Pine Grove Inn — Restaurant in Town of Brookhaven

I will try to keep this as short as possible: I am a previous customer of the Pine Grove Inn but it seems that my other two catering orders were under the previous owner. (which obviously I thought they were great since I catered two funerals for family members) In Aug I called to place an order for another funeral sadly. We ordered full trays of the following items for a total of $1700 with tax and delivery: Sauerbraten Weinersnitchel potato dumplings red cabbage penne alla vodka salad corn muffins/cranberry muffins

I grossly overpaid for the food but that is my fault for agreeing to the price since previous years for the other catering which I ordered the same food was much less. But my family likes German food and I previously ordered German for my mother and my grandfather and now it was time for my grandmother so this was the only place I know of to get German food and like I said previous experiences have been great.

None of this food tasted like German food. Everyone was so looking forward to the meal. Everyone was very disappointed.

I called the Pine Grove to let them know that the Sauerbraten was so bad that we were going to throw away the left overs. It was very dry and tough, there was no gravy with it and it was not sour at all.

The Penne Alla Vodka was just a big tray of noodles and red sauce. It was also dry. It did not taste anything at all like penne alla vodka. I had to add a jar of alla vodka sauce to the left overs in order to be able to enjoy this $200 tray of penne alla vodka.

The cabbage did not have any tang to it. No sourer flavor at all. Just tasted like red cabbage.

As you can see from the math above. We paid $1700 for 7 trays of food (3 of them being salad, muffins, and cabbage) so this is an average of $242 per tray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They were also a half hour late. This catering was for a funeral so I had guest standing in my house, some I did not know very well, waiting to eat and it was very uncomfortable. They had to come in and set up while I had a house full of people rather than empty house at the agreed upon delivery time.

All of the food was eaten and gone except for a half tray of terrible sauerbraten and practically a full tray of penne alla vodka and a full tray of cabbage.

I called to complain and ended up speaking to the owner Mike. He was not agreeable and never called me back.

This is what I offered to them:

Give me two new full trays of really great sauerbraten and penne alla vodka

Or:

Give me $400 gift card to the restaurant so I could bring some people down to hopefully eat some really great food and then they will hopefully now feel the desire to come back or order from them for a catering job. (mind you $400 for a group of people (6) to eat there would end up with a bill for more than $400 with food and drinks so money would be made at that time) and a chance to save face with the same people that thought their food was terrible.

THE OWNER MIKE REFUSED BOTH OPTIONS OR ANY REFUND no refund of any kind no new dishes no gift card

The manager Prince was attempting to make things right and was very nice for the most part but this was out of his hands for the final say. Prince did issue me a gift card for $100 but I do not feel this is fair considering how much I paid for the food and the quality of the food. PS they get their meat from Restaurant Depot which might have explained the quality of the Sauerbraten. The weinersnitchel was also dry with no sauce but more edible than the saurebraten so we did not have any of that left so I did not complain about it.

But the bottom line is the new owners don't know how to cook German food and he does not care about his reputation. I was very fair in what I was willing to accept to make this experience right and he refused all options. I was not going to leave a review online if he had given my any one of the three options I gave him so he left me no choice but to share...

My wife and I decided to have a nice dinner out at the Pine Grove Inn on Saturday, August 9, 2025. We haven’t been there in years and getting a sit-down dinner on Long Island on a Saturday night can often be a long wait. The Pine Grove had no wait and the reviews were good. When we arrived, my first concern was that the place was empty. There was one table of 4 women. Not one other patron. And this is Saturday at 6:30 PM. The place looked surprisingly run down, inside and out. We decided to go in anyway and met with friendly staff. The menu had a pine Grove inn salad ($16) and a house salad ($12). When asked what the difference was, the young waiter didn’t know (another concern). We ordered stuffed clams for an appetizer. My wife’s entrée was grilled salmon with a house salad with balsamic vinaigrette. I had the beef stroganoff with a house salad with Italian dressing. I ordered the one German beer that has on tap. The beer was good. The rest of the meal was a disaster. My salad was practically swimming in Italian dressing. My wife’s salad had 2 small containers of balsamic vinegar on the side. No oil. She changed it to Italian (I could have poured half of mine on hers but elected no to do that). The salmon was overcooked on a bed of tasteless rice. The asparagus was the one redeeming part of her dinner. My beef stroganoff consisted of slimy noodles with a relatively small number of small chunks of rubbery beef with brown gravy with very little favor. If it wasn’t for the fact that the staff were very friendly, we probably would have walked out by now. (Another group of 4 women came in. Thay sat at their table for 2 minutes then quietly walked out. Maybe they saw our meals). Conclusion: the meals were so bad, I wondered if someone was playing a joke on us. It was no joke. That’s $116.45 + tip – (yes, I gave them a tip almost out of pity) I’ll never get back. And we’ll...

This was our second time here. The first time, we walked in and we surprised the staff, as they were setting up for a private event, although the sign on the door said they were open. We were seated and served, none the less. Although the food/service was a bit questionable, we chocked it up to the private event, and figured they would serve us anyways since we were already ther. Fast forward to today. I called a day ahead to make sure they were open today. When we arrived, at 5pm on a sunday, the parkinv lot was empty. We walked in, there were 2 or 3 people at the bar, and the rest of the restaurant was empty. The waiter let us pick where we wanted to sit. While taking our orders, the waiter did not speak english almost at all, and needed us to point to the dish on the menu so he could copy it on to his pad. The Onion Soup was Delicious. My dish, Weiner Schnitzel was delicious as well, but the shrimp scampi my wife ordered appeared to be a pound of melted butter with no seasoning poured over spaghetti with some shrimp on top. The Beef Stroganoff my daughter ordered had an off taste to it, and the red cabbage was horrendous. My other daughter had the spaghetti and meatball from the kids menu, and said the meatball tasted wierd. And finally, my son was not happy with the chicken tenders. When i asked for the Check, our waiter was confused as to what i had asked for, so i restated that i wanted the bill.... he walked away, and got another staff member to come over with him, to find out what i asked for! Unfortunately, seeing as how this was our second attempt with this restaurant, with similar experiences both times, we will not...