Chinar On The Island - Staten Island

Beyond disappointed.My family has been frequenting Chinar since the original owners first had it, almost 20 years ago. The food was always delicious and many parties were hosted there. I've taken plenty of my American friends here, introducing them to delicious food. Including my husband. My husband and I have been ordering take out from Chinar for the past few years. We decided to make reservations there over a month ago to celebrate my father's birthday, which is for tomorrow. Party of 10. No one calls me to confirm the reservation. I call Chinar multiple times to confirm, no answer. We drive by and the place is bordered up! So the place suddenly shuts down, doesn't inform guests who have made reservations in advance, and now I have to make alternate plans with a day's notice. Very unprofessional and not cool.

Review from Beginning of 2020 Have visited Chinar on the Island restaurant multiple times for variety of occasions: from regular lunch or dinner to birthday parties to celebratory dinners. I have to say today 's visit was VERY disappointing. We came to celebrate my Grandmother 's birthday. Here is the breakdown of how the establishment works:1. Upon entering through double doors you will see the place where the hostess is supposed to be. We never saw a hostess here. Usually one of the waiters will notice someone entered and will either point to the table or just tell you to sit wherever you like. 2. Upon sitting down you usually will get your menues quick. 3. Ordering: depends on the day of the week. If you come on a slow day (a Tuesday lunch for example), someone will take your order in a reasonable amount of time. On a Saturday night (our most resent visit) we had to flag someone down, and staff still attempted to not stop at the table. After 20-25 minutes of waiting and attempting to get someone 's attention, finally a nice waiter came up, apologized, however was visibly fluttered and wanted to move on to his next task as soon as he possibly could. He was nice but definitely overwhelmed. We ordered, asked for an adult drink menu. Food (appetizer) came about 15-20 min later, no drink menu and no soft drinks that we already ordered. 4. Bill: usually accurate. May take some time for them to bring, sadly. Parking: parking lot available.She specifically wanted to come here for the one dish from the menu she enjoys--Chilean Sea Bass. It 's once again, hit or miss. One day you will receive a good appetizing portion, the next it 's a tail end. What specifically got me very frustrated is the fact that I told the waiters that it is my grandma 's birthday and asked for a birthday candle in the dessert that we ordered. The dessert come with no candle, a piece of cake was not even gently plated, but rather thrown on the plate. It 's 2023. We never went back after this visit.

Never again!This restaurant is known for very delicious food, and we decided to make a banquet for 25 people to celebrate our wedding anniversary. It was a disaster, even though the food was delicious as usual! There was just not enough of it compared to other times we were here. The amount of food served was half of the expected! Two menu dishes were not served at all... I cannot imagine people in a restaurant sitting at empty tables with empty plates and waiting for the dessert for an hour! Half the guests left without eating the cake, because there were not enough clean plates to set the table for dessert timely.We feel our guests were dishonored, and we are very disappointed by extremely unprofessional management and service. The waiters do not know their basic responsibilities and skills. Before the party started, they were asked to arrange napkins in a decorative way. The response was they did not know how to do it and continued talking on their cell phones.What a shame!Neither the money for missing food nor DEPOSIT MONEY was ever returned.Indecent and unprofessional business...

I was invited as a guest to a wedding anniversary. This restaurant had a very unprofessional level of service. The plates were served in blue rubber gloves! The Pandemic is over and this is not the presentation you’d want to see in a five-star restaurant. In a five-star restaurant you do not expect dirty forks and knives falling from writers’ hands making the floor dirty, greasy, and slippery. I was also expecting that wine and other liquor would be poured, or at least offered, to the guests. I felt like we came to a self-service Chinese buffet rather than a 5 star restaurant. Utensils were also wrapped inside napkins like in a lunch room rather than nicely decorated.If you really want to enjoy the food AND experience a five-star service I would suggest to think about a different place

Booked a banquet for a special occasion. For the per-person price paid, there was certainly a shortage of food. I thought it might have been just me as I was hosting/dancing and just didn’t get a chance to eat, but the following day most of the guests were complaining that the first time in their lives they left the Russian restaurant literally hungry. The manager was trying to convince us that our company were super big eaters, that is why nothing was left on the plates. How nice! Most of the people didn 't even taste more than two dishes out of eight main courses on the menu, because everything else was eaten immediately being served in a very small amount. Personally I ate two slices of salmon, two spoonfuls of salad, mashed potatoes with a tiny piece of fish, and a lamb chop. I 'm probably the biggest eater in the company.It is definitely not worth what we paid for a plate.Additionally, we bought a very specific type of champagne for one of our specialty drinks. However, the waiter brought out a completely different champagne that was cheaper and did not work with our recipe. He said that the other waiter mixed all the champagne bottles up, and he did not know which one was ours. Very cheap and unprofessional. The guests were also sitting behind the table with empty glasses as the waiters didn’t bother pouring, or even offering, any beverages. This is a common expectation from such a highly rated restaurant, which didn’t happen. When the waiters finally showed up, I was shocked to see them in blue rubber gloves, like they came to clean the bathroom, not serve food to people. Overall, very disappointing.