Ellis Gourmet Burger — Restaurant in Bruges

Good food but poor customer service. I have been to this restaurant many times and used to like it as it offered good quality affordable burgers. It still does as a matter of fact but my last couple of experiences here have been tainted by the poor customer service and the wait for the meal. Already twice, and both times when sitting upstairs, I have had to wait substantially for my meal (more thank 35 minutes, which is a lot for a burger place). In both circumstances I had almost finished my drink by the time the food arrived (and let me add that when ordering tea, twice I received the wrong tea bag, had to wait for a new one and in the meantime the warm water became even milder). To add to the frustration was the fact that other tables received their food before I did although they had ordered later. There was one couple who ordered just before we did who waited almost 50 minutes for their food and then had to remind the staff that they had not yet received the sides to their meal. Having said that, these times I experienced delays have been when the restaurant was particularly busy; however, the rudeness of the staff did not help bear with the frustration: the table next to mine experienced a confrontation with the waitress; I had received no apologies for the wait, and to add to it all, when asked at the till if I had a good meal, I explained my frustrations and received as an answer "oh it is normal when it is busy" rather than an apology. Sad to see how poor staff training and an understaffed kitchen can affect what could have otherwise been...

The pluses: it's open all day, which is a big deal in Brugge. They've started serving drinks larger than the usual 35cl that comes in most Belgian restaurants. The service is pretty good and we've been there loads of times. They have pickles and onions which is not always usual for belgian burger shops/fry shops. They try to use cheddar on burgers, nachos, etc which I respect them for. I don't blame them for the quality of cheddar, American-style cheddar just doesn't exist out here, so they're working with what's available and by local standards it's pretty darn good.

Ways they could improve if they wanted to: -Cook the bacon! It is the taste here belgians just prefer it uncooked, but the pictures show cooked bacon and this is American themed, so it would be great to have just one place that actually fried it crispy. I always have to remove mine and it seems like such a waste. -Season the fries, the herb seasoning was good and we miss it! -Add American sauces! Ranch, blue cheese dressing, spicy bbq, there are many more and they can elevate bad fries and hide any number of sins. I know it's a chain, but there are a lot of american tourists that visit brugge, and ranch is a myth out here. -Remove whatever the sugary tomato stuff is from the nachos. Local places like to add this to their version of mexican food and it ruins everything it's on. -Make takeaway better/more consistent. The portion sizes are always smaller, and the care isn't there (probably why theres a takeaway discount). We got a burger bun on our salad...

First of all, the burgers were very good; not over cooked, well presented, tasty combos with good quality ingredients. However, we never really got warm; people sitting near us were putting shawls and jackets back on - it was a cold snap admittedly but we mentioned about the heating to a waiter (or lack of it) and it got slightly warmer for a short while then went chilly again. As we left the place I touched a radiator... it was off! It was -3* outside but we'd just paid over €60 for a couple of burgers, 3 sides and 2 drinks. I think you can pump the heating up a bit while there's paying customers inside! One more gripe - we asked for tap water and got a small amount, maybe 50cl in a fancy jar which had blurb on it about it being tap water but it had been "filtered, leaving all the minerals in" etc... They put a charge of €3.50 on the bill for this. I saw nothing on the menu to denote this pricing. That's a bit rich in my opinion! Loads of people have a water filter in their house! It's no big deal. I can get 75cl of Perrier, Evian, Buxton sparkling for that price in London! The check out waitress said "Oh, maybe I should have mentioned this when you asked for it!" Indeed, she should have. What with that and the uncomfortable low temperature, we weren’t inclined to...