Fox & Herb - Gourmet Café & Restaurant — Restaurant in Braintree

Ordered a cheeseburger and an Americano £13.50. couldn't have a bap as NO gluten free option available, not for sandwiches or anything!! Food was appalling- burger appeared to be mainly veg, v thin so there were two - and oddly curled at the edges, so obviously reheated in a microwave and dried out. There was an odd omelette between the burgers , processed cheese and exceptionally over crisp bacon. Obviously microwaved. The burger tasted disgusting, the chips were black in places( as if they were frosted or damaged before being cooked), they tasted of stale fat and were oddly greasy, but had been microwaved. There was no salad as mentioned in the menu and was told by an extremely surly male that the bare dessert spoonful of coleslaw,was infact the salad! No coleslaw is a pickled condiment. Salad consists of lettuce, cucumber, spring onion, rocket, etc.The male was rude and asked me to leave as I had been promised a 50% bill reduction on the food. I had been given £3.50. The meal was £10, and coffee was £ 3.50. I tried to point this out and was told I had abused his staff! There was only one other couple in and they were having coffee only, this was at 12.30 pm, middle of lunchtime when other places close by all v busy. Coffee ok, but think this was packet coffee as there was no smell of freshly made coffee and no coffee machines in use and it seemed to be gritty as if made up from a powder. The two female staff were friendly and as helpful as they could be but the male was surly and insulted me - a female on my own. I still have my receipt( I requested it from the card machine). I would not recommend, needless to say the...

Facade looks nice. When we went in, I thought it was one of those gimmick places that’s purposely rubbish! Turns out I was wrong and this is the norm. The breakfast baguette! (See image! 😂😂😂) The yellow between the bread is microwaved packet egg…..I think! Certainly not fresh. There is a rasher of bacon too…..I think! And that is it!! A loaded breakfast baguette! I’d be insulted if it wasn’t so funny!! Luke warm coffee, no dialogue or even slight interest from servers. Quite possibly the worst ‘sandwich’ I’ve ever seen, let alone paid for!

Edit: That’s an incredibly aggressive response and I’d like to call you out on it. Firstly, study the picture again and you can see that there is, in fact a poor excuse for a sausage hiding underneath the packet egg. (That must be the sausage I ate before I took the photo). Secondly, your accusation in your response is disgraceful given that your CCTV will not show anything of the sort. As for trying to damage local businesses, I’d suggest looking at my other honest reviews of local, national and international businesses. I highly suspect the response was out of embarrassment and I understand that given how awful it was. Lastly, I could go at your business with ‘full force’ under the Trades Description Act 2015 for the use of the word ‘gourmet’. I’d recommend looking the word up, taking a look at what you actually offer, and perhaps changing your model or at least your wording. I’ll leave it...

It seems popular, tables full of guests and a few mums with kids in the nice toy area. But I don't like the ordering app, which they expect you to use. Food was OK, lunch options a bit limited. My breakfast muffin seemed prepackaged, the wife's chicken baguette was good though with a tasty sauce. The location is handy if visiting Halstead to do some shopping.

Excuse the rant, but the place seems to run all it's ordering and kitchen on an over complicated smartphone app, which is neither intuitive nor easy to navigate. I hate having to scroll through dozens of options in the hope of finding what I want. Their white Americano was at the top of a list but the black Americano was about two hundred yards of scrolling below it.

For a deli cafe, the coffee menu was confused. Back to the Americano rant I'm afraid. It's supposed to have two shots, making a nice strong drink. They served up a large cup with a single shot, so really weak and not all that nice. The app only gave options for an even larger mug with or without extra shots, so perhaps that needs looking at.

As we left there was a pile of menus on the counter, which we should have used...