Suspenders Restaurant & Pub — Restaurant in Union

Now this is a sad story that has a lot to do with poor service or better yet the lack of attention from the wait staff. 20 plus years ago my wife and I first attended this establishment, it was a one time visit hence my experience then was less than pleasant. Back then this restaurant was outdated packed with a rowdy crowd of patrons, without a doubt not a spot for a Friday/Saturday date night. 20 plus years later, my wife and I wanting to stay local for a couple of beers opted to see if things had changed here. We were pleasantly surprised to see the modern and updated changes. Sad to say, service is a major key factor for me and unfortunately this quaint local spot lacks in that attention. The owner seems to be rather young and pleasant and is striving to make this spot the locals favorite. Since this venue has been here for decades it does have it's relentless locals and college crowd. I absolutely love the decor of this establishment but my favorite I must add has to be the amount of variety he has in specialized craft beer, truly impressive. Your prices for the quality is unbeatable. I honestly recommend a flight of beer as there is so much to choose from. Your menu is good and the food does look enticing. The prices for the food is phenomenal, I am dying to eventually make this my favorite spot in Elizabeth to come eat and hang out at. The owner looks very approachable and his staff does tend to like him as well his local old timers. Your female bartenders need to establish the true meaning of friendly and welcoming services as the first impression that I got was: Oh no, not another set a people on a Friday night! At least that was our first impression. The hostess was busy all around the restaurant doing this and that to help out the wait staff that we had to wait at least 2-3 minutes for her attention. I actually grabbed a menu to read in advance while I waited to be sat. Not blaming the hostess for the typical too busy on my phone situation as that wasn't the case. She was indeed assisting the wait staff with the patrons. Our waitress was probably the longest employee there as she said so herself. That night was her last night there as she was heading to be a full time nursing student. Wish her the very best. While she was pleasant, she was just too busy to attend to our needs. The attention sad to say we received from the food runners and bussers, which by the way were truly pleasant. Figuring we had gone there on a rather busy Friday night in turn we returned early next Saturday afternoon in hopes of better service, needless to say we were hit with the same lack of attention if not worse and it wasn't even as busy as Friday night. I firmly believe that because you don't have much tables in essence employ less wait staff for budget reasons and likewise for wait staff tipping purposes. But in reality if you hire more waiters your service level will increase to the liking of your patrons hence more tips for your staff and more revenue for you. When a patron has to wait for something as simple as silverware or condiments for the plates or even far worse for refills. You know that you have a hiring problem. At no given point on either of my visits did the wait staff have time to see if our food met our expectations and I will inform you that unfortunately my meal was not served to my expectations as I am a medium rare kind of guy and after having fully explained myself to your waitress, I received my meal well done and to my misfortune the waitress was too busy to realize the matter. My perception was that of being rushed as there was yet another table to be waited on. Needles to say, I managed to get my own silverware as we didn't even get silverware with our order. Sadly to say, I came to try more of your drafts but was so rushed that was lucky to have even got one beer. Unfortunately for us, unless you hire more waiters it may only go as far as three visits if so it may be. And that's sad to say because you have a pretty good thing...

I am putting this first so no one misses it—a 20% tip is already added into your final cost. The receipt you sign also has a space to add a tip. DO NOT DOUBLE TIP!!! We went to Suspenders because our other local, Tiffs, recently closed. The food was fine—nothing spectacular. Wasn’t bad, wasn’t anything to brag about. The cocktails were great. Sadly, it just didn’t hold a candle to the food or ambience of Tiffs. It was more expensive for a more basic menu. We had the smash burgers which were overpriced. The Philly cheesesteak was good. The chicken tacos tasted like they had mayo on them rather than Asiago. We also had wings and fries. The fries were the best part of the meals.

The service was sub-par. This was the absolute worst part of our experience. Our waiter never gave us his name. He literally stood there without a word waiting to take our order. After an awkward minute or two, I asked him to please give us more time as we weren’t ready to order. He couldn’t speak to recommendations on the menu—just described the differences which we could obviously see in the descriptions. In addition, it was ages before we’d see him and almost every time had to wave him over. The kid delivering the meals was more helpful than the waiter and was a true hustler. It just seemed that this man wanted to be anywhere else but there. The fact that a 20% tip was already added to our bill was so frustrating. We do not undertip and often OVER tip, but this waiter seriously left a lot to be desired and wasn’t worthy of 20% of an...

Clean place, decent food, and good service. Very quaint space with a very good aesthetic. My only qualm when it comes to this place is that I had a bad experience. I'm sure I'm an outlier, as this place has been here probably longer than I've been alive.

I came here with a few coworkers; we were looking for a nice new place to call home when it came to hosting a bigger happy hour (we were on the lookout for a new place). We sat down, ordered a few rounds, and had dinner at the bar. The bartender switched out, and we remained eating our meals and drinking our beers. When we finished, we just hung around the bar talking and shooting the poop, until the bartender came to us and told us that "there are other people waiting to sit at the bar."

I get it, we didn't have any drinks in front of us and we were probably talking without any drinks in our hands for a good 30 min, but I like to think that if I've dropped a $30 check for dinner and a few rounds, that warrants me to stick around. However, we were eventually pushed out of the bar and then went home.

Good place for dinner, but looks like I'll have to find a new place...