Sunday, February 24, 2008

Agozar: Good food, spotty service

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Agozar! insists on including the '!' after its name. Apparently they want patrons to be exclamatory when they take the name. Little do they know that patrons also have to do it to get any kind of service to their table. Admittedly, it is hard to find a place at any decent Manhattan restaurant for a large group of people (15 people that evening). This Cuban place is rated highly for its group dining experience by Citysearch NYC. We had to wait till the staff joined our tables together even though the entire party arrived on time (a feat in itself). There was also no space between the table and the wall, so the people who got in first had no way of getting out till the whole row got up. We had to shuffle the tables around ourselves to provide a way to the stuck and in the process ended up spilling drinks, water and breaking 3 glasses in the process.


We were ordering from a fixed-price party menu ($30) which didn't have the ropa vieja, although it appeared on the a-la-carte menu, the cheaper fixed-price menu ($25- less choice) and the more expensive menu ($35- more choice). We had to ask for chips and salsa after we were sitting around for 15 minutes without service. Finally, after an hour, our waiter was finally ready to take our appetizer and entree orders. The appetizers were excellent, particularly the shrimp in garlic sauce, where the flavorful sauce was unlike what the foodie tasted anywhere. The mojito pitchers were potent and did their job well. The service was lacking again and we spent a lot of time between the appetizers and entrees. The entrees finally came out, almost all of them together. The foodie had the shrimp enchillados and the photographer took the skirt steak. The chicken rice was kind of dry and there was only a hint of chimichuri sauce on the steak. The vegetarian paella was good. We should mention that this is one of the few restaurants that actually gives vegetarians a choice better than cold salads.


A sign of good service is when you hardly notice the service at all. It was certainly not the case at our table at Agozar. We had to ask for silverware and for our glasses to be re-filled with water. The waiter seemed to have a high level of complacence, probably due to the fact that his 20% gratuity would be added to the bill regardless of what he did/ didn't do. The place is friendly, but one expects much better service from a place where you spend $57 per person.


We recommend the food at Agozar but encourage you to look at other places for big groups.


Food: 8/10

Service: 5/10

Ambience: 7/10


Agozar! 324 Bowery, New York City 10012

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like your blog a lot. It is written more like what real people feel. I have a suggestion. You seem to only review expensive places. Why not also review more affordable places? Like those which are $10-$15 per head?

bluelaser said...

Thanks for your nice comment.

We will certainly make sure to review most of the places we go to (we eat out a lot, mostly in $10-15 places).

You might be interested in our review of Tangra Masala. Please keep checking back.