The Wallace Lounge — Restaurant in New York

I want to preface this review by stating that the Wallace Lounge has only been open for ~10 days at the time of my writing of this review.

With that said, I (as an Upper West Side resident) was very excited to see a new upscale piano lounge opening on the UWS. I'm a huge fan of cocktail bars of all types and I was hoping that this could end up being a fun new local place. Unfortunately, I would categorize their opening as "rocky at best".

Ambiance: Arguably one of the areas where Wallace performed best. The ambiance was quite nice (as can be seen in the pictures), dark wood accented with gold as one might generally expect from an upscale piano lounge. The pianoist and singer were talented and set a relaxed tone for the entire experience.

Service: While everyone was perfectly kind, it was felt obvious that the place was new. At a few points, servers forgot which liquors were offered by the bar as well as the price of various liquors. If you only offer ~5 signature cocktails on the menu, I expect you to be able to offer any and all classic cocktails. Additionally, I expect a cocktail/libations-focused piano lounge to offer a wider variety of spirits that what is available here.

Drinks/Food: We all only got 1 drink each and didn't end up ordering food so I can't speak to the food. I can say that they offered free rice chips which were absolutely drowned in oil (I felt bloated after eating only 1). I got the Martinez signature cocktail and my wife got a dirty martini. The upside here is that both drinks were excellently made and well-balanced. The dirty martini was exactly what my wife wanted and the Martinez was a fun cherry-tinged twist on a classic gin martini.

Pricing: The food is certainly a bit on the pricier side. In terms of drinks, ~$20 for what was effectively a modified gin martini is a little bit ridiculous. That's normally what I would expect to pay for a very interesting and unique craft cocktail. However, if you're the only upscale piano lounge in the area, I guess you can get away with charging those prices.

Overall, it was an okay experience, as evidenced by my 3-star review. It certainly wasn't bad enough to warrant a 2-star experience (especially considering how new the place is) but is not anywhere near impressive enough to warrant a 4-star experience. As a starting point, I'd recommend building out the spirit selection and craft cocktail selection, espcially if they want to be competitive with the vibrant cocktail scene...

Pretty odd experience that left a sour taste.

We were seated in two comfortable lounge chairs facing the piano, however had a pillar in the middle of the room blocking 90% of the view. No big deal, but a bit odd to face a pillar.

We ordered drinks (which were great) and some food. The charcuterie board was good, though kind of small and piled all over itself and then ordered some wagyu sliders. Those were delivered and had an extra plate of what I thought were some arancini, potentially as part of the sliders or as a nice gesture from the kitchen.

After having one, the manager/host came over and in a "gotcha" tone says "you knew you didn't order the truffle croquettes right?" as if to imply I was trying to pull one over on the place because they mis-delivered a dish. I just kind of apologized and said "oh put it on my tab I guess".

Look dude, I don't know your menu, I don't know whether you normally have a simple snack from the kitchen or even whether your sliders come with this on the side. Your croquettes with some truffle oil were fine and not worth the $18 you charged me. You've saved your place $4 in ingredients and lost a local who would come back a few times a year.

For a place trying to be classy, the accusatory tone and charging me for your mistake is just tacky. The drinks were great, the food was pretty good, the venue was nice (though nicer without a huge column), and even the service was excellent, but the host/manager acting like I was trying to steal food from them when they mis-deliver a plate to my table? I'm good. I'll head to the owl's tail nearby for...

We went to go listen to some live music. It was fine / nice, but there are much better places to go if you'd like to go to a lounge for a good drink and some jazz. The lounge is right next to the front door so there's a constant stream of guests going in and out. It detracts from the ambiance. The lounge is split up into two sections with a half wall down the middle lengthwise, a bar section and a lounge section. But the half wall makes it so that you can easily hear all of the noise coming from the bar area, but it's also high enough to obscure the view of the musicians from some areas in the lounge. Our server was kind of rude, but he may have been having a bad day. When I asked for the Wallace Martini dirty, he said there was no modifying the cocktails. My partner thought to ask, is it okay if she just has a dirty martini? Then the server said yeah. I just thought that was a bit of a weird interaction. We also asked for water with our cocktails + he forgot to bring it and then when we reminded him (gently!), he seemed annoyed. There were very few vegetarian options on the lounge menu, and what we had was fine but nothing special. For us, this was a bit of a miss and we won't be going back, but if I were staying in the hotel, I would...