Starbucks Reserve - Empire State Building — Restaurant in New York

Cocktails were good. Staff in the store and as I was looking around the bottom floor were very friendly and helpful.

The actual dining experience in the restaurant was not great at all.

1. I received a phone call 15 minutes after we were seated asking where we were - and we were literally sitting directly behind the hostess stand! I received a text message a minute later telling me my table was ready and to check in, and a second one saying the same five minutes later. Three minutes later, I got an email saying my reservation had been cancelled.

2. We ordered, and they were out of one of the three standard pizzas, ok - picked a different one. Then we ordered a salad - we are out of ALL salads. What?? Considering the only non-starch vegetables on the menu were salads, that was disappointing.

3. After our polenta fries came out, we finished them and our drinks and waited … and waited … and waited… no more food, no server anywhere to be seen. Finally, a random other server stops by and turns out, the woman who took our order wasn’t our server, she was just filling in temporarily for our server - but never told us. She also put our entrees on hold and never took them off hold before leaving and turning the table back over to our actual server. She also didn’t explain to our server that we had ordered that food or that it was on hold. Our server was under the impression that we ordered drinks only.

4. We finally got our food and the margarita pizza was literally cheese pizza. No tomato, no basil, not fresh mozzarella. Basic cheese pizza.

Now, I will say our second (actual) server was very, very apologetic about #3 above and brought us out a plate of olives (interesting choice?) and our food came out quickly after. She also brought a delicious dessert plate. I appreciate that it was not her fault and she did all she could to remedy. But then…

5. My mom wanted cheesecake. They take her order, come back, and they’re out of it, too! At this point, we can’t believe what a time we have had and had to laugh in disbelief. In a non-nasty way, we explained the other things they’d been out of, since she hadn’t taken out order, plus the call about us missing our reservation. We told her we would just take the bill.

Then someone mysteriously found a piece of cheesecake 🤔 - at least they brought that to us at no charge.

All in all, I might like to try an entree that’s not pizza - shame on us for all getting a different variety of that - but I don’t know that I want to come back here to do it. For $200 - 20% gratuity included automatically- we could have had a much better meal elsewhere. Go have a coffee cocktail downstairs, that was all that was...

I came here to relax and do some work, didn't even get to order because a woman who had been shoving me the whole time on line then decided to push ahead of me when it came time to order for her and her kids. Then she proceeded to say she didn't know I was there despite having to push by me, and pushing and shoving me before then (her kids were actually much more well behaved than her and didn't push me or shove me once.)

The moment that woman pushed ahead of me I stated very clearly that she cut ahead and me, and then I looked at the cashier and said she pushed ahead of me again when the woman didn't listen. Cashier heard me, acknowledged that they heard me, but continued serving her without saying anything to me. I repeated myself several times, kind of flabbergasted that everyone was pretending like I wasn't talking. Security came, placated the woman, allowed her to be served without even so much as a "be careful next time" or ANYTHING, treated me like I was insane...

Then when the woman was gone and I spoke to them privately they agreed with me that the woman was the one who was the problem? I know Starbucks greatly limits what security and baristas can do, so this is MUCH MORE a complaint against the corporation as a whole and how they determine how their stores are run. But like, what the heck?? And I didn't want it to be the main focus of the post so I decided to not open with this bit of information, but I require a cane when I walk after getting hit by a texting driver. So getting pushed around a Starbucks and then having staff pretend like she's in the right just to keep her calm... I had already reloaded my card when I was waiting on line, so I left and went to a different Starbucks down the street. Three stars just because when security talked to me privately they treated me very humanely, unlike the taller barista who took over from the one who ignored me. That barista made me feel like I was being an inconvenience for getting worked up and crying (I was very frustrated, and at this time no one had filled me in on the fact that they were just placating the woman and didn't actually believe her, so I unfortunately did...

Worst Starbucks experience I have ever had. We arrived and even with a reservation, were asked to wait to be seated as she currently only had one server available. There were only three other tables with people seated at them and no one else waiting to be seated, but sure, no problem. we waited about 10 minutes and were seated. In the meantime, the rest of her servers arrived as there were now 4 or 5 of them. One server came over and brought us menus and a tasting of their Empire State Cold Brew. Then our server came over and took our orders. This is where things really fell apart. We received our drinks and then after a very long wait we received our food. The food itself was subpar and never were we asked if we wanted anything else or any more to drink. I had also ordered a flight and after finishing our food and our drinks and waiting and waiting and waiting.. I finally gave up and told one of the servers walking by (as our was no where to be seen) that I wanted the check as I was tired of waiting. Shortly after, another server (still not our own server) offered to bring us the flight free of charge. Which I did very much appreciate. And after waiting a while more, it arrived. Once we had finished the flight, we once again waited and waited and waited for our check. Every other table was empty at this point and people who had come in after us, had already left. We had to ask for our check and were told they thought we'd already paid. So then they had to "find" our bill. What really killed me about this whole situation is that the two times I'd gone to the bathroom, I'd seen our server playing on their phone at the bar and also hanging out with all the other servers back behind their serving station. When we did finally get our check, they'd added an automatic 20% tip to the bill they had magically found. It is very obvious that Starbucks spent a lot of money on this location but they really should have spent more money training their staff. I would never waste my time or money there again and I'll be letting everyone I know to not waste their time or...