Tavern in the Square — Restaurant in Burlington

I went here last week after work upon a recommendation from co-workers and have never had such a bad experience at the bar. We showed up with a group and requested to be seated for a party of 12. The manager told us it would be 5-10 minutes, and that we could seat ourselves at the bar in the meantime.

At the bar, they were transitioning their menu, so a lot of their beverages were out of stock. Not the biggest deal, but a minor inconvenience. I opened up a tab while I was waiting, and picked up a White Castle IPA. For some reason they didn't serve tall versions of it despite serving talls of other beers, but that wasn't a huge issue either. What was an issue is that twenty minutes later, we were still at the bar waiting on a table. There were well over 6 tables wide open, and the hostess and manager were waiting near the front during that entire duration. I asked them again, and they told me it would only be another five minutes, and that we should close out our tabs at the bar to re-open them with our server.

When I went to close out my tab, I found out that the bar had begun to bill random drinks from the bar onto my tab. I had gone to the bar with my co-workers, but it was very clearly a personal credit card and not a corporate event. I was never asked, nor even told that drinks would be billed to my card. The co-workers who had their drinks billed to my card were people I hadn't even been sitting with. I have never ever experienced something like this. Completely unprofessional, and no member of the bar was willing to take blame for the mistake.

After thirty minutes, they still hadn't gotten us a table, and when we approached the manager about it, he told me that a table a ready for twelve. A member of my party, without counting, surmised that we might have more than that, and the manager became extremely agitated and told us we were going to have to wait another five or ten minutes. I made it clear to him that we only had twelve people, and that I had repeatedly done a head check, but he brushed me off and walked away aggressively telling me that I was going to have to wait if I had more than twelve people.

We were finally seated after forty five minutes, but our table didn't even seat twelve. It sat maybe 8 people. We tried to pull chairs from another table, only to be told that those chairs were necessary for that table, even though there was nobody waiting up front. Despite this, nobody ended up seating at that table. It was a nice day outside and there wasn't a single person on the patio, with ample seating for up to thirty or forty people. We asked to potentially be seated outside, but were briskly informed that our party was too large to go outside.

This was was above and beyond the worst service I've had relative to the quality of the establishment. I've never had management at a bar be that blatantly disrespectful, and I've never had staff be that brazenly unapologetic for a mistake they made that was clearly on their end. All members of our party unanimously decided we would never return to the establishment again. The bar staff was nice, and the server did his job fine, but given the overall experience I cannot give this establishment more...

First time here with my Fianceè. I'm disabled mind you. We walked in. A young Woman asked if she could help us. We asked for a booth for the 2 of us to make it easier for me to sit as I have severe back problems. She said one moment, took a phone call and never returned to us. The Gentleman up front asked, we stated the same and he said sure it will just be a few min. He came back a short time later and said he could seat us right then if we could be out by 7:30 as they had a reserved table. It was 6:15 so although close, we thought it should be suffice. We sat at a high table after asking for a booth but I managed with my back issue and it took FOREVER to get someone to take our drink order....a while after that, the waitress came back and asked if we were ready to order. We did. After she kept apologizing that the food was taking forever tonight....Skip to 7:10 when we got served...we start eating, on our 2nd drink. The waitress asked how everything was, I explained what the Gentleman at the front said about being out of there by 7:30...She said she understood because between how long the server took to come, and the food being backed up, it would be unfair to have us rush to be out of there in 15-20 min. She came back and said the manager stated nothing he could do, we had to leave that table by 730 even though it was not at all our fault. So we ate as fast as we could, pounded our drinks, alcoholic mind you, and left. It wasn't the Waitress' fault so we treated her with respect and tipped her but the Managers unprofessionalism and carelessness of our situation really would make us consider not even going back. Food, drinks, and server were great...took a bit to take our order but the amount of time it took for the food to come out was appalling and then having to rush it down due to the length of time it took, wasn't right. In and out, and that's the most honest score I could give. I do a ton of...

Hi 👋🏻. We were there for our Xmas dinner on Dec 28th and the first time at this location. All things considered, I think they have a great menu and a fairly good location. What I mean is where it is, in general, is great, but being a part of an office building and being tucked in a maze of a parking lot and in front of Burlington Mall doesn't make the access easy and frustrating. So that in itself can be a turn-off. Even though it was the holiday season, the crowd in general wasn't too bad.

It started off alright. The apps came out at a decent amount of time and tasted great and were hot 🔥. When it came to the meals, it was a mixed feeling. Even though all came out at the same time, the temp of the meals greatly differed. Which made it difficult to eat, but it wasn't worth the wait to send back. During the time from the apps to waiting for the mains, the service felt like it changed because we were waiting a long time between drinks where you order two drinks knowing it will be a long time before someone came back as well as the normal check-in's. We found ourselves doing everything quickly so we could get out of there. Please don't get me wrong, we did understand about the holiday even though it was 3 days later, but the crowd truly wasn't that bad that it made a big difference. So we didn't understand what was going on. We were hoping for a better experience, maybe at a different location since we really don't live close to this one. Don't know if we would or would not come back to this specific location. I'm sorry we didn't take pics because it was a bit dark, and we were not sitting under any lights. So, all in all, I think if everything was normal, the food could have been good without the service issues the experience could also...