Penthouse 808

Summary

This bar / restaurant is located on the 6th floor in the Ravel Hotel in Long Island City. The view is fairly nice as you can see Midtown from the east, but it is not stellar since it sits slightly lower than the Queensborough bridge and there are 2 smoke stack obstructions as you look towards the Empire State building.

We ordered some bottles of Rose and an entree.

The Peruvian marinated roasted whole baby chicken came with sweet bruleéd plantains and assorted aji sauces. The chicken was very tender and quite good in both dark and white meats.

The sweet bruleéd plaintains actually came on a different plate, 10 minutes later. These were also pretty good. They tasted like sweet thinly sliced potato chips and were lightly salted. The green aji sauce was a good complement.

My one biggest criticism with this is the pace. Whose idea is to bring out half of your main entree followed by the other half 10 minutes later? It seems unprofessional to do that. Luckily the food was good enough where I wasn’t completely irked by it.

The service itself was fairly decent, but as expected when the night moved on, the service aptitude worsened. Our server started disappearing more and more, and there was a lack of attention in general. I gave them my credit card for the bill, and it took them 20 minutes to return back.

The ambiance is fairly chill at night until it gets darker. Then the music is turned on louder until it becomes a dance light atmosphere where you need to yell somewhat to hear each other.

Final Verdict

I think the food here is decent if you set the bar low and don’t make bad choices when ordering certain food dishes. The view is pretty good for Long Island City, and the price is definitely not expensive compared to the neighboring Manhattan rooftops. I would expect sit down service to be mediocre, but if you are proactive, you can probably get what you need fairly easily. Friday nights don’t seem to be excessively crowded, so there’s room to dance and eat.

Yelp Jabs

The seafood boil we got was 100% not fresh

I probably wouldn’t have expected fresh seafood from a bar restaurant that has low foot traffic and isn’t the most accessible.

My dad and I purchased a groupon for seafood boil

People, please for the love of glory, there is a reason why there is a Groupon. You should not expect much with seafood with a Groupon.