Panna II Garden Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in New York

I don't know whether to begin with the hair in the food, the terrible service, the yelling, or the physical harassment.

Me and two of my friends arrived at the restaurant for dinner late on a Tuesday night, so naturally they weren't busy. We had a fourth person joining us. They quickly seat us and get us water and menus and a free appetizer served to all guests (which had several hairs in it, so we ended up not eating it), and we made sure to tell them that we had another person joining. Keep in mind that the restaurant was far from being full. Within two or three minutes of being seated, we realized the restaurant was cash only, and decided to leave. We weren't very hungry, as we had just come from an event, so none of us were going to spend a lot of money anyway, and with us all being college age, we didn't want to withdraw a large amount of money from the ATM and be charged for it. As we stood up to leave, a server immediately ran up to us and physically shoved one of my friends, in front of the entire restaurant, and yelled at us that if we would eat there they would take our cards no problem.

Her being shoved should have been our first sign to leave, but we decided that maybe it was just a strange, accidental thing and that he just got too excited. We made sure to tell our server we were just getting appetizers, and he made no fuss over it. He insisted that we ordered immediately but everyone didn't know what they wanted. However, he kept insisting and kept insisting so finally I ordered my food and my friends said they would order something once mine came. The food came out very fast, and tasted fine. However, within five minutes of the food arriving, before my friends could order (this was within probably 20 minutes of us arriving at the restaurant), we were being harassed by multiple workers to leave. They said we weren't spending enough money and that people were waiting for a table (no one was waiting). I finally just asked for the check.

Only problem is, they overcharged me by nearly $10. Keep in mind I am a poor college kid on a budget and I only ordered two appetizers. I tried to explain to my server that it wasn't correct, and had my entire table backing me up because what I ordered was not on the check. The waiter started a screaming argument in front of the entire restaurant with me, and started grabbing my hand, touching my shoulder, knocking my hands out of the way, etc. Much of the argument was just as much me telling him to stop touching me as it was him insisting that I pay for food I didn't order. He finally fixes the check and when I hand him my card, he refuses to take it, telling me that I didn't spend enough to be able to use a card and that they don't take cards anyway. At this point two servers were at our table harassing us, still touching me and yelling. I have no cash on me and neither do my friends, so we are stuck, and one of my friends had to go to an ATM outside (overdrawing her account) to get cash for me to use while I was still trying to talk to the workers. At this point I had told my other friends to just leave and wait outside. She is taking a long time and I am still being harassed, so I stand up and walk towards the door to see if she was waiting for me there (keep in mind this is a tiny place, with ceilings around five and a half feet, so it's not easy to walk in and our table was far in the back). I am harshly grabbed by the manager of the restaurant, who shakes me so hard I almost lose my balance and fall. I try to explain to him what I was doing, and he started grabbing my clothes yelling at me threatening to call the cops on me and my friends, refusing to listen to what I was saying or to let me go.

Finally, my friend brings the cash back inside and I hand it to him and he releases me, only now he tries to keep the change. I have to stand there for five more minutes to convince him to give me my change back so we can leave.

We were harassed, touched, and yelled at in front of all the patrons there, and we will not be returning. Would give 0...

Panna II is interested in making a quick buck, providing an enjoyable experience and good food are nothing but afterthoughts for them. I had the most miserable experience ever. Here’s what went down today: I walked in with a friend and joined a large group of friends who were already seated. Once we joined the table, a waiter throws my friend and I plates with appetizers. I ask the waiter what this is because I hadn’t ordered that and he tells me that I’m doing a group special so that was my appetizer. He leaves. Confused, I wait for him to come back so he can clarify what is happening because we didn’t want the appetizers that were thrown on the table. When he finally comes back, I ask for clarification and with a raised voice he tells me I have no choice but to eat the appetizer and share the food with the rest of the group. My friend and I tell him that we’re not interested in that and that we’d like to instead order our own plates of food. He refuses to allow that and then hands me a menu. I’m looking over the menu in absolute confusion considering he just told me I couldn’t order what I wanted. Nevertheless, I take the time to analyze the menu. He comes back and asked if we were ready to order. We weren’t and asked if he could clarify once and for all what is going on, why he told me I had no choice but to go with a mystery group special, yet we have a menu to order from. He angrily tells me that he gave me a menu because I’d ask for it and rushes us to order something. Meanwhile, the table next to us opens up. When he comes back, my friend asked if we could move to that table so we could be considered a separate group and that way order on our own. He AGAIN raises his voice and loudly says “NO, NO TABLE!” We continue to uncomfortably sit there still confused at what’s happening and rattled by the aggressive anger and rudeness from the waiter. When he comes around again, my friend asked “so are we not allowed to sit there if we want to order food?” He responds, “fine fine go go go sit there go go!” With our patience with him pretty thin, my friend clarified “did you not just tell us we couldn’t sit there and now you’re saying thatwe can?” He screams something along the lines of, “go, go sit there if you want to eat go go and sit!” Disgusted by the tone, we get up to leave. It was clear that he was just interested in making as much money from us as possible, begrudgingly changing his mind about whether we could sit at the other table once my friend said she’d order food. As I get up to leave this hot and dusty restaurant, he starts to scream saying that we are causing him problems. I kindly ask him to rethink who is causing problems for who given that he is screaming about us to an entire restaurant after he was the one that failed to explain anything to us and tried forcing us to participate in a group special that nobody in the group had any details or prior knowledge about. After we left, we found out that the group who stayed were served a handful of plates to share and charged $40. Hands down the worse experience...

Honestly had one of the weirdest restaurant experiences of my life here last night. These reviews are true - do not come here with a group of 6 or more, they will refuse to let you see a menu so they can charge you $30 a person and add a required and enforced FORTY percent gratuity. Definitely doesn’t say that on the menu!

Came for a party of 12 for a friends birthday, and I would not have come/asked them to change the restaurant after reading reviews on the way home. The waiter brought us into the restaurant next door, which is the same, so I guess that’s fine, but we spent more than an hour and a half over the course of the night in the restaurant alone with no servers around.

We got red solo cups for water that were sticky inside and outside, likely reused. The waiter opened all of our wine bottles without asking which ones to open first, and if he had asked we would’ve warned him one was going to explode. It did explode and he used someone’s dirty napkin to cap the exploding wine, and then grabbed another mystery napkin off the table to continue to touch the mouth of the wine bottle…

The food honestly was pretty good, I’ve had better Indian food and I did NOT like that the server forced us to order what he wanted, not what we wanted. He refused to let us see the menu because the prices are reasonable and he wanted to charge us an unreasonable price - $15 for chicken tikka masala on the menu but $30/person if you have a big party, AND you have to share family style, and, again, a required and insane 40% tip for less than decent service.

The music was so good all night, they fulfilled our needs of a fun, colorful, loud 21st birthday dinner, but the service was really questionable. Also, we saw a mouse. We bonded with the table next to us over the little friend and the waiter turned the music up so we would stop talking about it. Either way, the mouse’s name is Remy, make sure to say hi to him if you do end up making your trip to Panna II, or I guess Milon, because I think that’s...