Long Island dining nightmares: Tales from Newsday food critics

We’ve hit that spookiest of seasons, Halloween, when people look for — even pay for — situations designed to scare their pants off. When you’re a restaurant critic, however, the chills come all year long, and every dinner has the potential to morph into fright night. Steel yourself for some bone-chilling tales of hospitality gone bad.

ANDI BERLIN

I've worked in the service industry so I try to be very accommodating when I enter someone's restaurant. But every once in a while, I stumble upon something so dreadful, it sends shivers up my spine and makes me never want to eat food again. This includes ...

Restaurants that aren't open during stated business hours. This is my top recurring dining out nightmare. Long Island is a big place and often I'll find myself driving more than an hour for a meal. Then I pull up and there's a sign that reads, "Closed for private party," or even worse, a locked door. On one occasion, I drove for an hour and a half to get ramen at a specific restaurant, and the employees said they were just doing takeout for the rest of the night. The town was so crowded that there was nowhere to go, so I ate my ramen in a plastic cup in the dining room as workers stacked chairs on the tables. 

Splitting the check with a big group. I hate it when you're dining in a big group of loosely affiliated friends, and everyone starts passing the bill around, circling items and writing their names. My blood boils thinking about how our server will react when they see this utter, complete chaos. It's 2024 — get Venmo already.

The dreaded banquette table, aka the wall bench. You know the one — the long booth running along the wall with two-tops placed way too close together. This situation feels even worse to me than a communal table, because there's a semblance of privacy when in reality, you can hear everything the people next to you are saying.

Cash-only places. Especially when they don't even have an ATM in the back. I remember one fateful meal at a hamburger joint during a rainstorm. After finishing, the owner told me it was cash-only, but that he was closing up in half an hour. There was no ATM, so I was running down the street in the rain trying to find a Chase bank. And by the time I got back to the burger place with cash, he'd already taken off. So I had to drive back there the next day and personally hand him the cash.

ERICA MARCUS

If regular readers think I’m just going to go off on balsamic reduction and microgreens, I have to confess that, over the years, I’ve become too inured to them to consider them proper nightmares. Ditto water-repellent synthetic napkins, specials menus devoid of prices, loud music, ice-cold butter and restaurants still adding a credit card surcharge. There are greater horrors:

Bad stemware. The worst-case scenario is being forced to drink out of a Mason jar, as if I were a character in "Little House on the Prairie." And how, in 2024, am I still seeing those stumpy, thick-walled wineglasses whose concave bowls make drinking a challenge? Even more appalling: Seeing folks who ordered a full bottle of wine being served in elegant flutes while I, the chump who shelled out $17 on a $4 pour, am stuck with a squat goblet that looks like something out of "The Flintstones."

Menu misidentification. My first year at Newsday I ordered coq au vin at a well-known bistro and was served a pan-seared quarter chicken sauced with a red-wine reduction and planted with a big twig of rosemary. Nice enough, but where was the promised chicken braised in red wine with lardons of bacon, mushrooms and pearl onions? Later that same meal, an advertised tarte Tatin showed up but, instead of caramelized apples reposing on the burnished crust under which they’d been baked, I received a wan portion of phyllo dough topped with poached apples. I still shudder. Recently, Italian veal dishes have been keeping the nightmare alive: There was an unspeakable saltimbocca a few years back that had been drowned in brown sauce and topped with mozzarella, instead of being sautéed with prosciutto and sage. And I’ve lost track of the whole braised shanks that have been passed off as ossobuco when that dish translates to "bone with a hole" and must be made with crosscut slices to reveal the marrow.

Server theater. "Have you dined with us before," is the opening line and, if the answer is no, I am often instructed that the menu is composed of starters, main dishes and side dishes — which would be helpful if I’d never eaten in a restaurant. And if one more server tells my party of four that the kitchen’s small plates are "meant for sharing" I won’t be responsible for my actions.

MARIE ELENA MARTINEZ

Dining out is in my DNA, but some things just drive me up a wall: online menus without prices, frozen butter with bread, overdressed salads, soggy croutons, flat fountain soda, hot pepper "warnings" that don’t live up to the hype, being thrown out of restaurants after 90 minutes at spots with miserable time management. Other nightmares:

"Clip joint" restaurants. You know these spots when you see them all over social media: Trumped-up pricing, impossible reservations, long waits on arrival and lackluster food. My friend Craig calls these "clip joints." The modern version has a fake plant wall with cringeworthy neon pink signage. The drinks flow, the Instagram selfies commence, the room gets rowdy ... and two items have to be sent back to the kitchen because the server is busy with retakes of the bachelorette party three tables down. Check, please!

Weak pours. I know restaurants clear a good portion of their bottom line with alcohol. But if you’re going to charge me upward of $18 for an adult beverage in a coupe, I don’t care about the fancy flower as much as the kick. And don’t even get me started on your "ice program." A sphere of ice the size of a toddler’s first bowling ball that tickles my nose on every sip isn't remotely relaxing. 

Wobbly tables. Nothing sets a meal off kilter like a wobbly table. When they’re not — and this happens more than it should — the server tests the table (as if you’re lying), then has to do advanced yoga to get under there and work some magic. Everyone is uncomfortable, slightly embarrassed. Until it happens again midmeal and the tiny piece of paper that took seven and a half minutes to fold and secure comes loose again. More yoga.