Chez Burton — Restaurant in North Hertfordshire

Firstly, the food was excellent, and comparable to many fine dining restaurants you'll find in central London. I had the beef cheeks and the cod served with clams. Both were delicious. Sadly, what should, and could have been a fabulous birthday celebration turned out to be a disappointment because of shambolic service. The concept of small plates of food arriving at different times is not a new one, but one which I like. However, there has to be a limit to the "arriving at different times" bit, and having a single person on a table of six still to receive any food at all a good half an hour after every other person has finished everything they ordered is not acceptable. Essentially, the entire table had finished eating were engaging in after dinner chat and contemplating pudding, whilst one diner hadn't had a thing. After sitting down at 8 o'clock the final dishes eventually arrived, after a few prompts to the waiting staff, at 10 o'clock. She then had to eat her dinner, alone, with the rest of the table watching on. Not great. Also, they ran out of the chips. The chips are utterly incredible and as a result I'm sure they're incredibly popular, but running out of chips? Come on Chez Burton. Make extra. It's potato. Then they ran out of house red wine. Not the 1959 Chateau Margaux. The house red. Then we ordered a cheese board of which half was missing. To compound all this, the situation was totally mismanaged from a service perspective. At no point was there a proactive approach to recognising any of this, rather it took endless prompts from us to point out things weren't going great but ethe response was slightly unapologetic and they were a bit too busy to really pay any attention. That said the waitress staff were lovely and there is absolutely no criticism of any one of them as an individual. It's clear there is a passion and good level of culinary skill in the kitchen at Chez Burton, but this, unfortunately is not matched by the same expertise in service.

Comments on owner's response 19.45 24/09/2025 Apologies for the confusion about the wine. I was led to believe we were drinking the house wine. Regarding the chips, sorry, it is just potato. Admittedly a very lovingly made and delicious version of potato, which is the very reason we would have liked more, but it is just potato. If you end up throwing some away, perhaps the planet will be a few seconds shorter in it's overall existence due to reckless potato usage, but that's a short price to pay for ensuring guests having the choice to eat enough chips to shorten their own existence. Fair enough if the chips were made of lobster, but they're not. They're made of potato. I contest strongly your account of the ordering and arrival times of the dishes. I'd like to understand what exactly is meant by "your first round of plates." This suggests that the plates arrive in some sort of order. They don't, and I believe this is intentional. As I said in my review I'm a fan of the slightly haphazard arrival of dishes and enjoy the informal dining atmosphere this helps to create. My point was having everybody finished, regardless of what round of plates it is, and one diner still to receive any food at all, well over an hour after originally ordering, is not great. You suggest the pork dish was ordered at 9.45. That is absolute poppycock and disingenuous. The entire table ordered at the same time. We ordered 2 chips and 2 seasonal greens for the table to share. We also ordered 2 plates each. This included the pork dish which, oddly enough, was ordered by the diner who ended up without food. 9.45 might have been the time the kitchen were made aware of the order, but I can say with absolute certainty every diner placed their order at the same time. The only exception to this was the rather disappointing request for extra chips. Could it be that the original order was never placed and subsequently rushed through at 9.45 when they were made aware?? Categorically nobody ordered any food (rare chips aside) after the original order was placed...

CATFISHED! We were tricked by online reviews and pictures into thinking this place was something special. When we arrived we were first surprised by the decor, which did not have the high end vibe we were expecting to find. We were the first customers of the evening to arrive and the chairs were dirty, uncleaned from previous diner's spilled food. We were handed cocktail menus and ordered a cocktail each and were pushed to order wine in the same order! When the cocktails arrived at the table we were again asked for a wine order before we had even taken a sip. The pina colada cocktail had so much unblended fruit in it, it was more a dessert than a cocktail. We were then handed food menus and opened them to find lots of food smeared across each one, again left overs from previous days where diners had browsed the menu for top ups. Does it cost much to print a fresh, clean menu? We were told that 4-5 plates would be adequate for 2 people, which is usually plenty at any tapas restaurant we have been to before. We ordered 6 plates. Each plate was difficult to divide between 2 because the portions were so small. The amount of food and the quality did not match the pictures on Google. I think the restaurant is probably owned by a reasonably good chef who thinks he has trained someone to do the work, but it is nowhere near the same standard. We were not impressed by any of the plates we had, it was all very mediocre and disappointing. The service was relatively enthusiastic but unprofessional and untrained. We were not offered any water at any point in the evening. I have given 2 stars because I suppose in some ways it could have been worse, but there is no chance I would...

An Exceptional Find

We had heard about this place through friends and thought we would give it a try.

From the initial greeting and welcome, the quality, decor and warm ambience and lighting you get the immediate feeling that you’ve made a good choice and worth a little travel time like us as we had from Bishop’s Stortford.

Apart from a great wine menu, that is not overpriced, they have a specialist in-house cocktail mixologist who can make your heart’s desire, including a great non-alcoholic range, all in two shakes.

Unlike the often disappointing chain restaurants with transient staff, this is a serious place and professionally managed by Neill & Jacqui and a top flight chef at the helm to provide you with imaginative delights to seduce you.

The menu was above expectations and memorable and we especially enjoyed the crab croquets, amazing steak and goose fat chips.

Keep up the good work, we’ll...