Stafili Wine Cafe — Restaurant in New York

Our waiter, a slim Greek gentleman, was quite condescending and had a rather strange demeanor, ie. raising his eyebrows as we tasted the wines, furrowing his eyebrows - as if confused or offended - when I asked for something similar to a Merlot or Beaujolais - to which he curtly replied “we don’t have that,” and kept reiterating this as if it was a request so outlandish, so utterly foolish of me to ask at a wine bar. Throughout our time there, he continued his condescension towards me while being contrastingly lovely towards my male companion, do with that information what you will. Wine selection is also quite bizarre. Lots of lesser-known varieties from Greece with no descriptions whatsoever on the menu. No offense to the wines of the region, as I’m sure there are many great kinds out there, we just didn’t taste any of them here. The closest bottle they had to a Merlot [insert waitstaff condescension here] had ‘notes’ of what can only be politely described as a mix of movie theatre popcorn and manure, and not in a good way. After trying two or three bottles overall, one worse than the other, we panic-settled on the least rancid tasting one. We didn’t want to upset our waiter any more than we already had. Bottomline: unhelpful waiter, sexist vibes, terrible wines. The upsides are the location, and the fact that it’s a pretty cute spot with a lovely Al fresco indoor/outdoor setup. This is a suitable spot for the social media inclined and the folks going for the vibes rather than the wines. Just don’t ask...

We are locals who collectively have been coming here for a couple of years now and have always appreciated the more relaxed atmosphere compared to other wine bars in WV- which is why I am at lost for words for the experience I had last night. We arrived and ask the waitress how long for a table for a party of our size, where she told us reservations could only be made through Resy. Ok fair enough we thought, and found a reservation for our party size available in 15 minutes on the app and booked it. We showed the waitress and stood outside to wait. 2 of us tried to go use the bathroom while we waited to be seated and were chased down by the waitress who told them only seated customers could use the bathrooms and blocked them from going any further into the restaurant. At this point it’s about 5 minutes until our resy reservation so we approach the hostess again to plead if they could please use the bathroom as we only had a few more minutes until time. Not only did she deny them entry to the bathroom, she told us she would actually not be able to accommodate the reservation we had made. Meanwhile, we had seen at least 4 groups enter and be seated while we waited outside. At this point we decided to leave, where we saw a whole row of empty bar stools that would have fit our parties size. I truly have never experienced more...

TERRIBLE SERVICE AND EXPERIENCE! I made a reservation weeks in advance for outside seating to celebrate my birthday. When we arrived on time, we were not only seated inside, but 5 people to a 4 top table. There were bigger tables available but the employee pushed over a fifth chair to squish at the 4 top. Since we were going for dinner, it was not very conducive to an enjoyable evening, since one of my friends did not have table space to eat at. I felt very slighted and overlooked. We respectfully informed Sammy, the hostess, that we did not want to stay due to the lack of accommodation for our party .She informed us she would still charge us as “missed our reservation” even though we arrived promptly and our reservation was not upheld. I felt held hostage by the news this restaurant would abuse the card they had on file. It seems they were more interested in making money off my resy reservation than finding a solution to the issue. Very disappointed in my experience and I was very much looking forward to trying this restaurant right near my workplace To say the least, I will not...