The Commerce Inn — Restaurant in New York

The Commerce Inn is a pretty cool looking spot. The drinks were good and reasonably priced for the area. Unfortunately, the food was overpriced and poorly made. The service was lackluster. We waited 20 minutes after our drinks were ordered for our waiter to ask us what we wanted to eat. And the restaurant was basically empty (we went at 6pm on a Saturday).

Go for a drink, but not for a meal. The food appears to all be pre-made and wildly overpriced. The portions are some of the smallest I’ve ever seen. We ordered 6 appetizers and 4 mains and left hungry. Some of the food was barely edible (see below). Waiters would come over and consciously bring the wrong food to the wrong person at our table, and kept forgetting who was drinking sparkling or still. Again, the place was basically empty. So this just means they didn’t bother paying attention or communicating with each other. For over $100 a person in an empty restaurant, that’s kind of nuts. I’d only be ok with that if the food was out of this world.

We ordered a lot of the specials and only a few main menu items. Maybe this was where we went wrong, but basically every item on the daily specials list tasted off or was covered in oil (fried tomatoes, cod cakes, tomato pie, fluke, lobster).

Drinks — pretty decent. $18 for a cocktail in WV is reasonable. They were strong and tasted good. Would come back here for ONLY the drinks.

Oysters — the waiter said they were from Massachusetts. Generally the ones I’ve had from that region are large and fresh, but these were small and extremely briny. We didn’t finish them. Not the restaurant’s fault, so whatever. When we ordered them we asked for horseradish to be served, but they brought it AFTER we stopped eating them. We waited 5 min for the horseradish, nobody brought any. Then we ate. And then we stopped eating because the oysters were pretty rank. I gave our waiter a heads up, just as an FYI so he could improve future guest’s experiences, and they said “I mean what do you want me to do?”

Fried tomatoes — undercooked, hard, $17 for 4 slices of battered tomatoes. Basically just raw breaded room temperature tomato slices….. for $17

Tomato pie — decent, but also overpriced

Cod cakes — basically crab cakes. Tiny portions. They tasted alright. This might be the only semi-reasonably priced item on the menu.

Lobster — $59 (highway robbery) for a tiny 1 pound lobster, parts of it were overcooked, parts were undercooked. They basically just cut it in half, covered it in butter and breadcrumbs, and threw it on a plate.

Fluke — oily, over buttered, tiny. $27 for 2 thin strips of fish. Might as well have been an appetizer.

Bone marrow — a single bone with extremely oily marrow, topped with a ridiculous amount of mushrooms. Hard bread served under it. Aside from the overwhelming amount of oily mushrooms on top of the bone, the dish was tiny, even though it’s a “main”. This was a waste of money. You’d need to eat 3 of these before feeling satiated

We didn’t bother getting dessert.

The Bottom Line: I rarely write reviews, unless the place is extremely good or extremely bad. Unfortunately, for dinner, this place falls into the latter bucket. It’s a nice restaurant and a great place to get drinks, and it definitely has potential — but the food and service are a total nonstarter if you want to eat here. I would have been more open to the lackluster service we received had the place been packed. But like I said, it was basically empty.

My recommendation to the restaurant — retrain the servers and rethink the food. And rethink the prices. Either charge a lot of money for great food, or charge reasonable prices for mediocre food. I wouldn’t have written this review if it weren’t for the extremely high prices for tiny lackluster dishes at this restaurant. We spent $400 for 4 people and left hungry. At this price point you’d expect the food and service to be great. Especially in this location. If the food had been 50 bucks a pop, then fine. But basically everything tasted...

How a five buck mistake could ruin a perfectly good dinner. The pork chop and roast fish were terrific. The devil egg had no flavor. other than refrigerator, dry and under whelming at best. Table settings needed to have spoons as many of the dishes had delicious drippings that couldn't be eaten with a fork. Tried to get wait staffs attention, but they were either looking up, down, or the other way. No one ever came back to the table after plates were served! We had ordered the five dollar spoon bread which was oval shaped and served from a oval plate. It was brought to the table and the waitress cut the bread on the plate into what looked like six or eight pieces and placed two small pieces from the end on a plate and took the rest back to the kitchen. One slightly larger and one small. The larger, middle piece stayed on the oval plate. I assumed that she was going back for another bread plate. NO. That was the portion and no explanation. I noticed this same routine for a table of four. Same "show". Two end pieces on a plate and the rest back to the kitchen. That "chutzpah" of the bread ruined the entire experience. Why not just put the bread down on the table or make a smaller portion. It's not the charge for the bread, but if you are going to charge for bread then serve a portion of bread just as other restaurants do. Portale, for example, charges for bread, but puts the entirely fresh baked loaf on the table.

Lastly the website is not current with the menu. It shows an illegible menu. The one at the restaurant is totally different (readable) with many items different from the website menu. Nice website, but not current. Tough to plan ahead as to what you would order. What you want may not be!

Now for something that I would have never written about, but while I’m commenting, I will make note of one other annoyance. This is with this restaurant and some others. The bill is settled at the table with a “point of service” device. This is done with the server standing over you. Even if they are not looking and then the total is shown on the screen after paying. There is no discretion, This is a system that began in Europe and other parts of the the world where service and tips are included and expanded to the United States. A customer generally leaves more in cash.

So with the serving of bread and the lack of taste devil eggs, I think that this restaurant needs a bit of a retooling. I guess that is why we were able to get a table at 8 PM and noticed others...

Expensive but pretty good.

This is my friend's favorite restaurant so he chose what we ate.

He ordered the deviled eggs (4 for $7) and the fried oysters ($4 each). The deviled eggs were really good. I don't know what they put in them but it was so addicting. I ate it slowly because I wanted to savor the taste haha. The fried oysters were pretty good as well but expensive. The other fried oysters I've had just tasted like one fried hard mess but this one tasted fried on the outside and gooey on the inside. They were good but not memorable.

We waited 50 minutes for the whole roasted chicken. The chicken was pretty small and it's $30 per person even when you share it with another person. I wonder if I buy one would it still be $30 and I get the whole chicken.. hmm..

Anyways, the chicken was pretty bomb. The white parts tasted as succulent and fell off the bone as the dark meats (which I've never experienced!). My favorite part were the veggies/pureed potatoes on the bottom of the dish. They sucked in all the jus from the chicken and were SO GOOD. I wish Commerce would just make a dish out of these veggies.

I ate dinner an hour before so I felt satisfied after this dish but I think without that previous dinner I would still be hungry after eating here :/

Coat check is a plus! and it's tucked into the middle of greenwich village-- a very quiet...