Patsy's Pizzeria — Restaurant in New York

This is going to be quite the journey, gentle reader. Prepare. Grab a drink and journey with me to the Upper West Side for an odd date night gone… mostly wrong but with character?

… The space is old school and lovely, but you deserve better pizza. The staff deserves more help and better pizza. Honestly, even the rustic wood bar and homey, mom and pop, Italian family-style venue deserves better pizza.

What do I mean? The crust is so-so (for NYC that is not good news, but we’re not focusing on this because it’s not the main offender in this crime against your intestines, trust me…) the “cheese” is a cheese-like substance with good pull but no flavor. It somehow masquerades as cheese, but has no flavor; a conundrum. The PepP-R-Oni (because we are not convinced it was truly pepperoni or meat of a true nature) was possibly worse than the cheese.

Did you ever have those “You can eat pizza on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime” monstrosities brought to us by working baby-boomer parents in the 90s whose own parents’ force-feeding of Wheeties made them hand us anything with dancing colors and animals in the commercial? Yeah. Those microwaveable bagel horrors. The “pepper-ohhhhh-no” on the pizza resembles the tiny spice faux meat product squares you would pick from your braces after someone’s mom forgot the number for Dominos at the sleepover and the bagels made their appearance. If you forget them, trust me, they will “visit” you again in about an hour to 90 minutes.

Where does that leave us? Picking the arugula and fresh basil from the top of the pizza and eating it like a salad as you watch your waiter hurriedly trying to appease twelve tables of families. The wait staff is truly hardworking and trying their best, but servicing so many large tables (many of the pasta dishes are served specifically in family portions at reasonable prices) both inside and in an extended outdoor seating area.

In sum: we get it. New York is expensive. But to the owners of Patsy’s; come on. Invest in extra staff because yours is GOLDEN and deserves extra help. Invest in better ingredients because your location and neighborhood is GOLDEN and deserves healthy and really good quality food. And invest in yourselves— would you eat that pepperoni on...

Spaghetti and Meatballs = Rest in Peace! They recently overhauled their menu. Spaghetti and Meatballs went from true perfection to a complete fail. Sauce was pure salt and the new meatball recipe is awful. They said the sauce is the same amount of salt, just increased pepper. I guess they don't understand the fact that increasing pepper increases the perception of salt on the tongue. And why why why, would you change the recipe of your meatballs which everyone says are the best in the UWS?

And now, they make you add meatballs as a paid extra to the spaghetti, so the old price last month was $20 for Spaghetti and Meatballs, and now it is $33.

If the food had stayed the same, I would have paid the $33, but it was really inedible, so I returned the plate, and went to Shake Shack.

I was a Patsy's regular, but Oh well, I'm now in search of a new Spaghetti and Meatballs goto.

Response to owner. You no longer have Spaghetti and meatballs as a single item on the menu. 3 weeks ago I could order Spaghetti with 3 meatballs for $20. Now on the menu, you sell Spaghetti Pomodoro for $18 with ZERO meatballs. Then I have to add 3 meatballs as an extra which costs $15, for a total of $33. The portion size was identical. I was never a whiz at math, but $33 appears to be greater than $20.

But as I said previously, it is the new meatball recipe and the over seasoned sauce that is the real problem. The new sauce tastes to the tongue over salted, thus you can't add any parmesan cheese, which would make it even more salty.

You say the food tastes very much the same. Then why change it? I'm sure you had items that weren't customer favorites. Those deserve change. But your Spaghetti and Meatballs was a Customer Favorite, so why would you change that? It makes no sense. Is the new recipe less labor intensive? Cheaper to make? If so, doesn't the increase from $20 to $33 cover that cost of the...

It is sad to see a great, local spot lose customers because of staff. My family and I go to Patsy’s once every weekend. Lately, there is a waiter who works on Saturdays during the afternoon/early evening shift who is extremely rude and should not be in the service industry. Last visit, he came over asked me if I wanted to drink anything I said no thank I am good with water so he left, while my wife is just about to order a drink for herself and something for our daughter. So I asked him to come back he came back took the order and left. We put the food order in, food comes late, in fact much later then everyone around us, not once did the waiter come and check if we needed anything or the causal how is everything here, nothing. We never even got bread. When it comes to the check I find gratuity of 20% added, so I walked to the waiter again since he never visited our table and asked how come, he said this is an automatic charge for large groups. My family and I are 4 (my wife, myself, a 3 months old and a toddler). I had to argue with him that large groups usually means group 6+ and I also had to argue that before you add a charge wouldn’t it be nicer if you mention prior and not post the fact. He was not happy and I certainly was not either. Today we walked in just me and my daughter. He sees us he turns around and makes us wait while he is pretending to be doing something on the POS. No greeting, nothing. We waited and soon enough I said let’s go so this becomes our last visit of...