Riverview Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Burlington

I had to write a review after the horrible experience my husband and I had tonight at Riverview Restaurant Burlington. We had a negative first experience when they first opened (my husband's food was over cooked and dry, and they ended up giving us complimentary desserts). Tonight we decided to give them another shot. We were seated at 6:30pm. We walked out at 8:40pm feeling disrespected, embarrassed and without having eaten our meals!!! It took 40 minutes for us to get one appetizer (wings), and then an additional hour and a half to get our entrees (2 Ribeyes). To add insult to injury, when our food finally arrived, my husband's food was cold, and my entree was completely wrong! My steak was not cooked medium rare as I had ordered, and both of my sides were incorrect (I ordered roasted potatoes and parmesan brussel sprouts, and I was served mashed potatoes and zucchini!). After waiting all that time, we expected our food to at least be correct and cooked to perfection!!! I get that sometimes the kitchen gets backed up and food may take a while. Fine. I even get that orders sometimes get messed up, and food sometimes is served cold. But for everything to be wrong, cold and served super late all in one dining experience is ridiculous and completely unacceptable!! The disrespectful and embarrassing part was that management and both owners (who I'm told were there) seemed to not be all that concern. We watched the ENTIRE dining room get served, some tables who arrived after us were even served our exact order. We watched table after table come in, eat and leave...to the point where it became embarrasing. People heard us complaining to our server, and then when their food arrived they would look over at us to see if ours came yet! We were not given any explanation as to why our food was taking so long, and we were not offered any food while we waited. At no point did a manager voluntarily come to our table to offer any apology or explanation. We had to flag down a manager just to express our dismay. After 2 hours and 10 minutes of poor customer service and messed up food, we decided to just leave. Needless to say, we will not...

Food was bland. Service was horrific. Over-priced.

Experience: Had reservation and was told we needed to wait because a bunch of tables were just sat before us. After 10 minutes of waiting, we were sat and waited for an additional 20-25 mins before someone came to the table to give us water. We gave our drink and appetizer order. The table that was sat after us had service and drinks before someone came to give us water. We didn’t get our drinks for about 30 mins. We received 2 of the 3 appetizers. The server never checked on us until much later. We sat for a while before we were able to submit our entree order. Entrees came out and they were ok. Lacking flavor or strange flavors (e.g. the short rib did not taste like short rib / pappardelle had zero flavor and was a bit rubbery). Inconsistent execution (e.g. one chicken cutlet was perfectly crisp, juicy and delicious. 2nd chicken cutlet was greasy, not crispy and had a strange flavor). Portion size varied between plates. Needed to flag down our server to order another drink, even though he was at the table next to us and never looked at our table. And we had several dishes from appetizers and previous drinks that remained on the table through dinner.

It was not a pleasant experience for us and most likely we will not be back, but others around us seemed to have a great time. We were disappointed. We are also restauranteurs and staff, this is not acceptable service that we would allow from our staff, though we are fully aware of the challenges that can occur during dinner. Not everyone will be happy. However, some of these issues can be addressed with training. For instance, getting back to tables to refresh drinks is good for the restaurant, the bar, and the servers. Why you would want people to sit and not push drinks is beyond me. At the end of the meal, it seemed like the manager was aware that we were not happy, but did not inquire. Ergo, the review. Best of...

Dined here on 7-22 as part of as a group of 8. Things started out poorly at the bar, and went down hill from there.

With just 10 patrons at the bar, 6 of them from our group, it took 3 bartenders 10 minutes to pour 4 glasses of wine, a vodka martini and a Tangueray and tonic. It appeared that they had to look up how to make the martini and a gin and tonic. The T & T was terrible, lacking a lime wedge, a straw/stirrer, and even Tangueray, appearing to be mainly tonic.

Once seated, more drinks were ordered. The wines were delivered quickly, but mixed drinks took forever, again leading us to believe they were looking up how to make them. A vodka martini had to be sent back, as it was made using gin.

Three of our group ordered soup, one came out steaming hot, and the other two were ice cold. The cold ones were replaced with freshly microwaved soups. Two appetizers were ordered, to share by the group, and were delivered 10 minutes apart.

5 of our group ordered steaks, two ordered lamb, and one ordered scallops. When dinner arrived, the vegetables on everyone's plates were cool to cold, and 3 of the 5 steaks were warm at best, though all were cooked correctly. The lamb and scallops were served hot and properly done.

When the bill came, we were a little surprised to see a 20% tip added to the bill. I have no problem with restaurants adding the tip to large parties, but 18% seems to be the norm. I regularly tip 20%, and often leave more, but considering the poor quality of the bar service, as well as so much of the food being cold, 20% is a pretty optimistic tip, in my opinion. Our server did a decent job, but he has to take some blame for serving the food cold, and poor drink service.

I gave two stars, only because the food was good, even if much of it was served cold, and our server was pleasant and somewhat attentive. Needless to say, we will not be returning to the...