What can I say? I wasn't really eager to try out this club seeing as how Berlin never really did it for me. But they were promoting it on Kiss 925 and people had been telling me that it was really good, so I decided, what the heck. I'll give Manhattan Fuel a try.

For starters, I wasn't wholely impressed with the name (I'm still not). But it's definitely out of the ordinary so I'll give it points for that. At 11pm, there was a fair-sized line.

Despite seeing that the girls in the regular line seemed quite young, and that they didn't believe me when I said that my line had no cover (we were in the VIP line), I chose not to see that the night was gonna be spend with an uncool crowd.

When we got inside, the guestlist coordinator told me that I wasn't on the guestlist and then asked me if I had any passes. This was very *not* cool. I explained that my hookup told me I didn't need to bring anything and that he told me to just show up with my 11 friends. Basically, this was not a good time to tell me that I wasn't on the guestlist and that I was going to have to turn around and tell my friends that they each had to shell out $10 that they didn't account for. For the other singletons out there, $10 might seem like nothing, but most of us are still poor new grads and so $10 for us OSAPers (okay, I'm one of those who should've got OSAP but didn't) is more than we'd appreciate. Luckily, they went and called my hookup and he told them to let us in for free. The good part (in addition to keeping that $10 in my pocket) was that the two girls working the door were always pleasant and friendly with me. I didn't get the icy stare of look of death, so I must say they were good for the place.

Music was oh so not good. The r&b/hip hop set was alright, but it was a bit on the slow side for a jumping Saturday night. I can't even describe the House/Techno set because it was just awful. Upstairs they were playing a mix of retro and house/techno but again, the mix was poor and littered with bumpy song transitions.

Bar service was less than stellar. I was rudely told to stand aside when I mistakenly approached the wrong side of the bar, and then was given the evil eye for ordering a $3 bottle of spring water. I didn't ask you for tap water. I actually paid triple what I should have for a bottle of water. And I tipped you! Sheesh! If I wanted really crappy service, I would've gone back to Spacco's and let their horrible waitress serve me (side note: Spacco's has really good food, but there's this one waitress who *really* needs to take Customer Service 101).

Unfortunatley, Manhattan Fuel does not live up to the hype that Billie Holiday gave it on the radio. The crowd wasn't cool, the music wasn't good, and the bar service was horrible. Decor hadn't changed much, and there was great service at the door, but that is still not enough to improve MF's standings in my eyes.

Final assessment:

Service
Crowd & Ambiance
Music

Their website is http://www.manhattanfuel.com