The Bancroft — Restaurant in Burlington

I rarely write reviews, and I never write bad reviews. I am going to make an exception in this case. I am not sure the restaurant deserves even one star.

I live just outside of Manhattan, and was visiting the Burlington area because my family lives there and my family was celebrating three birthdays - my mom’s 90th, my niece’s 28th and my son’s 14th. In the 30 years that I have been living in Jersey City, I have had the pleasure of eating at some of the finest steakhouses in the country, as well as some of the finest restaurants in the world. When I decided to look for a celebration restaurant, I did a lengthy online search and discovered The Bancroft. The reviews were excellent and my family said they had not yet visited.

When I made the reservations, I was specific about the reason for the event. I made a reservation for 7 people and was told that we had to sit down before 6 pm or after 7:30. I was surprised but agreed. Nothing was said about the size of the table or the location.

We arrived on time. When you enter the restaurant, there is a concierge/hostess desk, and it is adjacent to a very large and boisterous bar. The desk is also close to the door. The hostess directed us to our table. This is a very large restaurant on two levels. Directly behind the hostess desk is a stairs leading upstairs. Adjacent to the stairs is a serving station. All of this is proximal to the bar. Our table, for our very important celebration, was literally the first table in the restaurant. All foot traffic converged by our table. On one side of us was the bar, and the other side was the stairs and the serving station. Very near was the front door. It was 15 degrees out last Saturday night. Every time the door opened, we got a blast of cold air. The manager came over after hearing about my complaint and informed me that another table could be made available, but it would be smaller. The one we were at was barely large enough for seven. No explanation was given as to why two tables couldn’t be pushed together.

We ordered some sides and appetizers. Three of us got steaks. My son ordered a sirloin and I ordered the filet. The cut of the meat must have been of lower quality. My son literally had to cut through tendons and sinew. It was visible once he cut into the meat. My filet was tough and dry and over seasoned. It was inedible. The manager replaced my son’s steak, but the replacement wasn’t much better. I passed on the offer to replace mine. Our sides included the asparagus and fingerling potatoes. When the asparagus arrived, they had a grayish color and tasted so odd that no one ate them. The potatoes were plain and dry.

At the end of this very unsatisfactory meal, the waiter brought over one small dessert dish for my mom. It consisted of three tiny truffles. My son and my niece were forgotten despite my emphasizing that we’d were celebrating three birthdays.

The waiter was adequate, but indifferent. The manager did her job at a minimum. The food was overpriced and of inferior quality. I will note that the duck dish and pork chops were well received by my family, but this is a steakhouse after all. The steaks should have been excellent given the restaurant reputation and prices.

With tip, the meal was $500. We did not order desserts, and I am the only one who had alcohol. I had two glasses of wine.

Having eaten at exceptional steakhouses, and even chain restaurants like Ruth’s Chris, I would say that The Bancroft was the worst steakhouse I have visited. And I am still upset that our celebration dinner was anything but a celebration.

Shame on you at...

