Burger Village — Restaurant in New York

UPDATE: 5/18/2024 The following morning after our dinner here at Burger Village on Friday evening 5/17/2024, my husband and I are both experiencing symptoms of food poisoning. I'm currently pregnant and I request all my meats to be cooked well done to avoid ingesting under cooked meat and catching a bacterial infection. We both ordered the same type of burger, mine well done, and his medium well, and shared the same "frings" and loaded nachos appetizer. We didn't eat anything after this restaurant besides some water and went to bed feeling okay. However, the whole morning till this evening as I update this review, we've both made an abnormal number of trips to the bathroom with unpleasant bowel movements each time, and continue to experience stomachaches and pains and we strongly believe there could be unhygienic practices at this establishment and have notified and filed a complaint with NYC311. So PLEASE be warned if you decide to eat here, you may get more than just a stomachache the following day. I've considered myself very lucky to have never gotten food poisoning yet in all my years eating out in NYC but this is very frustrating to deal with especially because I'm pregnant right now. I would avoid this place right now at all costs.

Review posted 5/17/24: Initial first impressions were not bad, the space is open and bright, but we noticed that the indoor tables are crowded pretty close together. Their middle aisle of tables just shouldn't exist because servers can barely squeeze past, and if you back up your chair, you're going to hit the person behind you.

Onto the food, the loaded nachos cost $11 for a light drizzle of cheese and diced tomatoes. After that first layer of topping is gone, you've got a lot of bare nachos that aren't even seasoned enough with salt so you can eat them by itself. 75% of the nachos are bland and naked and definitely not worth the price they're charging for at all. Maybe $7, and to advertise it as "loaded" is laughable. Loaded with next to nothing is more accurate.

They also advertise to have Coke but it's not really coke. It's a cola on tap, same with the other non-alc beverages they list on the back of the menu. Quite misleading. Just put Cola, don't say Coke, and make me think it's actually the soda brand Coca-Cola when it's not.

Their burgers are on the smaller side and underwhelming. The meat could've used more salt and pepper, because without the grilled onions or cheese, it would've tasted so bland. We ordered a side of "frings," which is half a basket of onion rings and fries. Fries were very crispy, but again, they lacked salt. There's salt and pepper grinders at your table though, yet no napkins or ketchup.

For a burger joint, I don't understand why there aren't any napkins available at the table. I know some customers ruin it for others by abusing condiments and such that are on tables, but surely one folded napkin per table seating is not too much to ask for. Considering the type of food this place serves where you have to eat with your hands, it's a little annoying and inefficient to have to flag down an already busy server just to get a singular napkin.

Anyway, my husband asked for the check before I finished eating, I was halfway through my burger, and it took 30 minutes to bring over the bill. He did this on purpose due to reading other reviews about the slow service. He asked 3 separate employees, and it still took forever, so listen to the reviews!

We asked one female employee who initially took our order, and she cleared our table on the spot but then disappeared to deal with the outdoor tables for 15 plus minutes. I just don't understand why they didn't want to immediately close out our check.

I left here feeling annoyed and unsatisfied with my meal, I wish we went somewhere...

For a restaurant that prides itself on food quality—grass-fed, antibiotic-free, organic—they need to get back to basics when it comes to food handling and customer service.

I’ve been a longtime customer of Burger Village across multiple locations, but after today’s experience, I will never return or recommend this place again. While my family and I usually dine in, today was our first time ordering takeout—and it will be our last.

On my second bite, I found a piece of dark hair in my burger. Disgusted, I immediately spit it out, and my husband and son refused to eat theirs. To make matters worse, the fries were burnt and inedible. I called to speak with a manager, and at first, the district manager was helpful and willing to issue a refund. However, shortly after, the store manager called me, accused me of lying, and berated me like a child.

At that point, I told him to forget the refund. In all my years, I’ve never had to call a restaurant to complain, and I certainly wouldn’t have if this weren’t warranted. Instead, they’ve lost a loyal customer.

As a business owner myself, I would never treat a customer this way. It’s shameful, and if this location continues down this path—with declining food quality and outright hostility toward customers, there will be plenty of more negative reviews like mine.

UPDATE -- After I posted my review, the restaurant responded, saying they were sorry they "missed the mark" and asking me to reach out directly. I assume this is just their way of pretending to take responsibility while trying to shift focus away from an honest negative review.

First of all, why would I reach out to the same place where I was already berated and disrespected? If you don’t know how to treat your loyal customers right the first time, that’s on your company.

The location where I had this horrific experience was the Park Slope location. The manager there is highly disrespectful and clearly doesn’t care about...

Delicious food, atrocious service. I order all the time and it's always great, but decided to go for dine-in and ruined my perception of the restaurant.

On a Wednesday night, there were never more than 3 tables of people- it was dead, so no excuse for excessive wait times. We were seated and it was at least 15-20 minutes before an employee came back at all to see if we wanted anything. We were ready to order at that point so we put in for two burgers, fries, and 2 drinks. After that we didn't see anyone for 30 minutes or more. Would have liked a drink at this point. There was nothing going on, I'm watching them standing around texting while we don't have our beers or even water.

Eventually everything comes out at once, we eat, time goes by, we're done eating, we clean up, stack it up. Wait for someone to come by. Waiting. Waiting. Making eye contact with the servers. Again, standing around texting. Empty drinks. No one came back after the food and drinks came back to see how it was or if we needed anything else. Would have loved another round of drinks, but that just wasn't in the cards I guess. After another 20-30 minutes goes by of us just sitting there done eating, we were forced to go up to get the bill because it was apparent they were never coming back.

This is literally the only time in my life I've ever considered tipping less than 20%. It was that bad. When we had to go up to ask for the bill so we could finally leave, there was no awareness that they left us waiting for that long, no apology or anything. This ruined our night out, which was supposed to be a...