NY is so about the hype and I fell in......again. FIVE months ago I made a reservation for my daughter’s birthday dinner. We are a party of eight. The reservation was guaranteed by $150 per person on a credit card, so I was under the assumption that dinner would be in the area of $150 per person excluding drinks. We were all dressed nicely. We were the only ones. That should have been the first clue. I thought the place would be good looking and cool. It was not. It was in Hell’s Kitchen. Everyone looked at it from the outside, and then on the inside, and each of us was trying to keep spirits up for the other seven. It was in a horrible location. It was the main floor storefront of over half a block, of a crack welfare hotel. The people in the area were beyond degenerate. We were shown to an innocuous bar with a thing as a bartender. Not sure what it was. The bar was very limited. No beer served. No mixed drinks. Minimal service. My son informed me that the restaurant prefers that people drink wine with their meal. I now know why. HaSalon is supposed to be a takeoff on their Tel Aviv restaurant, which for some reason I do not know. I thought it would be a lot cooler. “Decor” was a zero. I booked the 9pm seating which was the party time and it ended up being so. They did not escort us into the “dining room” until 9:25 PM. The music was mostly oldies and it got bumping after 11-ish. (Dinner was three hours and change long.) Around 11pm the steel gates on the windows on the entire property were rolled down. That was when the party began. It was Bagatelle 10 years ago. There were 13 appetizers. We ordered all. To “try”. I was not involved in the ordering. Each was approximately 3-4 bites. So we ordered a few more. Everyone was drinking this night so we went through three magnums of wine in as many hours. There was a lot of dancing although there was a warning on the menu to dance on tables and chairs (all mismatched and rickety) at your own risk. Except for the beautiful and large open kitchen, the place cost about $250 to put together. The food was fair. No more. No less. No one said they would return. All appetizers were vegetarian and some were zero taste....like the cabbage. They are known for their leeks. They were leeks. The tomatoes were tomatoes. There was one long piece of pasta but you could not tell. It had to be cut up to be eaten. And so on. It was very loud. It was impossible to talk, but we knew that. The check came and I HAD TO get my glasses because I could not believe the total. WE are TOTAL IDIOTS. Each appetizer was in the area of $30. The piece of grouper was $113. The shishlik was $149. The chicken was $79. It looked like a fetus. The fillet was $115 (and excellent). And so on. AND THE WINE.....let us not forget the wine that they push (and my husband ordered......although I am sure he never looked at the price prior) was over $5000...... bringing the grand total for dinner in a dive to $8572.70. Our fault. We dealt with it. Then, on the way out, as were were all gathering in the hall, a little guy comes running up to my husband and attacks him. This is in the midst of six security guards, all 6’4” and up, and built like walls. Little guy was screaming that my husband touched his girlfriend. All of my boys jumped in. Well, to make this even funnier you have to know my husband who is the most HANDS-OFF person you have ever met. I must have touched about eight people to make my way to get out of the restaurant. It was wall to wall people. My husband was directly behind me. All of our kids were behind him. Security told us they would deal with little guy and so we left. Thirty seconds later, still in front of this elegant establishment, as my son is smoking a cigarette while talking to my daughter, a little dirt bag grabs the cigarette out of my son’s hand. Before we knew what happening, the dirt bag starts screaming repeatedly “come after me man.....I cut you up........come after me man......I cut you up"..........and again and again and again. We had to diffuse a second bomb in two minutes. Let’s see, so what would you rate the night??!! Maybe HaSalon means “dinner in a dive”.