Tiny's & The Bar Upstairs — Restaurant in New York

Horrible Christmas Day Experience - AVOID.

Having done considerable research for an alternative Christmas Dinner to our usual UK fare, we booked Tiny's months ago and were excited by the menu. We are complete foodies and reviews were good. We showed up at 2.50pm, a respectable 10 minutes prior to our reservation, and were 'welcomed' and shown to our table. The host was, at best, rude. There were lots of staff hovering in the bar area, they did not appear to be ready for service. A guy appeared a couple of minutes after seating, offering to explain the menu to us. By explain, I mean patronise, and tell us we had to choose an option for each course, except where there was no choice. Pretty standard menu logistics. We ordered drinks and our food. All diners (i counted a total of 19 of us in the back room) received an amouse bouche of Lobster Bisque which was delicious, a real treat. Then came the long wait while every other diner received their starter and we did not. We had both ordered the lobster tortellini. One of the servers noticed and informed the kitchen, which was obviously not a high priority as it was another considerable wait while the same server kept coming and checking if we had received the starter. He knew we hadn't had it as he had been stood at the serving hatch, almost next to our table, watching us wait. It eventually arrived but was not what we were expecting - two pieces of bland, stodgy tortellini and green puree. We ate it as we were famished by this point, having eaten breakfast at 7.30am. Other diners around us were now on their desserts while we waited for our main, despite many of them being seated after us. The mains arrived, my husband had the halibut and I the filet mignon. The halibut was fine, just fine, but the filet mignon and everything with it was cold. Completely stone cold. I think I had 3 bites and was done. I just wanted to get out of there and not waste more of our Christmas day. I left pretty much a full plate of food and it was cleared with no mention, no question whether everything was ok. We asked for the dessert to go, we were really quite upset that our Christmas meal was ruined. Our dessert arrived with the cheque. $200 for some soft drinks and an unpleasant meal. I was embarrassed I just went to pay. I am one of those people who apologises when others bump in to me so just wanted to do the British thing, pay and be cross about it with my husband afterwards. Still, no one had asked us about the food, wished us a Happy Christmas or had made eye contact. As I was about to pay my husband mentioned that no one had asked us for feedback and a whole plate of food was left. The hostess was nothing short of indifferent and her colleague didn't seem to understand, just saying ''oh ok, you want to speak to my manager?' My husband said yes and the manager spoke to us. Well, he didn't speak to us - he only looked at and wanted to speak to my husband. I explained my meal was cold and our starters had been forgotten about however he was more interested in asking my husband how his meal was. He asked if we would like to just pay for one prix fixe menu, which we eventually agreed to. We still ended up paying $120 for a terrible meal and even worse customer service. We were absolutely astounded at the lack of care, consideration and friendly service you expect from a culture where tipping is expected and relied upon. We have had better service in McDonalds. The team at Tiny's could not have cared less. When we returned to our hotel later on we dug in to the dessert. We would have had a more flavourful experience licking the bathroom floor. The dessert was advertised as Christmas cookies, sugar plum and sea salt chocolate truffles. You will find a better dessert being made by a 2 year old with play dough and cookie cutters. The textures are very similar too. If this is Tiny's Christmas Day offering, I would hate to be a customer on a regular day. We had to go and eat elsewhere barely 2 hours after leaving. A waste of time, effort, money and food. Avoid,...

We did a lot of research, and chose Tiny’s for our Christmas Day dinner. Our big mistake was expecting a good experience from them on a holiday.

We came in early for our Christmas dinner, and was told by the hostess that we had to wait in the upstairs bar...which had no room for anyone at all, since all the seats were taken by people who weren't even drinking, just waiting for tables they had booked that weren't ready. But she sent us up there anyway, in spite of the fact that there were two empty seats right by the entrance door that we could have had a cocktail at. Not sure if she was even aware of what was going on in her restaurant.... (isn’t that her job???).

