XIX (Nineteen) Restaurant — Restaurant in Philadelphia

My boyfriend and I enjoy going to new restaurants in the city. We look forward to restaurant week where we can try upscale restaurants and determine our favorites so when we are having special date nights or celebratory dinners, we know which places we enjoy! After reading some reviews, we decided that we would try XIX and I'm sorry to say, we will never be going back. The food was fine, but the service was absolutely terrible. Our server didn't make it to our table for about 15 minutes after we were seated. In fact the hostess had to come back and offer us water while we waited. This is important to note because the restaurant wasn't crowded. When the server finally made it to our table, she asked us immediately if we were ready to order, it felt very rushed and there was no description of the menu or even a welcome for it being our first time there. So we gave each other a look, and quickly made our selections.

One of the things we also look forward to when we go to dinner is trying signature cocktails from each restaurant we visit. We had to ASK for a drink menu, because our server never took our drink order. 20 minutes later, once our entrees were served she came back telling us the bar was backed up and we couldn't get our cocktails. This was upsetting mostly because people around us were all getting cocktails, so I'm not sure why we couldn't. As we we were looking around frustrated that we didn't get the drinks we wanted... we also noticed everyone else had bread! We asked our server if we were supposed to get bread, because we never did. Her response... "only if you ask for it". We heard the lovely waiter behind us tell his table, "I'll bring out some bread while you look over the menu". This was absurd! We were in the middle of dessert, we were not going to ask for bread now. An apology for forgetting may have been nice, but no, we were supposed to know to ask for bread?

At the end of the day, it wasn't the food, or the wine that we settled for that made this experience disappointing. It was the service. There are so many wonderful places in Philly, that are happy to have your business, restaurant week or not and this is not one of them. I have no interest at all in going back, and wanted to share our experience in hopes that it might sway another couple who likes going out and trying new places, not to waste...

I don't know what the hype is for this place because I was not impressed.

First off, I had my 50th birthday dinner party here. Although they're supposed to have awesome decor and breathtaking views, I never saw it. We were tucked in the private room with no view of anything. The room we were in was nice but I felt like I was in a basement. I was told that they don't seat people in the main dining room on Sunday so we were stuck in the private room. We weren't allowed to use the bathroom on the floor because it was reserved for a large party. So we had to go to another floor to use the bathroom. So no quick run to use the potty either.

They do have an aux connection in the private room if you want to connect your phone for music. Luckily I had an android phone because iphone doesn't have the aux connection and their system doesn't have Bluetooth. Everyone in my party had iphone but me.

The service here left everything to be desired. The waiter would disappear for extended periods of time and we had to constantly ask other staff to find him. I swear it was 40 minutes before we placed an order, never offered a 2nd round of drinks, they took silverware after the salad, then did not bring clean utensils for eating dinner. Off to search for utensils since he was not to be found. We brought wine but he never brought a cork screw to open it. Just lame.

The food for Dinner was sub-par. Strip Steak cut into 2 small pieces which lacked seasoning and served with slimy inedible vegetables, salmon with a horrible bitter salad, and even the house salad was dreadful. Someone did say the crab cake was amazing.

Luckily gratuity is built in to the check because I would not have left much of a tip. The guests at my dinner made my 50th memorable, however I could have had better food and service at a local steak house.

To make it worse, I left hungry and went to wawa for a snack afterwards. What a waste of $2000! I would not return here. Save your money and...

Absolutely HORRIFIC experience. Thanksgiving at XIX Nineteen was a total disaster. Reservations were being seated 45-60 minutes late. As it is, this place can seat hundreds of guests at a time and tonight, on Thanksgiving, it was jam-packed. So for a full house buffet, on a major Holiday that happens on the same date every year, management only puts out just SIX chafing dishes, which couldn't be refilled fast enough. Guests were waiting, forever, just for enough food to be put out for their entire group to (almost) eat together. The waitstaff, bus boys, etc. were not in uniform, all wearing their own suits, which was weird; you couldn't tell them from the guests.

This is supposed to be a top notch establishment and instead it was totally Kiddie City. Elegant? Yes. Sophisticated-looking? Okay. Prepared? Absolutely not. While the little bit of food we got was in fact good, it wasn't worth the $68-ish each of us paid and after watching this comedy of errors all night, I would highly encourage any large group looking to book at XIX to look elsewhere. Clearly at this time this establishment cannot handle large volumes or plan in advance. Very...