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BROOKLYN, New York — Recently opened on 5th Street in Brooklyn, the Hook & Lion tapas restaurant has recently become victim to a particularly harsh review on Yelp, a well-known website which hosts crowd-sourced reviews of local business. Unfortunately, the fine dining eatery got off on the wrong foot when Williamsburg resident Christopher Kennedy left a scathing first Yelp review after he was dissatisfied with his experience.
“When I leave a restaurant,” Kennedy began when talking to one of our freelance food critics, “I expect to be full. When all was said and done and we split the bill up between me and my thirteen friends, we each paid, like, 80-bucks.”
Later that night after the Kennedy party had been bar-hopping, he decided to take to Yelp to air his grievances via their iPhone app.
“I had just had enough, you know?” he explained. “What I said in that moment was what I felt in my heart about Hook & Lion and I don’t regret it.”
Kennedy’s review, which was posted at 12:37 a.m., spared no details when it came to his grievances with the restaurant that had only been open for the better part of a week.
“This place is destined to fail,” he wrote. “Our waitress was a total bitch and took forever whenever we ordered drinks. Like how long does it actually take to get a Pacifico?”
He explained that the waitress expressed that the restaurant did not serve beer “in buckets” despite his requests before launching into a tirade about the food choices.
“We ordered, like, a hundred things off the menu and they just came on these tiny little plates,” his review claimed. “Last time I checked, we came here for dinner and not appetizers. When I asked if they had anything substantial on the menu, our bitchy waitress explained to me what tapas means as if I’m some type of ignorant midwesterner. I’ve lived in Brooklyn for three years so I’m pretty much a native, and I’ve never been treated like that before.”
When we contacted the restaurant’s owner, Felipe Suarez, to discuss his highly-anticipated restaurant’s first Yelp review going viral, he was beside himself.
“In such a bustling and culture-rich area, we expected big things from our first night,” he told us. “But when I saw the review from Mr. Kennedy, I was, well, astonished.”
Suarez further went on to describe the scene in the restaurant that night – a scene which he could see from the kitchen. Being a small space with room for only about forty people, Suarez described the group as “rowdy” and “unaware that other people were in the restaurant.”
“They crowded our small bar,” Suarez explained, “We ended up having to go to a convenience store to keep up with all the Pacificos they were ordering.”
He also explained that Kennedy clearly did not know what tapas were upon making the reservation for his large group, and that his “uninformed” review has now tarnished what was supposed to be a pleasant soft-opening for the highly-touted owner and head chef.
“We’ve since reached out to Kennedy offering him a gift certificate in hopes he’ll take his review down,” Suarez told us in closing. “But he’s declined our offer, stating that he could simply get the same food walking around and eating samples at the recently-opened Whole Foods on 3rd Street.” .
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
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Are endless apps at TGIF considered tapas? …asking for a friend. I may or may not be in need of a classy date place.
They are if you believe they are.
“Hey babe dress up tonight we’re getting tapas. Wear sensible shoes though because it’s in the stripmall on the Southside and the parking lot is full of potholes. Also bring your wallet in case I get mugged. Or if I ask you to pay.”
Pacifico is trash.
I actually like Pacifico a lot, and I do slightly agree with Tecate being Mexican Coors Lite (but I’m not saying that’s a bad thing).
If I’m drinking anything from Mexico it’s a margarita.
can confirm on Pacifico’s being meh. take a Tecate or a Sol anyday over that.
Tecate and Pacifico are the same thing: Mexican Coors Lite. It always astounds me that people and bars around DC try to treat either of them like some craft speciality with a $6 price tag and everything.
Where’s a Carta Blanca when you need one?
Ska Mexican Logger. Class it up a bit.
Them fightin words
K. Meet me on the 9th green at 9, bitch.
I’m not sure what annoys me more. The hipster who can’t admit that they don’t know what tapas or the owner trying so hard to appease a bad yelp reviewer.
If you go to a tapas place without being a 98 pound girl on a juice cleanse and expect to feel full afterwards… you’re gonna have a bad time.
This piece is weird. Assuming you made it up, you didn’t go far enough in ridiculousness.
Or rather, our world is too ridiculous as is.