So, after realizing that there was no space to have a cocktail upstairs, we went downstairs to see if we could sit at the empty seats by the door, and the hostess refused to let us sit there. She was about to let some people, who had come in after us sit there. After we confronted her about the fact that we had come in before them, and should be allowed to sit there, she said “I don't know what to do about this stuff” (isn't that her job??? to work with people??? and be in charge of making sure people are fairly taken care of???). Then, the other people who wanted to sit there harassed us, so we decided to leave. So we went to the Odeon, a neighbor restaurant, for a cocktail, to wait for our table. Before we left, we had to repeatedly ask the hostess if she even had our phone number, to let us know when our table was ready (also, isn't that her job??? too much work for her as well, to make sure we were taken care of). Already starting out as a bad experience, but we knew if we cancelled the reservation at that point, and went somewhere else (which we wanted to do because it was already a bad start to our evening), we would have been charged for the night anyway, so it was take abuse, and hope for the best.

We get seated, and then things just went from bad to worse. The food was average, and the entree we chose: the filet (or so they claimed, said it was filet, not sure because the quality of the meat was not great) was tough, cut into multiple pieces like a tip steak, and overcooked, almost inedible. At this point, we were told that one of our prix fixe meals would be comped, for the trouble we had gone through. Even after all these bad moments, things got worse instead of better: we then moved on to really inattentive service, to the point that we had to ask the hostess (after waiting 15 minutes for the anyone to even notice our attempts to get service), if someone could take our dinner plates away, so we could move on to dessert. The only high point of the evening was talking to our neighboring diners, lovely people, who had already warned us that the dessert was a waste of time.

After that, it still took forever to even get the mediocre dessert; at which point we were told that both meals would be comped, and we would only have to pay for the wine we ordered. Absolute proof on their part that we had an awful experience; this was not just an idea of us being difficult. But, truth be told, we would have been happy to pay twice the price, to have enjoyed the evening, instead of being so upset at how everything went. Not worth it to go out to eat when the whole event, service and food, is all so bad. We dine out a lot, total foodies, and we understand that things can be problematic at time: I waitressed for 12 years, so I get the business. But this was just bad food, bad service, and no one cared, just “comp the meal to buy them” idea. No one tried to talk with us about what we had gone through, except to say that they were understaffed.... Yet other people around us were being taken care of just fine. As we were leaving, we asked to talk to the manager, but of course that was a lot of trouble too, so we just gave up.

We have gone to this restaurant for years, but will never be back after this....

Cute little rustic place with some good food. There was like 5 people helping us so I have no idea who our server was but they were all very friendly. Good thing it wasn't too packed for Sunday brunch because the tables are quite close to each other. The food was a bit on the expensive side and their menu is very weak with descriptions. I didn't know that they were giving me a side for the main. And then I ordered another side and it was way too much of the exact same food... that I did not really like. I usually only drink fresh squeezed OJ however I couldn't tell if it was or not.

Loaded Egg Sandwich ($15)- 4/5 This was yummy. The bread was a little hard to cut and was messy when I tried to just pick it up and eat it. I was a fan of all the ingredients in this! However this comes with a side was tater tots, which I did not know and did not like.

Dulce De Leche Waffles ($15)- 4/5 This was quite loaded with fruits- berries and banana. Overall it was sweet because of the caramel and flambeed bananas. Probably a little too sweet for my liking especially in the morning (I'm more of a salty kinda person).

Tater Tots ($8)- 2/5 I was so excited about seeing tater tots on the menu but it made me so sad that it was the exact same thing as the side I got on my main which I was unaware that I was even getting. These were way too mushy and not your typical tater tots. They're filled with cheddar & chives which sounds exciting but I prefer the real stuff.

Orange Juice ($5)- For $5 I'm going to just assume it's fresh squeezed but I'm not too sure although but they did have a slice of orange to top it off. There's no ice but still pretty chill so I liked that. But it was so...