Red Hat on the River — Restaurant in Town of Greenburgh

Three Stars ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️

Here’s why:

First, the most important thing, the food! Kudos to the chef! We had the crab cake, the chicken and the scallops. Everything was on point, balanced and delicious!

Second, the atmosphere. Absolutely beautiful with the view of the sunset on the Hudson. Not too noisy and really nice.

Now, the bad. In terms of cocktails. Not good. Ordered a Lavender Lane, not good, not good at all. So I had to return it, that got ugly, but I’ll get into that later. I decided it to replace it with the restaurant’s version of the Aperol Sprits. Not really good, just a mere meh…

I believe that the bartenders could have an improvement by going back to the basics. Just had to see how they shook their drinks to realize their lack of essential knowledge. They were just mixing them with ice, instead of using the right technique to actually break the ice. And also, the lack of balance on the drinks. Really one was bad and the other was bland.

Lastly, the ugly. The service started normal. The restaurant was a little busy so we could understand a little delay, and that we got, at the beginning. We got our drinks after a while, and to be fair, the beer and the wine were good. But my cocktails were definitely not. So when I returned the cocktail, the Lavender Lane, we all felt an attitude from the waiter when I ordered a different drink and he said “but do you like the Aperol Sprits”, implying that I didn’t know what I was ordering, or that I couldn’t distinguish a good drink from a bad one…

Anyways, we tried to don’t put too much attention to it, but then it seemed strange that when we got our drinks the waiter didn’t took our food order, even when the menus were put on the side of the table, and that took another unnecessary waiting time.

I have to say that the bussers and the food runners were checking on us constantly and were very polite and attentive as expected. So when my wife’s beer was almost finished, we told one of them to help us get a new one, then after five minutes another one, 10 minutes later the waiter (previously nowhere to be seen) finally showed up with an Aperol, not the beer. (Also, it looked totally different to the one I was initially given, to show the inconsistency at the bar). So five minutes later, we got our beer.

By the way, the busboy who poured it, left all the gas in the liquid, so additional training may be required on that end…

Anyways, we continued our evening, ordered another glass of wine, that one never came, so our appetite for dessert was gone, considering the waiting times.

I saw a lady working close by, whom turned out to be the manager at the moment, and asked her for the check (also, take in account that 10 mins earlier I asked my waiter for it). So gave her my card and she brought the check to sign. It turned out I was charged for THREE beers instead of two. So I had to have someone call her to fix it. By that point I had lost any hopes with the waiter. And so she did, she apologized and fixed it.

As I was calculating the tip, the waiter came and tried to apologize, but used an overfamiliar attitude, even called me “hermano” which is “bro” in Spanish which I consider completely inappropriate for fine dining.

So when I signed, I thank the manager, the bussers, and the chef. And due to the last interaction, I put to the waiter a reminder to don’t call customers “hermanos”. And finally, left.

I took my time to enjoy the beautiful sunset, and as I was leaving, the waiter approached me and with a fake apology, approached the last incident, he, full of sarcasm, said “I’m sorry for offending you by using the word hermano, I didn’t know that it was such a bad word”. I replied “I wish it was a sincere apology” and left.

So I believe that the inefficiency and lack of self awareness are things to work in the future. The service deserved zero stars‼️ but thanks to the quality of the food, and the positive attitude of the manager, host, food runners and bussers, I give the restaurant 4 stars, not for the experience that I had, but rather the...

My partner took me to Red Hat for dinner to celebrate my birthday on a hot and hazy Sunday evening. The location is gorgeous, and we chose to sit outside despite the heat because we wanted to be close to the river for the breeze. No complaints whatsoever about the atmosphere, it’s truly stunning. The food was pretty good. We shared the string bean salad and Nonna’s meatballs to start, both were excellent. I had the scallops for dinner and my partner had the burger with fries. The scallops were alright. They came recommended by the server but the dish overall was not as flavourful as I would have liked at that price point. The dish came with spinach and mashed potatoes, both also more bland than I would have hoped. My partner said his burger was very good.

I would have given a higher rating if we had better service. Unfortunately, our server Juan, was inattentive the entire duration of our experience at Red Hat. At first, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt because I can only imagine how difficult it is to serve outside in that heat, but we soon noticed our table was the only one being ignored. He would spend 10 minutes at the other tables, talking to the guests and giving recommendations, then walk past our table quickly without checking in or ask us over his shoulder in passing if we were good after he was already past our table. We had to ask three times for bread and butter and waited 20 minutes after we were nearly done appetizers before being casually asked if we were ready for dinner, assuming the food order hadn’t been sent to the kitchen yet, as we had to then wait for the food to come out. Still no bread and butter. We also had to ask for more water multiple times because again it wasn’t brought the first and second time we asked. This was especially frustrating as the evening was so hot, I would hope that the bare minimum would be to have water come quicker than not. A different server finally brought out the bread and butter and we had to ask if they could please bring us another water as we were still waiting. They brought it quickly while our server was at another table chatting with guests.

We finished our dinner and then as everything was wrapping up, it seemed our server remembered we were there and came to pour water and ask how we were. We asked for the cheque, which he brought immediately, funnily enough. No asking us if we wanted to see a dessert menu. We paid the bill and left, again without another word from Juan.

The rest of the staff were lovely and friendly. Next time we dine at Red Hat, we’ll hopefully have a...

Made reservations with a group of over 10 here for a special occasion. Positives: the place is beautiful, right by the water, a whole wall is windows so that’s beautiful. The food was very good I enjoyed it and the drinks. However, hopefully they can work on there skills in reserving for larger parties. The nice thing is they will print a custom menu for you. The person who reserves for the group had so many communications with me regarding something very simple which is just reserving a table for us. They require for you to choose items from the menu so you have a limited menu for a larger group which doesn’t seem right, other places do not do things that way, they’ll either do a pre fixe or allow you to order from there normal menu. I got so many phone calls and emails regarding the reservation I thought everything would be amazing in terms of service because of that. Unfortunately we were missing a place setting for a guest and chair, so when we pulled one up for her after she arrived from over two hours away and made the effort to come in bad weather, the manager came and announced to the table that we needed to keep a space open for the servers to serve the food. The waiters didn’t tell us anything, the manager did. And very sadly the person who was the guest of honor was in such an awkward way asked to move over. When the manager came I thought he was going to ask us how our food was and if we were having a good time. No, he just announced that we were sitting wrong basically for the servers, when I have countless emails indicating the amount of guests we would be and when I saw an extra guest was coming I called the restaurant an hour and a half ahead of time to let them know, as requested by the person booking our reservation. And yet we were missing a seat and tried to make our guest who was last not feel unwelcome by pulling up a seat for her ourselves. Also, when we arrived there was no other guests in the restaurant, we were the first ones so it wasn’t like they were busy and forgot to put an extra seat. The person who made our reservation also change the time of our reservation without asking me from 5:00 to 4:30 in case they had another reservation at 7. I thought that was a bit unprofessional and it was a big turn off for me, I had to tell my guests after the fact that our dinner reservation would be at 4:30 instead of 5. This place has potential. I can see how maybe for just two people or a much smaller group this would be a nice option for brunch or dinner. But for a larger group, even booking way ahead of time, I do...