Duke's Public House — Restaurant in South Burlington

Duke's Public House (pretty terrible name, not sure who "Duke" is...) is the restaurant/bar attached to the Delta Hotel in South Burlington, VT (Marriott bought the hotel in 2020 and gave it a "facelift" I guess.). The hotel is right off exit 14E in South Burlington and SUPER convenient to anywhere you might want/ need to go up here. The restaurant has an extremely limited menu (you can see it in the first pic). But all the things on it are very good. Not complex, just good, fresh, real, well executed food.

You can also see my Gin and Tonic with Hendrick's in that first pic. A moment about gin and tonics: they seem simple. They are almost always executed very poorly. Either served in the wrong glass (a gin and tonic should be in a Tom Collins class, as shown here) or with flat tonic (UNDRINKABLE) or both. At Duke's they are using Fever Tree Tonic. The Best There Is. The End. Plus the correct glass. So my beverage is always delicious and has bubbles. Perfection.

The restaurant has high top seating, but is mainly a huge, L shaped copper topped bar which is LOVELY. There are TVs and last night we had the NBA finals on one and "Moana" on the other. So. Much. WINNING!!

The atmosphere, service, set up in Duke's is my ultimate "sports bar" experience. I want to sit at a nice, airy, open, clean, light filled bar (the entire front wall is windows) with good drinks, good service, good food and TVs.

Despite the very small menu, there ARE vegan options. The Duke's Salad is Vegan. The Roasted Marinated Beet Salad can be made Vegan if you just request no Creme Fraiche. These salads are meant to be entrees and are appropriately huge. Other, non vegetarian/vegan items come with very good mashed potatoes or french fries or seasonal veggies and you can just get side orders. I like to call it "build your own vegetarian Tapas!" (I'm not sure if the french fries are vegan.)

This Caesar Salad is maybe the best I've ever had in a restaurant.

As I've mentioned before, I LOVE Caesar Salad, but it is pretty much always disappointing. Not here. This freaking salad is so huge I wasn't able to finish last night (I blame my near death Mother's Day weekend experience and getting over the last of the Baby Germ Death Cold). Excellent, crunchy Romaine lettuce cut into appropriately bite sized pieces. Just enough delicious dressing (i.e., not sopping with dressing). Shaved Parm. I am not a fan of croutons, but these are fine. Some day I'll actually think to request no croutons...

You can add a protein to your salad. I always add salmon and they do a beautiful job with the salmon. It comes out perfectly crispy on both sides and piping hot. I don't actually even put it on my salad. Just eat it as a side. There is also a pan roasted salmon entree which I have ordered in the past and is similarly delicious, including the sides of mashed potatoes and seasonal veggies.

Duke's is a perfect example of how you can do something in The Food Industry that is simple but also VERY WELL EXECUTED. You don't need to serve everything on earth. Do what you're doing really well and I will show up if I can also get a great gin and tonic and watch Giannis on one TV and Moana on the next!

I really think there is room for a lot more restaurants like Duke's out there in the...

Being out of staters; we wanted to try somewhere new to eat. The wait on Valentine’s Day was hours for other places, should have known when this place had no wait that there would be a reason why.

Upon arriving we were seated, which then took 10 minutes before a waitress came over. She finally came over, couldn’t tell you her name cause she didn’t even introduce herself (Asian girl with a top knot bun🤷🏻‍♀️) she takes our alcoholic drink orders and quickly walks away before we could even spit out that we wanted appetizers. Y’all we watched this girl walk around the restaurant, come in and out of the kitchen for FIFTEEN MINUTES!! No drink..she doesn’t even come back to take our order. Until finally another waitress realized that we were a little distressed and Came over to say “oh can I take your food order?” Which she then again takes our drink order too. (Still no sight of the original waitress) this girl comes out fairly quickly and at least gives us our drink. All while the manager is too busy in his gossip sessions with all his friends coming in to realize that his waitresses SUCKED and that even other tables were waiting for their orders to be taken. SO UNPROFESSIONAL!!!!

We finally receive our food, which is Luke warm at this point. And at this time we knew calling someone over to complain would probably be another 20 minute ordeal. My s/o had fish and chips(which he couldn’t even finish it was so undercooked). I had the teriyaki chicken sandwich. Mean while the other waitress finally comes back to check on us. Like girl, where you been???? When she returned to the table she would ask us if we needed anything, before we were even finishing a sentence she was walking away, and then would take FOREVER to return with item we asked for, it took more time for her to come back to the table ten times then just having a few extra seconds to stick around and hear what else we needed. She should have been in the back getting more training. Truthfully. And maybe the cooks some more education on how to handle fish since my s/o spent the next 24 hours with FOOD POISONING AND VOMITING ALL DAY!!!! We left our number on a receipt with a number for someone to contact us in regards to how disappointed we were, still not a call. I also caught wind of TWO other tables that were there complaining as well! Will never ever...

I am a Marriott Titanium Elite. I usually avoid hotel restaurants unless the meal is free as I usually find them more expensive than they should be and the food not up to par. We checked into the onsite hotel, the Delta, late in the day and the next morning we decided we didn't want to go anywhere for breakfast, so we went to Duke's. I have traveled a lot in my life and eaten at a lot of restaurants, but I can honestly say that this was the best breakfast I ever had. You might think there is not much difference from place to place in eggs, potatoes, bacon and sourdough toast, but I can tell you from experience that there is . This breakfast was perfect in all respects- eggs perfect, perfectly seasoned potatoes, crispy and flavorful bacon and perfectly toasted sourdough. And LOTS of food. Oh, and the service. Cooper was our server and he was efficient, friendly, and informative. The other server Ada, brought us our food and checked on us in addition to Cooper. What a bonus! We asked for tourist suggestions (we have done most of Burlington things in the past) and each of them independently said #! Ben and Jerry's tour and #2 Shelburne Museum. We spent more time touring that we expected that day but they were spot on! We also had a chance to talk to Nick, the manager on duty. It was quickly apparent why the servers were so friendly and informative, as Nick exudes those qualities himself. We are from Ohio and so our visits to Burlington are infrequent. We will be bak to Duke's, for sure. If you want a great meal at a reasonable price, it is Duke's in the...