Sip&Guzzle — Restaurant in New York

We had a reservation for Guzzle, and added ourselves to the waitlist for Sip and were happy to wait. At the end of our experience in Guzzle, our server and hostess mentioned a “cool nook” available immediately downstairs which allowed us to order from both Sip and Guzzle menus which also had a view of the bar. We took it up enthusiastically as we still had an hour on the waitlist.

When shown to the “nook”, it is a shoeshine booth facing the door of Sip (see photos) on the side of the bathroom/service hallway. While I found the shoeshine booth novel, and didn’t make much of a fuss at the time of seating (despite the misrepresentation), the experience started to get worse.

The booth is a limbo space (purgatory?)… it’s neither in Sip nor Guzzle… it’s in a walkway. The view from the booth was a view of the front door of Sip, which is see through… not how a “view of the bar” is typically understood to be. It’s also awkward as people inside Sip can see you staring inside, while not really being inside. The space is in constant motion as people and servers are coming in and out of Sip which disturbs the experience. Whenever new guests were brought into Sip, they took up space around the booth. Some guests even leaned in our booths and just hovered around talking, which is not just distracting but frankly a bit rude. The bathroom is right next to the booth (not the most appetizing) and the line to use the bathroom spilled into our space...

The booth doesn’t have a table…. So they bring a small side table and put it at the foot of booth. Said table barely fits and we were asked to be “mindful” as the table could fall over since it rests on a ledge over the floor. This meant we had to sit stiffly with one leg folded on the bench and one leg out for 90 minutes in order to avoid knocking the table over. Why would any serious establishment ever misrepresent a makeshift setup, and put the onus on the customer to make sure their poorly designed concept doesn’t fall apart? It’s ridiculous and amateurish.

We ordered drinks from Sip, and they were ok. We found the drinks at guzzle to be much better, surprising as Sip offers the elevated cocktail experience.

We ordered the Royale with Cheese from Sip, an A5 Wagyu sandwich with a side of house made pickles. The sandwich was SO SALTY. We finished the side of pickles before we finished the sandwich… that’s how salty it was… without the pickles to cut the salt it was almost inedible.

When we alerted the staff that the food was too salty, instead of trying to rectify the situation we were asked if we wanted “more pickles” (????) … as if the quantity of the pickles was the problem and not a ruined A5 Wagyu sandwich we paid 150 dollars for! To think that something as coveted and valuable as an A5 Wagyu Miyazaki steak could be handled and served so poorly raises many questions.

When paying the bill, we were told that the chef had been informed the sandwich was too salty and given a half-hearted apology. The server also told us that the next time we visit they will “try to make sure” to sit us inside of Sip. So basically the staff are fully aware that the awkward booth is not an ideal location to seat their guests; and they still choose to seat people there?? “Try to make sure” is a hypothetical… if you’re going to offer rectification/compensate for your guest’s bad experience, you offer something concrete and material.

The (maybe) guaranteed seat at Sip doesn’t inspire much motivation nor confidence to bring me back. My visit was far from frugal, and when spending hundreds of dollars on what is expected to be an elevated experience, you expect it to be delivered.

Overall - incredibly disappointing. The start of the night was great at Guzzle, it became an afterthought while staring into Sips. Big let down, especially as this place’s work and reputation is based off of the amazing SG Club in Tokyo. I saw little of it...

Context: My best friend and I have both been blessed to have the chance to try 35/50 NorthAm bars, 24/50 in Asia and 32/50 on the World’s list. The experiences have been incredible from your friendly local dive bar to swanky ones.

So as you can tell we’re probably alcoholic with an expensive hobby. Long story short, I’ve been reaching out since September to understand their opening date. Fast forward, they announced their soft opening on Jan 16, so I hopped on a plane from California to visit it, knowing that they already did friends and family night plus their IG mentioned limited seating during soft opening. All makes sense and seems fair. Moving along, we arrived around 6ish on their first soft opening night and put our name down for Sip (downstairs experience). While we waited we enjoyed all their drinks upstairs (due to soft opening it was a smaller menu). Drinks were classic cocktails with a twist which I really enjoyed! While we were ordering drinks in between, we noticed a lot of the bar friends and family started to show up and got special treatment. We overheard one employee telling them if they mentioned that they know him, it’ll help expedite them on the list. After that, we decided to see where we were in the list, which at that point it has been 2.5 hours and somehow we dropped to number 16 on the waitlist from originally 11. Yes, we were originally told there is no guarantee that we’ll be seated but I think it should have been communicated that soft opening was still for friends and family. So they’ll have higher priority regardless if they made a reso or not.

Coincidentally, their GM Brody was there when we’re talking to the host and he gave his email for us to share our experience and that he’ll help reserve Sip for another time which was nice at the moment.

