The Tavern — Restaurant in England

Overpriced, undercooked, unfriendly.

Went for brunch with my wife today and had another disappointing experience, I ordered the tavern breakfast, my wife the breakfast burrito, with some hot drinks.

From previous experiences I knew to order my eggs fried, well done (otherwise they tend to arrive barely cooked), but what we didn’t expect was for the eggs in the breakfast burrito to be completely uncooked, translucent and sloppy like liquid (definitely not scrambled eggs as described). When I complained to tell them this, they treated it like a difference of opinion, and the waitress said ‘Okay, that’s fine’ and cleared it away. The point was, in fact, that it wasn’t fine, and that my wife didn’t finish her food and risked being made ill by poor food preparation.

We paid our bill (weren’t offered any discount or refund), and then I asked to speak to the manager to explain that we didn’t actually think that this was ok. Initially a junior manager came out and did apologise, and since we had paid, offered us vouchers for a future visit, which we felt was decent customer service.

A few minutes passed, during which time she had evidently spoken to the waitress and manager, after which she for some reason rescinded the voucher offer and had been overruled by the blonde senior waitress who we had taken issue with.

Ultimately, the local waitressing staff are very nice and helpful, but the foreign management (who also own Brazils I believe) have very poor customer service ideas, and the chefs are substandard. Moreover, the prices there have become outrageous (£13 for a small fry up, £7.99 for a smoothie I think - the menu prices on their FB page are out of date, probably deliberately so).

This is not a one off, we have found our last few visit quite fractious and difficult, and as we said upon leaving, this is not the only breakfast place in town, and we will not be coming again. Frankly, the Grocers in Amersham is far better...

I love this cafe, and have visited many times - but I've written this review to flag my one-man campaign around mobile phone use.

I was enjoying an excellent espresso on the morning of 20.08.25 and was contemplating breakfast. Another customer was playing hold music on speaker-phone and then held the first part of the call inside, again on speaker-phone, when the other end answered.

For that reason, I decided against breakfast and paid. I could have spent another £12-£20 at the cafe but another customer's lack of consideration made me want to leave.

My own view is that, with the exception of low-end environments such as McDonald's, KFC, etc., all restaurant, cafe and pub staff should close down obnoxious and inconsiderate mobile phone use.

If you see my review of Cantinetta Antinori - a supposedly smart restaurant in Knightsbridge - you will see my excoriating comments around the impact of another diner's mobile phone use when I was spending £300 on a meal for my girlfriend's birthday.

So this is my plea to all owners and managers: clamp down on speaker-phone calls, the playing of YouTube videos and music without headphones, kids on games on their iPads with the volume up (etc. and so on) to encourage paying customers to either stay and enjoy more of what you have to offer or to repeat...

The Tavern is a great place for a quick, decent value brunch or lunch. The coffee is good, the atmosphere is cosy. The staff are amongst the nicest people in Chesham. Their friendly and hospitable attitude is one of the main reasons my partner and I frequent this fine establishment. The food is good, but could be better.

I say better because their chefs have talent but the normal menu is a bit bland. How do I know this? The specials. The specials are often the best food in town by a long way. This is where the Tavern would be five stars.

The normal menu is similar to places like Cafe Rouge, it's traditional European and English cafe food with a few interesting items. The specials appear to be heavily influenced by Northern Italian and Australian cuisine. They almost always amazing.

Interestingly enough there is a menu item which started life as a special - the breakfast burrito. It's good but I would describe it as bland compared to some of the other specials. I wonder if management is afraid of giving the menu too much character.

Long and the short, this is my favourite place in town. It's a great treat when my partner and I work from home. Advice to management would be to embrace the creative talent of your...