River Deli — Restaurant in New York

Was hoping to gain some faith in the food scene of Brooklyn Heights with River Deli but was disappointed even more than I could’ve possibly imagined. Walking by the restaurant you want it to be an enjoyable experience, unfortunately, the timeline for our dinner goes like this:

We wait 10 minutes for a table (great for a Saturday) and our hopes are still high. My boyfriend and I browse and select what we want to order however wait about 15 more minutes for the waiter to come back and take our order. Around us, we could hear him hop table to table and explain the specials for the night but when he finally arrives to us he simply asks “if we’re ready.” This would also be the last time we speak to him (not because he dies but just because he ignores us the rest of the night).

We order two glasses of wine (later a 3rd), mussels to start, the ravioli and the tagliatelle for entrees. The mussels and wine arrive promptly. No glaring issues with either except the wine just simply wasn’t very good. We proceed to wait a whole hour and 10 minutes for two pasta dishes. At about 50 minutes we voice our concerns to the manager who insists to/yells at us that “it’s coming, it’s coming!” After another 10 minutes we ask again only to be told they’re still “coming!” By now, other parties of 2-4 have been sat, ordered, received their food, paid, and left.

The last 10 minutes go by and we get our food. Due to sheer hunger (and wishing to escape River Deli) we finish our pasta very quickly.

To redeem themselves, we are kindly offered a free $9 dessert by the only other server in the restaurant. We just ask for the check. Total comes to about $115 with nothing comped and not even an apology offered by the manager. We pay. We leave.

An incredibly frustrating and confusing time considering the other tables around us did not seem to have our experience in the slightest. I still have praise for “traditional” Sardinian food, just not...

Mistakes happen. How mistakes are handled matters. Tonight, our waiter brought my fiancee the wrong entree. Without apology, he gave us a choice: either accept the incorrect dish or wait for another to be made (the original dish had sold out and been mistakenly served to the table next to ours). To avoid another 20-minute wait and prevent food waste, my fiancee accepted the incorrect dish.

When we saw it on the bill, we politely asked the manager to comp the dish—the dish that would have gone to waste if not for our compromise. He refused. Throughout this entire exchange, neither the server nor the manager offered an apology. The manager delivered a brief but aggressive lecture before reluctantly admitting he might have been willing to offer a discount or free dessert. He even stated that if my fiancee had only eaten half of her dish, he would have promptly comped half.

We paid in full because we believe honor is not a negotiation. As longtime patrons of this restaurant, we're disappointed to say we will not be returning, and we feel obligated to share our experience with neighbors...

I very much enjoyed the late-night meal I had at River Deli. My niece suggested that we dine family-style, and she ordered an array of salads and pastas along with appetizers of fried calamari and burrata. Among the salads, a spinach salad with a piquant lemon dressing stood out, and I particularly enjoyed the papardelle con funghi. The lamb ragù pasta was also very good.

Great atmosphere, too, cozy and gemütlich. My one reservation about the experience there was that we were given bread plates for both the appetizer course and the salads and pastas, and had to ask for additional plates to accommodate the second course. When those plates came, they were additional bread plates. Why bread plates and not standard-sized ones? We found that odd.

I regret that I did not think to take photos. I was in Brooklyn due to a somber family occasion and it did not cross my mind to...