This is the first restaurant review I've ever written and unfortunately for the restaurant it is a very bad one. My fiance and I generally plan a weekend getaway every 5 or 6 weeks. This weekend it was Burlington Mass, and we decided to treat ourselves by eating at the Bancroft. I have not been at this restaurant for many years and remembered it as having superb quality and fantastic service. I'm not sure if ownership has changed or it's been caught up in the general decline of every service industry overall that has plagued our country since covid. My fiance ordered the brick chicken and gnocchi, and I had the 28 Oz aged ribeye. We both ordered soup. I had the clam chowder and she had the lobster bisque. The first issue we had was that on arrival (despite having reservations for 5pm) we were informed that the dining room could not open till 5:00 since they had no wait staff, and since we had arrived early they told us we could sit at the bar or on a couch near the bar. I asked the employee working the front desk why we could not just wait at our table since it was clear they all were set up. I was told "management does not allow that". We ended up on the couch. We then proceeded to sit there for 20 minutes as barmaid after barmaid walked by and nobody even bothered to offer us a drink or see if we were okay. As we waited for 5:00 we noticed more and more people piling up in the waiting area as the restaurant also refused to allow them to sit in the main dining room. We finally got seated at 5:10 p.m. The night started out fairly well with delicious bread. Honestly we should have stopped there. When the soup showed up my chowder was average at best and my fiance's comment on the bisque was "Panera does it better". Once the two main dishes came my steak was not even close to a prime cut, it was extremely fatty, very stringy and was overpowered by the garlic black pepper taste. My opinion is it was a much lower quality cut of meat that was put through some sort of tenderizing process. Her chicken was (believe it or not) ground up chicken mixed with gnocchi and then baked. It was like a giant chicken gnocchi meatloaf. The Swiss chard that came with her entree could not even be cut with a steak knife. I had roasted brussel sprouts and fingerling potatoes as a la carte sides. The brussel sprouts were passable however the fingerling potatoes basically were boiled and upon returning home we realized they hadn't been thoroughly scrubbed. All through the meal we will continuously baraged by busboys who continuously reached over us grabbing knives and forks the minute we put them down. It's almost like they were running out of silverware in the kitchen. When we finally stopped trying to eat one of the bus boys came by asked if we wanted to take anything home. I indicated I'd take the potatoes. He loaded up all the dishes, came back with a large shopping size paper bag, put it in the middle of the table and walked off. At this point we realized that the waitress hadn't even bothered to come by and offer us coffee or dessert. We sat there embarrassingly with a paper shopping bag in the middle of the table once again waiting as we did when we arrived. Finally the waitress came by literally reached around this giant bag shoved a dessert menu at us asked us if we wanted anything. We declined and she then handed me the bill which turned out to be roughly $175. Mind you this was without drinks. I firmly believe I overpaid for this meal by $150. As noted I had high hopes for this restaurant as I had been there before but I warn everybody out there...

This was quite unsettling as we are constantly entertaining clients and their support staff at Dinners weekly. I'll say dinner was ok. Everything tasted fine, however my steak looked like it was a bunch of scraps or a couple end pieces they had pushed together to make one serve-able steak. That aside, our wait staff was very accommodating and I wasn't the one who needed impressing so I let it go. It it were The Branch President (my client) or his staff that got my steak I would have been embarrassed, but like I said I let it go. I encouraged his staff to order cocktails, given their respective contributions to my organizations referral base, and whatever they wanted for dinner and they took advantage of it. On the other hand the President (our client) and my executive team limited our drink consumption to a single (larger) bottle of wine, that mind you 8 of the 16 people at dinner ended up sharing with their meal. Each got less than a normal glass, but that's not our complaint. Once dinner concluded, and my appreciation of the team's respective efforts was clear, the Staff left for the evening, and my executive team and the Bank president stayed behind to discuss business. It was at this point we moved our much smaller party of 4 to the lounge area. Each of us ordered an after dinner drink, and then began the most important part of the evening's conversation. We talked for about 45 minutes and proceeded to order second drinks. I purposely ordered a coke with Dinner, given the audience and the fact I was looking forward to the opportunity to give my "pitch" post dinner. This beverage was my second cocktail over a 4.5 hours time span spent in the restaurant and while moderation isn't my general rule, in this instance it felt appropriate. Now my complaint: I can just hear my client now, asking for a Sambucca and Espresso, only to have the Bartender tell us that our party had been in the restaurant for a long period of time, and it is their policy to prevent over service and we were denied additional beverages. No measure of behavior had brought us to this point, it was only a result of our dinner parties collective drinks over a 5+ hour time span. Regardless of the fact the entire group of loan officers, 'the drinkers' had already left. When we inquired as to the reason and justification, we were told the word came down from upstairs given our bill included many drinks and their policy preventing the same.

I am giving this establishment 1 star because it is obvious they couldn't be bothered to come "downstairs" and evaluate further. The Bancroft's unwillingness to consider my company policy that prevents my executive team from drinking around referring sales people is unacceptable. I equally dislike those over-served at an establishment, and preventing those from getting in a car after a meal and too many cocktails is quite understandable. On the other hand, there remains a significant difference between those hosting /entertaining a dozen twenty somethings and the twenty somethings themselves.

Hosting...