Craft & Cleaver — Restaurant in North Hertfordshire

UPDATE: I will leave my original review below, but Adam reached out to me and offered me some money off to give them another try. Completely different experience with regards to the food, ribs were lovely and although chicken wings are still a little bland, dipping them in the sauces more than made up for it (the peppercorn sauce is absolute gold).

Service was excellent as before, very attentive waitresses. Cocktail list is brilliant too, I recommend the b*tch juice.

Thanks guys, you’ve won be round! :-)

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ORIGINAL REVIEW

So much of the experience I had last night at the restaurant was good, but overall, I’m really dissapointed with the meal.

Our servers were friendly and attentive. The ambience and vibes of the restaurant was on point. The drinks were delicious and we loved being able to play shuffleboard after the meal.

The issue was the food, which is ultimately what a restaurant is judged on. I had the ribs/wings combo and found the ribs to be bland and wings to be far too salty. Chips were okay and corn was nice. My friend who was with us had and said exactly the same thing and didn’t even finish his meal because he said it wasn’t great. We also came with my friend son who felt quite sick after his meal (he had the kids mac and cheese and half a sticky toffee pudding). We all left feeling a bit dissapointed with the experience, especially as my friend had travelled all the way from Horsham to try the restaurant after we had heard such good things.

This is actually the second time we’ve visited craft and cleaver as we went to the restaurant in St Albans a few months ago. We actually had a similar experience there as well, we both had burgers and thought they were quite bland tasting (and very expensive). Cawsburger in town really are the kings of burgers and while I can’t judge your hitchin branch on these , based on the food we had I think it would have been similar experience in terms of taste. I’ve also recently had a far superior meal in Smoke House in Cambridge.

Overall, I wouldn’t visit again which is a real shame. The bill was £200+ for the four of us last night and it definitely doesn’t feel worth it. Literally everything else about the visit was perfect so it is a real shame the...

I left Craft & Cleaver Hitchin feeling hungry, dissatisfied and a bit ripped-off.

Portion size was FAR too small for the price. You can see how small the amount of food was in the picture attached to this review.

Quality of the BBQ meat itself was alright but kind of standard…nowhere near special or unique enough in quality or taste to justify these sorts of extortionate prices. The side of ribs I had wasn’t especially different to what you can get in a box from a supermarket’s takeaway aisle, so why do the prices suggest this is a quality only available from them? It’s really not. The small thatch of dry coleslaw on the side wasn’t very appetising, far too acidic and the amount of fries was totally underwhelming.

Also they are cheeky and add 10% tip without asking and hope you don’t notice - a clear sign of disrespect to the customer if you ask me. The wait staff weren’t doing anything other than the basics, and the wait for the food took forever…so why do they (the company) think they deserved 10% extra?

The staff were fine, though a few did look a bit haunted and unhappy. Just pretty blunt and brusque asking what customers wanted. Maybe they’re overworked or not getting paid enough. Maybe there’s a toxic management culture. They just seemed rushed off their feet but the place was half-empty. We were served by multiple staff at our table, we didn’t have 1 waiter/waitress assigned.

The shuffleboard is fun, I guess. We were there in the mid-to-late afternoon so had it to ourselves for about an hour.

The area out the back is still under construction.

I might eat here again but certainly not more than once a year if I can help it. It’s too expensive...

Had the pitmaster which consisted of pulled pork, pork ribs, jalapeño sausage, wings, burnt ends and chips.

This was a really disappointing feast if i can call it that. The meat apart from the pulled pork was so dry it made it extremely chewy. The ribs were overdone, making them have a jerky texture whilst the wings, where was the seasoning? They were awful. The flavours were all the same, usual sticky bbq glazing which imo ruined the actual taste of what the meat could have been. I know my smoked meats quite well and this was not good at all. Comparing to bodeans and even more well known names, you really have some work to do. Please install more flavoursome spices/blends/rubs/glazing and don’t smother completely all in bbq sauce. Also reduce the salt, ribs were so salty! Chips though were really good, if you can season them like you do, why can’t you season meats properly?

Also tables, my god why do restaurants sit people like cattle so close next to one another?! It is fairly spacious but sitting in a line as if we are contestants on a game show is stupid. There was adequate room in the restaurant to space people out, we were all confined to one small section which was annoying, especially if ordering as much food as we did, we barely had any room for our metal plate we were given..

One more thing that annoys me is the stupid 10% service charge that is automatically added on. If i want to tip, I would do so, not feel like i’m forced to!

Service on the other hand...