Old Stove Pub

Borderline inedible, no permit for a/c and the hostess downing a bag of m&m's at the front of the house.  Something is awry here. If not for a waitress who tried incredibly hard, we would've left after the tarama (which btw tasted more like potato salad).

I ate here last weekend and I truly felt like someone was playing a practical joke on my friends and me. Sometimes you read Yelp and think "those must be tourists from Minnesota", but no, we are indeed what one would call the "core customer" of this type of establishment.

Let's just walk through the facts of our dinner:
- When we ordered, half of the things we requested were not available. No fish (of any kind),  they didn't have 4 different wines we asked for (no sauvignon blancs), and they were out of one of the Greek specialty dishes.
- Then it took 45 minutes for our drinks to arrive.
- When they arrived, half of the drinks were missing.
- When those drinks finally arrived another 30 minutes later, they were literally undrinkable. I am a big negroni fan, and I almost spit out the drink. It tasted like rubbing alcohol. This wouldn't be acceptable at a drive bar, let alone at a place charging $15 per cocktail.
- It took another 30 minutes to get our appetizers, and then another 45 minutes to get our entrees
- Since the only entree that was available was chicken or steak, we all went for the steak. The steak was fine, but mediocre for a $90 piece of meat. Seasoning is apparently is not in this chef's artillery.
- One of my friends doesn't eat red meat, so she ordered one of the appetizers for her main. That they then forgot to bring.
- They ran out of the red wine that we were drinking mid-meal, so they offered to bring us another wine and only charge us half price. This was nice except that the wine that they offered us was half the price of the wine we were drinking. I thought it was very unprofessional to bring a $50 bottle to follow a $100 bottle. You don't want to go from drinking fancy wine to drinking something worse. Especially at these fancy Hamptons prices.
- The poor waiter looked like a deer in head lights the whole night. He was obviously a 22 year old kid, not a professional waiter, who was clearly way over-worked. They didn't have enough staff for the number of patrons.

My advice: run far away from this restaurant. Even though there is apparently new management, this place is just horrible. The problems are far deeper than just "working out the early summer kinks."
The prices are crazy, the food is mediocre at best and unavailable at worst, the cocktails taste like they were mixed by an 18 year old raiding their parents liquor cabinet, the service was snail pace and frantic.

Close already, Old Stove.

Sometimes you look at Yelp reviews and you think, maybe they are just haters. Sometimes you should listen to the reviews. We tried the newly renovated Old Stove. The service was nonexistent. Parts of our meal never came. Other dishes came so late we were done eating when they got there. There were numerous spills during the evening, it was impossible to get water or a drink refill, and the food was at best mediocre. We were the lucky ones sitting inside. The outside tables border a gravel parking lot that spews dust every time the valets park a car.

But they have a piano player. So.... Nah. We should have listened to the reviews.