Meridiana

01/02/2007 Posted by harlembleu

Based on the great food and service ravings of my friend a group of us choose to spent our New Year's Eve $$$ at Meridiana - Italian restaurant. It's a shame and ironic that the recommending friend actually received the brunt of the insulting treatment. Our meal started out great ---- drinks, decent appetizers and really good foccacia bread (though we found the Spinach/mushroom dish a bit bland). The entrees were tasty . . . until my friend pulled this long blond hair from her pasta. Now, knowing just how queasy my stomach is, I forced myself to look elsewhere to calm my quickly churning stomach that could have disastrous imploding effect on the roomful of holiday diners. But that was not the worst. The server took the plate. After he and staff examined the offending matter "in our view", the manager came over and explained that it could not belong to any of the cook or wait staff because: - they all wear hats, and none have long hair and none have blond hair and . . . . In addition to the obvious implication, he said that we would be charged for a replacement dish. The manager’s tone was harsh and abrasive, even threatening. The owner, to his credit, did state that if any problems arise it is the restaurant’s policy to replace the meal at no charge. He even offered my friend a courtesy meal, because as he put it, one person’s mishap affects the whole party. BUT, this was after he, too offered insult by explained that the hair could not be their fault. In the end my friend did not receive a note/voucher/gift card of any kind so she could follow up on the offer of a courtesy meal. And after paying for uneaten food, our party left hungry, and disappointed. And if the ultimate judgement of a business is how it handles mistakes . . . This place gets a thumbs down.

Pros: The food was ok If you want to take a chance

Cons: but we dine out for service and atmosphere -- and the service is subpar

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful

12/27/2006 Posted by reasonableivy

i've lived this neighborhood for 4 years. whenever i passed by this restaurant, i wondered how good food would be. exterior was tempted to me,finally, i went there a few weeks ago with my boyfriend. sausage was too much overburned. it was hard to chew. side dishes were also tasteless. i ordered salmon pasta.i could see salmon, but i felt even excessively minced salmon was just like a garnish. because of shortage of sauce, pasta was too thick. worse than that was pasta itself was too salty. anyway, leaving almost food, we decided to leave. we asked the bill. weird thing was, tip was already charged on our bill. i have known what tip is. usually, if there are more than 6-8people(customers), tip is charged on bill. for 5 years living in NYC, it was the first time to me like that kind of tip charge. we could understand if they thought we were like tourists, then they charged tip like that. thing was, we just wondered,so we called a manager and asked about that. the most terrible part of our experience was attitude of the manager. he told us they ALWAYS charged tip like that except for regular customer. on that part, i asked him what regular customer was and he answered regular customer ALWAYS gave a tip over 20%. i've never heard about that regular customer things before. doing that, he told us if we wanted to get rid of THAT TIP, he would do that. Of course we wanted it. just i wondered why the waiter did that and i tried to ask of him,but even he didn't want to hear it. that waiter and the manager's behavior was tremendously arrogant. to make a long story short, first, terrible taste, second, excessively rude attitude. that's it. trust me.

Cons: food, service