St. George Tavern — Restaurant in New York

After a windy night at the ice cubes in Pier 17, my friends and I were in need of dinner. There isn’t much of restaurants around the South Seaport area and this place popped up. Despite the low reviews, we took a chance on this tavern because it is a historical landmark and the affordable prices compared to other Manhattan establishments. Our meal was meh. First, the hostess was surprised we had reservations. I totally get it, the place was empty, but still, don’t be shocked. Then there are two menus: American and Chinese. That was a surprise to me to offer Chinese food because all the pictures on yelp were American. In perusing the menu, I chose to eat from the Chinese menu because it was sharable. I shared orange beef, friend rice combo and string beans with pork as our main dishes. We ordered soup dumplings for the table as appetizers. The other diners ordered a burger and chicken sandwich. They ordered buffalo chicken wings to share as an appetizer. The Chinese main course dishes significantly came out first, which resulted half of the party eating and the other half salivating. The Chinese food was decent. It is your typical neighborhood Chinese joint you order to go. The saving grace was the soup dumplings, which was actually good. The dumplings came in last, similar to the buffalo chicken wings. The random order of the dishes coming out still boggles my mind, but it is the St. George tavern, anything goes! The other half received their dishes, with the chicken sandwich bread toasted (did not request to be toasted) and the burger with no avocado, which is part of the dish. The buffalo wings were also delicious. I forgot to mention the lychee martini, delicious, string and paired well with the...

It was actually one of my restaurant experiences that stood out of not being a good one. I took a group of 17 guests to this restaurant and was very sad on how the service went down. We were served fast and it was somewhat efficient, but we felt like we were bothering the servers when we needed either more cheese, a spoon or such. And this was a group that was not demanding. When it came down to paying, the servers came to the table and just yelled out the prices. I had to intervene and say that this is not a friendly way of presenting the bill. I think that maybe some things were lost in translation, since the servers grew up speaking another language. At one point however - especially in NYC - you need to learn the basics: A smile goes a long way, a please and a thank you does, as well as the overall tone when you're serving. Food wise, it was nothing to write home about. The salads were fine, the black bean burger really strange and we didn't or couldn't eat it. The rigatoni was fine, but the meat on top of it was not. My group was not excited and I don't see myself back here...

My friend and I went here for lunch On Sunday, Sept. 30, at 12:45. The place was less than half full. As we stood by the door for several minutes waiting to be seated, another couple walked in behind us and the host immediately strode over, warmly embraced them, and then seated them. My friend said, "Let's go," and we were about to, when the host returned and seated us. We looked over the menus, made our choices, and then both pulled out our laptops because this was a working lunch. Time passed and passed as 3 waiters plus the host circulated, cleared tables, took orders, and the place slowly filled up. Nobody came to our table, not even to bring a glass of water. We tried to signal for service, but were ignored. An hour later (no kidding, I checked my watch), when we had finished our business, still no one had come to our table. So we left. On our way out, we mentioned to the nearest waiter that we had been there an hour with no service. She said sorry, but the host had told her we were taken care of. Really!? There weren't even water glasses...