Harper's Garden — Restaurant in Philadelphia

I hosted an engagement dinner for 20 people here- and would absolutely not recommend this restaurant for any private events.

To start, after the initial contact was made with the event planner, Taylor, it was worse than pulling teeth to get responses and actually finalize plans and details. It took days, sometimes weeks, to get responses, and often the responses were incomplete. A few times we tried to plan a call and two or three of those times, Taylor either forgot to call or just chose not to and I did not get an email offering a new call until a couple days later.

We finally crystallized the plans, signed the event contract and got ready for the event. On the day of the dinner, NO ONE from the events team, Taylor or anyone else, actually met us at the restaurant. The event was scheduled (per our many emails and the contract) for 5:30 pm - at 5:25 pm the hostesses told us the space would not be ready until 6 pm. We went upstairs at 5:45 pm at everything was still being set up. So, things did not get off to a good start.

Taylor and I discussed and agreed on a specific table arrangement - that was not done. There wasn't even enough space to organize the tables the way we discussed, so we were given incorrect information on that. There was not enough room for people to move around and talk like we'd wanted. The event space is semi-private and upstairs and was VERY hot. Everyone was sweating and uncomfortable for the entirety of our event.

There were two servers that helped with our event - they were both very rude, especially in the beginning of the event. Mind you, half the time no one was around to help us take drink orders and the appetizers we ordered for a cocktail hour were extremely slow to come out. I told one of the servers that after she made a round with each platter of hors d'oeuvres, she could leave the platter on the table to the side instead of carrying it back down the stairs, and instead she and the other server just started bringing up the platters and leaving them on the table for people to get themselves. There wasn't enough space for people to actually walk around and grab things from the table at the end, so my mom and dad ended up walking around with the platters, serving food. My mom in heels, my dad sweating in his suit. Absolutely ridiculous.

Multiple times I had to run up and down the stairs in my heels to go to the bar for drinks because no one was coming around to take drink orders. Eventually, everyone just started ordering 2 drinks at a time, which helped solve the problem, but running up and down the stairs when I wanted to be spending time with my family and hosting an event was ridiculous. Taylor and I also agreed ahead of time and had on the contract that the servers would take my nephew's order for a kid's meal while the rest of the food was served buffet style. All the buffet food came up, and I realized my nephew had no food, so again, I had to run downstairs and try to track down our server to get her to take the order. My nephew's food came in almost 45 min after everyone else was already eating.

To top it off, there was an additional 3% charge (after tax, 20% gratuity, and an alcohol tax) for using a credit card to pay for dinner, so we paid a great deal extra for what ended up being terrible service. FWIW the food was a mixed bag, but more good than bad.

At a normal dinner, certain things with service slide, but our bill came up to over $4,500. I reached out to the restaurant event planning team more than three months in advance to start planning and avoid a last minute crunch, and they made it as difficult as possible from start to finish. I had hope that everything would be okay with this event because I've had good experiences here before, so I ignored the writing on the wall with how difficult the process was to begin with. It was really disappointing to see how little the team cared about making the event good for us, and I was sad that it couldn't be the event we envisioned. I would not recommend having...

We were under the impression of relax garden atmosphere and thought it’s going to be nice place but we were very disappointed, due to many things. The General manager, Leo, treated us with a negative attitude from the moment he slumped himself over our table and proceeded to justify all the systemic errors we experienced that had nothing to do with us, yet as customers we had to listen to his brash, rude, attitude, relating to operating issues and lack of any customer service, in our opinion he is a burden to this place and should take some time to read “Setting the Table”, to learn the art of customer service. . We had to carry our food from one table to another ourselves..none of many free waiters walking aimlessly around wanted to help us, they even went so far as to refuse to help when we ask them. Utter confusion ensued as we carried our food to our new reserved seating with the servers own black round trays. We didn’t realize we came for a picnic where a tiny plate of overcooked salmon cost $24 and we are also expected to tip on top!!! You would think by then somebody would wake up and have some awareness of their working environment and the basic duties required when choosing the job of being a server/wait staff. To no avail though clearly we didn’t even have a server at the new table. The young girl directly behind us at a computer looked confused, dumbfounded and clearly had no critical thinking skills. Next thing a man (who does not introduce himself, no name, nothing) takes it upon himself to have no etiquette whatsoever as he drapes himself in our space to the point he is leaning on his elbows on our table, speaking AT us right over food that we were eating, with no concern for our hygiene. My friend has lung disease and auto immune disease. Is there any OSHA training done here? Especially with the General Manager which is a State requirement.

But I will say there were some helpful and other nice staff members Canna, (bartender) Nick and bar beck Jody and other manager Alise.

In general this place gives the vibe of a dive bar with no real appeal, no true idea of the intricacies of what CUSTOMER service entails, which should be a seamless experience where the experience alone makes you no you will return. Not cheep tacky plastic dishes and music where you’re reminded of clubbing in Chicago till 6am in 2007.

We thought that it’s going to be a quality restaurant experience with a garden vibe where we could relax and hear ourselves think Instead we experienced something no one ever should. Garden vibes? No? Tables you cannot even push together? Yes! Servers away with the fairies? Yes! Intimidating random man suddenly in your space? Definitely? Could go on….. cannot waste anymore...

I was super excited to celebrate my sisters and I birthday together. We heard a lot of good things about Harper’s Garden so we decided on taking our parents, my fiancé, and our best friend there. Probably the most embarrassing moment ever when your parents have to ask you who in the world would recommend this place to you. Before I completely go off and bash this place.. I would like to address why I gave it two stars instead of one. The outdoor seating is adorable and their drinks and food are decent. However, it does not accommodate for the service we received. Our waitress was incredibly rude and not pleasant. For starters we had six people at our table. She consistently continued to only bring table wear and waters for five people. Ok not a problem, we just asked for an extra. Not only that our silverwear was just thrown at us and our waitress dismissed herself while she was chatting up another table we knew. All okay and I could ignore it. When our appetizers came around so did the bread which typically comes before the starters. For six people there were four pieces of bread. On top of all this it begins to drizzle. There’s no roof so before it starts to rain hard we are about to ask to move down to the tables with umbrellas. Our waitress comes to the table throws the check on the table and continues to say we have to pay for it now using the QR code all before we even got our entrées. She repeated this several times. I speak English and I’m not slow nor have I had too much to drink so I can comprehend things and don’t need them to be repeated to me as if I don’t understand. It was beyond rude the way she was reacting to the situation. We asked to move to the other table and she told us to take our drinks and go. We even took our silverware down because we knew she wouldn’t be around to give us a new set and good thing we did. It’s raining and the food comes out we eat and before we are close to finishing she shows up. Asking for the check and if we used the QR code. I have never been this embarrassed I would never recommend this place. We go out all the time and even if the place isn’t that good the services always makes up for it. Next time I’ll know to spend my...