The Bedford — Restaurant in New York

I rarely write reviews but I had to for this one.

Food: 5 stars! We had the truffle mac and cheese as well as a large Prociutto de parma pizza and it was amazing. Definitely recommend coming here for a good bite.

Drinks: Also 5 stars. In our group of 5 people we ordered wine, margaritas and the manhattan and they were all great!

Service: 5 stars for our inital waitress, 1 star for the last.

This is where our issue was. We had a really nice waitress who took our initial orders and also our repeat orders for about 3 times after. Our last order, which was a second truffle mac and a few drinks we had a different waitress. After that round, we asked for the check and split it where the majority of us paid cash and one person paid on card. We got ready to go and as we were waiting for part of our group to come out from using the restroom, the last waitress who served us approached our group. I didn’t appreciate the tone she took when she asked us if the service was okay. We replied that it was great. I immediately asked her if everything was okay, and she proceeded to explain, with an extremely condescending tone, “well, you had an almost $300 bill (our bill was $239 to be exact) and you only left a $6 tip. We’re working through a pandemic and we work on tips so” and waited for us to “properly” tip her. This is something I can completely understand as I have also been working through the pandemic and regardless of this virus have always tipped my servers for great service. Of course this was a miscommunication between us when we paid the bill thinking that the gratuity was included and that was our mistake. But the tone and attitude that the waitress had with us was uncalled for and showed the type of waitress she is, at least to me. I did not appreciate her attitude towards us at all and would have given 5 stars had she not approached us in such a rude manner, as if we’d owed her something. I loved everything else but I highly doubt I’ll be back, after being hounded by a waitress that wasn’t even our waitress the entire time over a miscommunication on our bill.

We did end up tipping because the service, food and drinks were great up until that moment, and it’s something we would have...

I am giving this resturant 1 star because yesterday my friends and I were racially profiled here.

I did not catch the waitresses name because we had 3 different servers for our table but yesterday we were chased down outside by this waitress and accused of "dinning and dashing".

My friends and I are a mixture of Black and Brown gentleman and when we arrived to this restaurant yesterday evening it was predominantly white. That didn't bother us because we heard the food was delicious and we just wanted burgers. To be honest, we had a great experience at the restaurant. The food was amazing and besides our food coming out late the service was decent. After devouring our burgers and knocking back a few beers we spilt the bill 4 ways and left. We even received a goodbye from all the servers we had and an older white gentleman on the way out, who could have been a manager or an owner.

Shortly after leaving the restaurant this white woman, who was one of our servers, storms up the street, approaches us, and accuses us of not paying. She demands we return to the restaurant to pay for our food. I felt absolutely disrespected. My buddy kindly told her that the bill was covered and the receipts were left on the table. She then told him that she checked the table and there was no bill. He then kindly walked with her back to the table and there she saw the bill.

Could you believe it? She didn't even check the table, she just saw us leaving and assumed the worse!!!

When we were in the restaurant we were very respectful. We were not there long. We were not loud. There was NO REASON why this should have happened to us. We didn't even rush out the restaurant. We said goodbye to everyone as we slowly made our way out. So for this to happen to us was completely disrespectful and wrong.

I will NEVER come back to this restaurant and if you are a Black or Brown person I strongly urge you to think twice before...

I've eaten here a handful of times over the past ten or so years. It was always a decent contemporary American restaurant with a good selection of main dishes. Service was always good as well.

Tonight I went to The Bedford for the first time since 2019. Some things have changed and I don't think I like them. First, the restaurant now operates two kitchens, having added pizza to the menu. Second, service seemed confusing and hectic.

I visited with my father, who chose a personal pizza as his main dish, while I ordered a chicken dish. We were first visited by one member of the waitstaff who took our drink order. A few minutes later a different staff member came by and said "I'll be right with you". You'd think this confusion would clear itself up with a "I got that table" conversation in the back room, but we continued to be served by two for the rest of the evening. It was just plain messy as one person would take a beer order and the other would stop by a minute later and ask "would you like another beer?".

My main complaint, however, is that our food was not served remotely at the same time. Even at a third-rate diner everyone in your party generally eats concurrently. My father received his pizza about 20 minutes before I received my chicken. I watched him eat and then he watched me eat. Awkward. When I inquired about this I was told it was due to the food coming from two different kitchens. But that's easy to resolve by doing one of the following:

1. At a bare minimum tell the customers when ordering: "I noticed you ordered a pizza and you ordered not-pizza, so, just to let you know they'll arrive at different times".
2. Keep the pizza warm until the chicken is done
3. Don't start the pizza until well after the chicken prep has started.

Anyway. It was messy. The food was decent although the pizza was a bit soggy (despite being instantly delivered)! The atmosphere...