Restaurant Review: Royal's Downtown

Royals Downtown
215 Union St
Brooklyn, NY 11231
718.923.9866



This past Thursday I found myself doing something I don’t usually do. I went to Brooklyn to meet some friends and dine in a restaurant. The occasion was Brooklyn restaurant week and I thought it would be a good time for me to try to go and eat at a serious meal in one of the outer boroughs. It’s not that I am prejudiced against Brooklyn; it’s just that with so many choices here in Manhattan I find it hard to talk myself into traveling over or under a body of water to go eat a meal.

Since I don’t know that much about Brooklyn restaurants we decided we would try to find a place in Carroll Gardens, close to my friend’s house, and would go from there. Using my handy Zagat Online subscription, I cross referenced the Brooklyn Restaurant week list with the Zagat list of top restaurants in Carroll Gardens. I then looked at menus and came up with Royal’s Downtown on 215 Clinton between Union.

I found the experience extremely disappointing.

Our three course prix fixe was reasonably tasty, featuring a porcini soup that got better with each bite (although the strong tasting parsley was an odd and unwelcome accompaniment), a better than average penne Bolognese and three scoops of overly sweet sorbet. My dining companions had a rather dry, but not unappealing chocolate cake for dessert and a seared hanger steak that was cooked perfectly to medium rare but wasn’t anything extraordinary. All of this with a bottle of Chianti came to forty dollars a person after tax and tip—not bad for a decent restaurant meal.

What was the problem with the meal then? It took almost three hours for us to receive our three courses, pay the bill and leave. We were averaging one course about every 40 minutes. Normally I am sympathetic to restaurants. If they re crowded, I’ll excuse slow service. However, Royal’s was not full and our waiter was incredibly neglectful. It took us at least 20 minutes before any kind of hello or offer of drinks. When we did order wine, it took another 15 minutes. We didn’t even get a glass of water until after the wine was poured. We were incredibly parched.

Once the food started showing up, we began to receive barely audible “sorry for the delay’s” muttered from the mouth of our waiter. There was one with our soups, an even quieter one forty five minutes later with our entrée and another one 45 minutes later when I received my three scoops of sorbet. By the time dessert rolled around I didn’t even want it anymore, I just wanted to go home and go to sleep. We were trapped.

About half an hour later, we were wondering why we didn’t receive a check. There were two other tables seated in the restaurant and all we wanted to do was give them our money so we could leave. At this point my friends and I decided we would leave a 10 percent tip—we never (I emphasize never) leave less than 20 percent, but they had to know that something (our waiter) was absent from our dining experience.

Purposefully, we began to look visibly agitated. Maybe if the waiter saw that we were angry he would give us our check so that we could be excused from our table (we joked about just walking out, he probably wouldn’t have noticed.) Finally, after several minutes of visible agitation, our waiter looked up from whatever he was doing and gave us the check. Sensing the anger and vented up frustration he offered another muted and insincere “Thanks for your patience tonight.”

There are ways for restaurants to apologize for doing something wrong. They can give you something for free, usually wine or dessert. They can also apologize sincerely, and profusely, and spend some time doting on you—that’s ok too. Or, they can at least make you feel like they want you to come back. Royal’s Downtown merely offered a couple of halfhearted apologies and continued on like a little kid who says sorry thinking it will make everything better. When our waiter thanked us for our ‘patience’ it was like the restaurant was giving us a big F-you. One of our dining companions then uttered under his breath, “yeah and F-you too.” Only it wasn’t really under his breath. Me and the third person at our table both cringed—the tip just went back up to 20 percent.

I really wanted to like eating in Brooklyn, but Royal’s just didn’t cut it. I suppose I’m disappointed because at least for a brief moment I let my Royal’s experience taint my view of what all Brooklyn restaurants are like.

When I came home after the dinner, my dad asked me, “Where did you eat?” I responded quickly with “We just finished a 3 hour three course meal at a place called Royal’s Downtown.” I then sneered, “In Brooklyn.” I went to my room and commenced to be disgusted with myself. Did I really just denigrate Brooklyn, because the one restaurant experience I had wasn’t a particularly good one? After a day of recollection I’ve decided that my Royal’s experience (there are so many jokes about how un-royal the experience was that I can insert here, but choose not to in lieu of pointing out that I can insert them) was an anomaly. I am now determined to go have a delicious Brooklyn meal in the near future. Any suggestions?


Grade: C-/D+ Nothing special about the food and horrendous service I will never go back. As for who to take, make sure they have either have extreme patience or masochistic tendencies.


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