Runner & Stone — Restaurant in New York

Let me start off by saying, I think the food here is good, even really good. But a bit over priced perhaps.

This place suffers a bit of an identity crisis. I made reservations here on Saturday, February 13. Valentines weekend. For 6:45.

The place wasn't crowded at all when we came in. What raised my eyebrows immediately is when we were greeted, it appeared as if they had no plan where to sit us even though there were lots of tables open. They decided to sit us in front of the bar and entrance door. I was two feet away from the bar, and it was a bar table, so the seats were high and so was the table. Not very romantic. My first thoughts were, its going to be cold whenever someone opens the door; and when the place starts getting a bit more crowded I'm not going to like the idea that I'm right in front of the bar area where people normally wait for tables and getting drinks, and like I said they sat us down at a bar table, it was very high and very small. This wasn't going to be the romantic setting for Valentine's I imagined.

Luckily we asked to be moved to a slightly better spot, in the front corner of the restaurant, where the seats were lowered but we were still very close to the bar, but at least it seemed secluded away from it.

Originally I chose this place because of the regular full menu, but being that it was Valentine they had a special menu, which bummed me iout a little bit because I was looking forward to some things on their full menu. I asked our server if the full menu was possible, she gave an abrupt "no" that kind of put me off a little bit. Not a "sorry, no" but an abrupt "no".

On to the food, I had the duck pastrami as an appetizer, on the regular menu, this would have been bigger and an entree. As an appetizer it was 3 slices of duck, 3 slices of pickle, garnish and mustard. I thought it was tasty but for the price I was paying for it, I felt a little gypped. I can't imagine if I had paid like $10 more on a regular day how many slices of duck pastrami I would have gotten, 6?

For the entree I got the pork chop on bone. It was nice and juicy. But it lacked a little seasoning that would make it stand out from other places, for $32, I couldn't help but think it was a little plain, although cooked well.

Now I say this place suffers an identity crisis, cause I can't tell if it's supposed to be a place that is supposed to be just a little bit more upscale and trendy, you know based on the prices and ability to do reservations. But I didn't feel it was an upscale atmosphere, I didn't feel the food and atmosphere warranted the pricing. It got really loud and crowded at my time there. It just didn't seem like the romantic and intimate place I wanted to take a date.

Now it's fine if they aren't going for an upscale type place, but the pricing in the food should reflect that.

If they are trying to be more upscale, perhaps seat your customers that have early reservations away from the bar, in a nicer spot when it's empty.

Again honestly I thought the food was good. But it wasn't fantastic. This place loses points to me because of pricing, portions, and atmosphere. If I had paid a little cheaper or gotten a bit more or the food was seasoned a bit more and differently, and if I wasn't seated so close to the bar, this place could have easily gotten a 5 rating from me. I'm not saying it needed to do all those things, but one or two of those things could have gotten this place a much more positive review.

I just didn't feel like this was worth the $200 I spent for...

Visited with my girlfriend nearly 2 weeks ago for dinner on a weeknight looking to try a new spot in our neighborhood.

The atmosphere and service was stellar and attentive without pestering—could not be more pleased with how we were treated, and this was the only saving grace that keeps me from giving this restaurant 1 star. The food, however, was extremely over-salted and disappointing.

We started with the Duck Pastrami which was easily the best part of the meal. If you do attend Runner & Stone, do not miss out on this dish. Wonderfully cooked and paired. We also ordered the Baby Iceberg Salad, which was covered in a dressing that tasted as if a salt shaker's lid fell off into the dish. So much so that we mentioned it to our waiter (we don't normally do this) and had the dish returned.

We ordered the Squid Ink Paccheri and Fried Chicken as our entrees. The Squid Ink Paccheri's heat was just right, however it could not make up for a once again overly salted sauce. The Fried Chicken had heavily salted breading—breading that, at the very least, was nicely fried with a light crunch. Thankfully the salad itself was refreshing and used to extinguish our taste buds.

Looking for redemption and a contrast to the salt, we finished with a couple of espressos and the Rye Brownie Sundae only to once again be disappointed with a dry and chalk-like brownie that appeared to have been baked and left to dry the day before. The cold and hard brownie (shouldn't a brownie sundae have a warm brownie?) was then topped with an extremely tasty spoon of rye whiskey ice cream which unfortunately only froze and hardened the brownie even more so. We did not finish this either.

Runner & Stone felt like a restaurant that was having an off night, however at a higher price point (our check, with two cocktails apiece was near $150) I can easily say I won't be returning or recommending this to friends until I...

Came here for a sunday lunch/brunch with my partner, and unfortunately had a very negative experience all-around with both service and food.

Starting with food: veg chowder was an absolute mess, sandwiches were ok. The vegetable chowder was topped with way too much finishing oil, and had almost 0 flavor to it, incredibly under-seasoned. For sandwiches, we got the fried lemon and zucchini sandwich, and the lemon slice that was fried was too big to be edible. I love lemon, but had to pull the large wedge of lemon off of my sandwich to eat it. It was decent flavor-wise. Coffee was good. Hush puppies were dry.

Now for service…they informed us when we walked in that it’d be counter service ordering. No big deal, fine. Where this gets strange is when they told us to use the server’s station to get our water and utensils…not a station set up for guests really, but going and grabbing things from where the servers would usually take. Then when paying, the reader automatically had a 22% tip on it! For us to serve ourselves.

We were the only people there besides when people stopped in to get from the bakery, and when people did stop in, one woman literally had to walk to the back of the store to fetch one of the baristas from the back, where they were sitting and talking. The cooks brought the food to the server station, couldn’t find any of the baristas/servers, tried to get their attention from the back and were ignored, and luckily the cooks saw we were the only people there and brought us our food. We had to put our plates and glasses away at the end too, and scrape off our plates.

I could’ve just rolled with all of this if the food was good, but the food being bad really just made this one of the worse lunch experiences I’ve had in the area. Seems like a nice coffee...