WISE Bar & Grill — Restaurant in New York

Went there for Valentine’s Day yesterday. There are pros and cons to the place. I’ll start with the cons… The sign outside need to be better, especially at night time. Need some kind of illumination or something. We literally drove pass the place looking for it because we couldn’t see the sign. Plus the building is black. Had to make a U-turn and come back around before we saw it. It’s literally between a car wash and a laundry. I personally thought the building was part of the car wash🤷🏽‍♀️. Now before I go into the story more, I found this place on TikTok. I saw 3 people post about it and decided to give it a try. I liked the look and it seemed like a good place to dine and take pictures. So I called them 2/8 to find out if I needed a reservation for Valentine’s Day because their website wasn’t allowing me to do it. The person I spoke to advised me that no reservation was needed, they operate on a first come first serve basis. So it was set to go there. I called yesterday (2/14) at 2:59PM again before we went to double check that nothing changed. I spoke to a lady who told me the same thing. No reservation, first come first served before 10, 10:30. I said no problem, we’ll be there way before that. Now fast forward…when we arrived at the restaurant, the lady at the front asked if we had reservations. I told her no, I would like a table for two. She took about a minute or two tapping away at the tables on her tablet. While she did this, I looked around from the entrance. There was maybe 7 or 8 tables occupied. Everything else was empty. When she was done, all she said was go to the bar. Ummm…okay… So we went to the bar and stood there for a few minutes. Workers walked up and down passed us. After a while my boyfriend asked why did she say come over here? I said I don’t know, I thought we would be seated from here. He went back to the front to inquire about what was going on. He came back and said the lady told him all the tables are reserved and open seating don’t start till 10:30. HUH!!?? So I went to find the lady and she told me the same, all the tables are booked and how they are booked out for the night and we would have to wait till 10:30 for open seating. If we would have gotten there before 6 we could have gotten seated for brunch. I told her I spoke to someone twice, even up to earlier THE SAME DAY, and they both told me I didn’t need a reservation. So we went back and forth about this for a bit. Finally a guy stepped in and told her let us sit over by the stage. I don’t know if he was a manager but he clearly seemed like he was in a higher position that her. She said okay and walked us over to the table and told us we would only have a limit of 2 hours. I said that’s fine. The whole beginning was unsettling and had me questioning if other issues were at play after I looked around but I left it alone. The rest of the evening was fine however. The drinks were good and the food was tasty. The pink flamingo I think it’s called is really good. It’s one of their signature drinks. Calamari was nice and seasoned. Points for the food and drinks. I made a to go order for my mother of the same thing my boyfriend had which was grilled chicken, potatoes and salad. Got home and she got grilled chicken with French fries! Ummm…not what I ordered and paid for. Overall this...

We went To Wise bar and grill a week after it’s opening. It's like Williamsburg , or Manhattan place.We liked it. The ambience is great, it has really nice bar and interior decor is great. We ordered some food, it tasted good, but the portions were super tiny. And it is very pricey. So we decided to do a birthday party there, if they provide good banquet menu. So we definitely asked for banquet menu and asked if there would be enough food for almost 20 people. They assured that there would be more than enough food, there would be a lot of food. Let me tell you for the price $120 per person, I expect to have a lot of food. So the day of the party comes. They served with appetizers. So very smart move- they had quite a number of salads, but more expensive salads portions were really tiny and those good salads were gone in seconds , not even everyone had a chance to try them, not even saying that someone could have eaten enough of them. and besides there were just 2 plates of better salads, whereas the boring regular salad portions were much bigger and there were 3 plates of each voting salad, same with pickles. Nobody even ate pickles. Then the was herring with what you call potatoes, which in fact was quite tasty , but on each end of table there was a really tiny plate with potatoes at the very bottom. The worst had to come yet!!! So I kept asking for main dishes , cause everyone was super hungry and there was no food to eat, except for boring salads with leaves. The waiter kept telling that it was coming. LISTEN IT WAS COMING FOR 2,5 hours!!!! Hello!!! What is wrong with kitchen??? 2,5 hours they were cooking salmon??? It takes 15 minutes to make it. So finally the fish came, the slices were tiny and they didn't even have enough slices for all the guests, so the waiter had to go back to the kitchen to get another piece. Besides the tiny slice of fish they serve 2 pieces of vareniky to each person . I guess they were watching our diet So then we sat for another hour until we finally got meat . For that hour I kept asking for meat too. The meat was nice and at least enough for our party. But nobody cared at this point as we had barely anyone at the table already. By the way I felt bad for our waiter, as he was a really nice young gentleman. And was trying to calm us down. Then, the manager was trying to get us out of the place by showing our DJ to cut the music down. Very rude. So we paid tons of money for staying hungry and for horrible service.

I took just a few pictures of the...

I think if you’re gonna come you’re better off on a weekday, I think weekends are a little scattered for most restaurants but I went on Saturday night and was blown away by how disorienting the process of getting in the restaurant was, and that is no fault of anyone other than the hostess, who went out of her way to make life difficult for me and my group. It was almost comedic how rude the short hostess with a black bob is. She made us do a mandatory coat check $5 per coat and then lead us in the restaurant when there was no seating available (information she neglected to mention earlier) and walked away instead of just telling us there were no tables available. We asked what was happening and she waved us off and brought us back to the CENTER OF THE RESTAURANT TO STAND AND DO NOTHING multiple times without explaining. It was bizarre. Another waiter had to inform us there was no seating. When we asked hostess why she didn’t just tell us there was no seating before she made us do a MANDATORY $5 per coat coat check that I’m positive she made up on the spot because everyone had their coats, she rolled her eyes…? We would have waited but not after her attitude. Then the coat check man who literally remembered every coat we had without even seeing our tickets because we decided we were just gonna leave after that experience, tried telling us we’re not getting a refund for our coat checks even though we were in the restaurant for a total of 3 minutes. I normally would let 5 bucks slide but considering what I just went thru with the annoying hostess I decided I’m not letting these people have a single cent of my money. The manager was nice though, and me and my group got our money back in the end. Also they checked ID’s at the door but literal children were inside the restaurant which was confusing. Just overall a lot of chaotic energy, I’m not coming back. They need to fire that girl at the front, her attitude lost them out on a big group that was ready to celebrate a birthday with dozens of overpriced shots....