Porter House Bar and Grill

1 year ago You should only go here if you’re okay with being treated like a second-class citizen. My family had a reservation for which we showed up on time. It took at least forty minutes, or perhaps even a bit longer, for us to be seated. During that time, we saw multiple similarly sized parties arrive later but get seated sooner than we did. We pointed out one instance of this to the hostess, and she said someone in that other party was a regular (or something along those lines). There you go. Blatant second-class treatment for us. Even if the restaurant has a reasonable basis for thinking that their business interests are furthered by treating guests as members of a hierarchy, I don’t think it’s smart to be so overt about it. In another case, the excuse we were given was that the table in question was a “bar booth” and somehow we were designated for a different area of the restaurant (when making the reservation, we did not make any selection as to one area of the restaurant or another). This restaurant really pushes the elitism angle. I overheard a waiter say to a busboy, “He’s super VIP,” in reference to some other guest they were both attending to. So that’s how this place operates. They make an assumption about your social status, and then they treat you better or worse based on that perception. This is a city of nine million people. Manhattan alone has a lot of people who are able to absorb their prices. Most of the time, the hosts have no meaningful information about who’s coming through the door. That means that, most of the time, they are making arbitrary calls about who’s who, and that is surely going to alienate some locals and repeat visitors who might otherwise want to come back and who can afford to do so. We felt profoundly insulted by how we were treated. I noticed in other reviews a pattern of people suggesting they got substandard treatment based on characteristics like their race or gender or based on other aspects of perceived social status. Before making a reservation here, ask yourself: Do I really want to give my money to a business that operates in such a slimy way?

Reliable top-notch steakhouse

Reliable food (including great steaks) and unfussy service in a modern, comfortable setting brings us back to Porter House several times per year. Great for a special occasion, or just one of those nights you feel like having a big hunk of beef.