So we continue our chit chat and drank fabulous drink then Steve was making his round to ensure that people were enjoying their time and drinks. He asked us and I told him you actually don’t want to hear our experience but he proceed to say please tell me and so we did. He was extremely apologetic and checked with the host to see if there was any opening that could fit us. Luckily something popped up and we proceed downstairs and ran into Brody. Steve told him he’ll take us downstairs and Brody said we’re full etc and Steve said we can debrief about this later on. Then Brody proceed to tell us “I see you guys went over my head”. To be fair we didn’t expect Steve to come by to check on us or expected any escalation but Brody’s ego was hurt.

Then Brody said did you guys closed out and I say I will go upstairs to close out after I know our spot is at. He proceed to said “that’s not how it works around here”. So I said ok I’ll go up to close out. To be fair they have my credit card, so it’s not like I could have left without paying but who knows what the reason is from not closing out right away vs later.

Fast forward, I closed out and we went downstairs. Ordered all their drinks which was truly delicious. Ben did an amazing job but what do you expect from someone who had experiences at places like Double Chicken Please!

Also, we ordered the A5 wagyu sandwich which was absolutely amazing. It literally melted in your mouth and def worth $150 imo! We also some rice cakes which was okay for me and tried their toro tasting platter. They gave you chu toro, o-toro and Akami toro which was a nice range of fatty, medium and lean bluefin tuna. The cuts were definitely fresh but please do not add salt on top of it. It ruins the flavors. During our time downstairs enjoying our drinks and food, our waitress and rest of the employees were extremely friendly to us. However, Brody kept walking by and giving us the look which I never have felt that uncomfortable in my life. We spent $200 upstairs and $510 downstairs but we felt unwanted and like we didn’t...

I had really high expectations for SG given it's been compared to DCP & other high end NYC cocktail bars alike. I was astounded at how low quality my experience was, particularly with the staff.

I booked for 9:30pm on Tuesday with my two roomates at Guzzle. Upon arriving they told me they couldn't find my reservation, even though I had it pulled up on my Resy. After some time they magically "found" the reservation and told us to wait until the table was ready. They transformed a tiny 2 person table into a 3 seater. I made the reservation in advance so they knew 3 people were coming. Things only got worse.

Our waitor's name was Sam and at first I thought he was just sarcastic, so I played along thinking it was a joke. But when I asked him for drink recommendations he told me to quote "Stop worrying so much about what other people think of you". I laughed it off again thinking it was a joke, but it caught me off gaurd, I've never experienced that at any other cocktail bar in NYC. If I'm spending $30 per drink, I expect the staff be knowledgeable and excited to talk about the drinks. But alas no recommendation or color was provided and it felt like he was annoyed that I even asked.

We asked to keep a menu to order more drinks, but he insisted to take them and ask for them again when we needed them. When we were ready to order again, we flagged down another waitress who told us we should just look up the menu on our phones... Not sure why I felt like I had to beg to see their menu to place another order?

And to top it off the final debacle happened when we ordered dessert. We noticed other tables getting the soft serve and it looked amazing so we asked our waitor to give us a recommendation between the three they offerred. He told us to get the honey meringue soft serve without much description, so naturally we went with his recommendation.

When the dessert arrived we were surprised to find that it came in a container like a store bought pint of icecream would. We expected it to be served in the same parfait glasses we had seen at other tables. Minutes after the dessert was set down, and before we had even touched it, we asked Sam if it was at all possible to switch our dessert. He told us that the dessert was now "ruined" so they would certainly have to throw it out. Okay maybe I'm crazy but the dessert was fully enclosed in a sealed container. I found that a bit hard to believe. He told us he would talk to his manager and stormed off with the dessert. He then came back and told us that they wouldn't be able to switch the dessert since it had already been served. So we said it was fine and we would just take the original dessert. He went back into the kitchen and let us know that they had already thrown out the original dessert. He then told us that he would replace the dessert with the one we wanted but next time to ask him about the desserts first (which we did!) and that if I wanted to post something on instagram I could just point to the one I wanted, that he loved to talk about the desserts and food so we should have just asked (not true given I wasn't given recs for food nor drink). Also I never said anything about instagram I referred to seeing the dessert on other guests tables. Then he proceeded to patronize me about if I really wanted the salty potato soft serve. He said quote "Are you sure thats the one you really want? Because it might not be the one you saw on instagram." I'm not sure why he kept alluding to instagram as if my friends and I were obnoxiously taking pictures? We in fact took no pictures and were just trying to enjoy our time but it felt like Sam was intentionally trying to make us uncomfortable.

All in all the food is overhyped, drinks are way overpriced, and the staff made us feel unwelcome. 0/10 will not be recommending or...