoes, and the Bruschetta.

Alright, when they say "roasted" they really mean it lol. The cauliflower was completely black on top, undercooked on the bottom and sitting in a bisque that I couldn't really describe. A running theme is adding arugula to every dish so there was arugula thrown in there too.

The potatoes or "patatas" as the menu says in Spanish. 🤔 were undercooked which is alarming because due to our close proximity to the kitchen we heard them ask the server to inform us that we would need to wait a while for them to be done. We did wait 20 minutes for them. When they were brought to the table the plate was so hot because it was clearly prepared in the pizza oven. I have never had food so hot that was still raw. Also not very flavorful and also served on another bed of Arugula

The Bruschetta - continuing with the theme here that it was soaking wet. The edge of the bread was toasted (assuming they put the loaf in the oven and then cut it after toasting?) So it fell apart the moment you bit into it.

Lets pause here and enjoy a second bottle of flat sparking water from under the bar **

The Entrees: I had the " Spaghetti A LA CHEF" Vegan version. Truly disgusting. I have never seen pasta so overcooked and wet. The pasta broke on the fork - it was sitting in water mixed with truffle oil and finished with 20 pieces of sun-dried tomatoes so the competing flavors were really wild here. Also why didn't I get the arugula bed? (a blessing). But truly another wet sloppy soup. and $24? are you insane? is that because you used 1/4 of a bottle of truffle oil?) OH and the vegan sausage? maybe one crumble at best lol.

My boyfriend had the vegan version of "Rena's Rocket" looked fine but was soggy because it was drenched in hot honey! They need to learn to restrain themselves with any and all liquids lol.

My Brother had the Homemade Cavatelli - Again soaking wet. Cavatelli looked overcooked. I was told it was just very wet but not terrible. Not worth $18 though.

Bathroom: They have one bathroom. There was always a line which was unfortunately next to our table.

We waited forever to get the bill - $11 each for the flat bottles of Sanpellegrino and the line item said topo chico which might have explained the Margarita menu or Tequilla bottles displayed everywhere. The did a very performative showing me the bill "Make sure this is right" I had complained about how disgusting my chef special was but I didn't ask for it to be removed because I did eat it all out of pure fascination.

But then we looked at the final receipt we had printed and they added a $16 cocktail with Bulleit Bourban upgrade which was strange because only one person in our party had one glass of wine...

It was terrible food, horrible service and then overcharged on the bill after the "check the bill" song and dance....

Unfortunately my friends and I had a very average experience at this restaurant last night. It was very hot in New York yesterday and the restaurant was very very hot - like uncomfortably hot. We were fanning ourselves with the menu the whole time.

The service was very very average. They were understaffed so I get it - but we literally had to ask for our drinks, our orders, a straw, bread - and everything else we were trying to have. Nothing was happening and we felt like we were constantly asking for things and that made us feel uncomfortable, but it as because we weren’t getting any service that we had to nag.

Also we were clearly not having a good time - the staff would have known we were not happy for sure, we were waiting and asking and fanning! It would’ve been nice for a staff member to at least say - yeah, we haven’t looked after you very well so here’s a round of drinks on us, but they didn’t. That was very disappointing.

Overall it was a very disappointing, annoying experience. The food was OK - nothing to write home about - but when you can’t even get your drink, or your food, or your bread, or water or a bloody straw, it really puts a bad taste in your mouth.

Even if the food was awesome (which it wasn’t) it would’ve just been mediocre because of everything else bringing the whole night down.

I’ll never go back.

And I think I’ve written like 4 Google reviews in my life, so the fact that I’m putting time and effort into sharing this means it was clearly a very negative...

We were excited to try this place nearby as we love Neapolitan wood fired pizza. The place is very small and tables are tight but we went early so good thing it wasn’t busy. We ordered a ‘margherita’ and an arugula pizza. Ok so, a margarita typical has fresh slices of mozzarella on it, like circles thrown in a few places on the dough. However, we received this pizza with shredded cheese on it. We asked the waiter if it was ‘fresh mozzarella’ and he said yes of course. But I think it was a little lost in translation because yea it was fresh and not bad lol but it was definitely not fresh mozzarella. This was a cheese pizza with a wood-fired dough. The dough and the sauce was decent. The arugula pizza on the menu does not state it has any mozzarella but has shaved Parmesan which is why I ordered it. I received a pizza with shredded mozzarella and no Parmesan. When we asked the waiter he said yes of course it comes with cheese under the arugula. And when I asked about the Parmesan he left and brought a bowl of grated Parmesan and I asked is that freshly grated? He said no. I said that is not shaved and not fresh, there is a big difference. We were completely disappointed. If you didn’t know these little differences, you might not care and would enjoy the pizza here. However, if you are New Yorkers and know a good pie, this is not good. There was no fresh cheese in an Italian place! We won’t be back here although they probably have a lot of good food but based on this experience, it did not...