Honest Burgers Spitalfields — Restaurant in London

We came to satisfy a burger craving for a late lunch. We were seated fairly quickly, but everything after that was excruciatingly slow. I'll tell that story after I describe the food.

6.50£ Kentucky Tea Sour - Bourbon, peach, lemon, Honest Iced Tea & 7£ Honest gin, Fever-Tree Mediterranean tonic, cucumber, grapefruit: The drinks were very light, cool, and refreshing. I found the old time-y mugs charming and I appreciate that they use paper straws.

9£ Beef Burger w/ red onion relish and lettuce and cheese & 11.50£ Honest Burger w/ red onion relish, smoked bacon, cheddar, lettuce and pickles: These were rather tall, thick burgers. The patties were juicy and cooked to medium rare. The cheese was nicely melted over the patty, and the bun to patty ratio was great. The red onion relish was definitely sweet, and the smoked bacon added some nice flavor and texture. All burgers come with rosemary salted chips were savory and crisp. They went well with the sauce, but it seems like a bit of gyp that sauce is 1-2£.

Like I mentioned, the service was very slow. It took at least 15 minutes to order, and another 30 minutes to receive our food. That part was not so bad. We finished our food and waited for a staff person to take notice and give us our bill. After requesting our bill more than a couple of times, we finally received it and paid, but we didn't get a pen to fill in the gratuity portion. At that point, I didn't think the service deserved a tip, but we still asked for a pen, so we could leave a tip. They acknowledged our request, but never gave us a pen. Finally we gave up and decided to just leave. We were about a block away from the restaurant when one of the waiters came running after us. He explained to us that one of the other waiters accidentally voided our payment, because the gratuity line was left blank, and he was confused by that. So this waiter who chased us down asked us to please go back to the restaurant and re-pay our bill. I honestly did not want to, because at this point I thought the situation was not only taking up a lot of our time, but also felt somewhat cornered in that situation. The waiter apologized and offered us free drinks, but we were not interested in drinks or having to spend another minute at the restaurant, because it was our last day in London and we had already spent more time than we wanted just getting a couple of burgers. I signed the bill and did not leave a tip. Why should we tip when it took us more than an hour just to pay a bill and then get hauled back in to pay again? It felt like we were never going to get...

PS Responded, no details given, saying not much, just was apparently “busy Saturday”!!! Lol, It's not a desert island; it's called Brick Lane & Saturdays; the area is heaving; if you dont know now, you know,…and you had more staff than clients. No bother. If that’s the level of service you provide and are proud of, let it be!

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We visited on Saturday. Sadly, there was nothing to compare with any other branch we’ve been to. Unfortunately, we had awful, sluggish service; lagging throughout, only one of the male servers was working with the rest of the team, and the waitpeople were all over the place and looked tired. It was poor service overall, even though it was a massive team on that shift; we came in around 4 PM; we were a couple sat at the end at the corner table; there were Plenty of waiters/waitresses around, so they were not understaffed. Frankly, many of them were there, Mainly hiding or chilling in the private room area near where we sat. We ordered two burgers and wings and took them a while!!! The Chefs were constantly cooking and ringing the bell, both takeaways and in-house,…but the food was sitting in the kitchen on shelves for ages…!

After all that wait,…They brought our burgers eventually, but the wings were still nowhere to be seen; the burgers arrived already cold, 🥶 and then they realised our wings were missing, as I think the guy was the supervisor asked us if we had our wings already?!

Obviously, We said nope! While the cold burgers were almost finished, we were starving. Guess what? A few minutes later, He brought the tiny “So-called Large portion wings” and was cold 🥶 again!!!

Shocking, I couldn’t make it up!

It felt like a chilled/Cozy environment for their staff; nothing was professional or productive there! Extremely laidback/Lazy service and We were shocked as they were having a great time; the only ones suffering Were whom? You guessed it right; the only ones suffering were the guests/Customers inside. The team was having a blast, and we won't come back Never again.

We won't come...

Ordered food from this restaurant at lunch on a Friday, I understand it might be busy. I paid extra for a priority delivery. I rung up after an hour of waiting and was told the food had been ready for 10 minutes and they were waiting on the collection from Uber. I questioned why they had allowed freshly cooked food to be sitting under the heat lamp for 10 minutes as the lettuce would be like soup, chips would be solid, burger bun completely wet and food generally in bad condition. I was assured it would be fine and that they were chasing the driver.

I ordered an honest burger with fries and three onion rings, including delivery, it cost me almost £25.

I finally received my food after almost an hour and a half and found that it was stone cold, completely rank and well past being good. The grease in the food had even made the thick cardboard packaging wet. I was given no napkins, no sauce to go with my onion rings. When I called up to discuss this with the restaurant I was spoken to at first by a female waitress who spoke to me so rudely. I was then passed onto, I’m guessing, the manager who I spoke to earlier. He basically said it’s not his problem that my food was destroyed and he can do nothing.

Absolutely appalled with the quality of service and respect for a paying customer. Having myself worked in restaurants that are very much like this, I would have cooked another burger straight away, even if it meant the customer would have had to wait a tiny bit longer. It would have made having to wait so long much easier if I received fresher food. Or they could have sweetened the situation somehow with a coupon or some extra food. It makes no difference to you when you work for a chain to have a little food go to waste and make something fresh, it makes a difference when you get a bad...