Cafe Escadrille

Big disappointment. Came here for a party. Asked weeks in advance for an allergy free meal (plain baked scrod, veggies, potato) but asked that they use oil, lemon, herbs for flavor) Fish was dry, overcooked and flavorless. Veggies were passable.
A restaurant of this caliber should be able to make fish have flavor. Had to request olive oil because it was so dry. Still couldn’t eat it. Would not return.

I must take a moment to tell everyone at Café Escadrille what an outstanding job they did for my Mother’s memorial gathering. Especially event coordinator Devyn Facchetti and bartender Joanie. The event went so smoothly, the staff was very attentive and the food was outstanding! It was a well-​appointed room with plenty of space for everyone to get up from the tables and mingle. The AV equipment worked flawlessly and sounded great.
Our buffet lunch was fantastic — the food was brought out as needed, everything was cooked perfectly and all the dishes tasted excellent. We were not rushed at all, and everyone was given ample time to enjoy the food while relaxing and conversing.
Joanie the bartender was wonderful — she was gracious and friendly and helped the other staff members out as needed.
Thank you to all the Café Escadrille staff for doing such a great job. My mother Jeanne would most certainly have approved :)

Café Escadrille — Burlington, MA — 4÷29÷2016
On the outside the place looks like a palace… Come to find out it’s also a banquet hall… I walk through the building apparently having entered on the banquet side and there wasn’t anyone to be found. As I walk through the long corridor I approach what appeared to be a dining room in the distance. Walking in I got an extremely strange vibe… Quite different than many of the places that I frequent… Honestly…, I felt like I walked into a restaurant in Florida at 5 o’clock…
For about 20 minutes I sat there and just soaking up the place… Not quite sure if I was staying or leaving… I honestly can’t explain it.
My server, Brenda, was awesome… She’s probably the only reason I stayed…
When The bread came out it was served at room temperature with gold foil packets of butter… A mix of some kind of fruit and white bread with accompanying crackers sitting in a wire bowl on top of doilies… Not very inspiring…
My salad course was the hearts of lettuce topped with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits… Basically what other restaurants refer to as the wedge… Tasted much better than it looked…
The main course… The steak and lobster… An 8 ounce grilled tenderloin with bordelaise sauce served with a baked potato, butter and sour cream. Add in a baked stuffed Maine lobster tail… it was ok…
Quite disappointed. Let me reiterate… Brenda was fabulous but the food was well below my expectations… If you follow my reviews online you’ll see that the bar is set extremely high… In my dining preferences I spell out exactly the kind of experience I’m looking for… If you like those dock side restaurants where they serve the potatoes in foil (they did not serve in foil here just using the example) and the lobster with that heavy breading then you will definitely enjoy it here… It’s quite basic for my tastes… Kinda like when you have dinner at a wedding… Nobody ever raves about the meal… That was my experience tonight… And to add insult to injury as I was cashing out I became aware that they have a high end dining room… Why wouldn’t you mention that to a diner that clearly stated his expectations when booking the reservation online?!
In retrospect… I should have gone with my gut…

Live music on a Tuesday night! The food was really good but the restaurant configuration/​setup for some reason reminded me of a TGI Fridays.

I was there on St. Patrick’s Day, the food was good but from 4 to 8 they stopped playing Irish Music. Most people there wanted to hear Irish music, everyone was dressed in green but the band took a 4 hour break. Who gets a 4 hour break? We ate our corned beef sandwiches and went to the 99’s down the road — no band, but Irish music playing.

Bizarre but it totally works!
Working late… where to go after 10pm?
Walk in, live music (2 piece, great guitar and folky)…fun. Older. Looks a bit like a traditional steakhouse. Then I find out only a lighter menu after 10 or a sushi menu. Sushi menu?
Hesitantly order sushi and to my surprise it good. Really good. So what goes good with sushi? Baked French onion soup of course! Surprisingly good as well.
So while not a true 5 star experience, I’m coming back. Maybe I’ll try the after work thing tomorrow here? Can’t get any more bizarre can it?

I’m not a prolific writer so I’ll keep this simple.
1) unaware of Gourmet Room mentioned in other reviews
2) reservation requested and denied for 6:30 — arrived early at 6:30 and numerous tables
available
3) generally slow service throughout the meal
4) no bread served until requested
5) no bread plates until requested
6) EXCELLENT prime rim but VERY expensive
7) special dessert of pudding with Jameson sauce — all of our party of five tried the dessert and
found it dry and tasteless — told server who had manager/​hostess come to the table and
hear our complaints — didn’t finish $ 9:00 plate that was on our final bill
8) on exit told same manager/​hostess of general dissapointment including charge for dessert —
told it could be removed from already paid bill — I told her that it should never have been
included and declined reimbursement
9) coffee cold
10) will look for prime rib elsewhere

EXCELLENT FOOD, EXCELLENT SERVICE
We eat out frequently but nothing is quite like the Café Escadrille’s Gourmet Room. Their chateaubriand, which is hard to find on restaurant menus, is our favorite. It is absolutely «melt in your mouth» delicious. Our salads were perfect and our friends ordered steak and fish and they both enjoyed their meals. We finished up with baked Alaska… yum. Also my margarita (s)were delish. To compliment the great food was the wonderful service we received from Victor who was quite charming. We’ll be back soon.

I LOVE this place… been coming here for YEARS. The bartenders are the best, GREAT apps… but $ 26 for (Chicken Picatta) 4 SMALL pieces of chicken is outrageous. Plus… Portions have been downgraded BIG TIME.

Nice place! Wasn’t here for regular dining, my prom was here. The area it was in was very big and it was pretty. The food was so good but I thought the portions were kinda small. Would come back!

I ordered Veal Marsala and it was delicious. For dessert I ordered ice cream puff. The ice cream was good, the puff was terrible; it was stale…
The service was fine. They were on the slow side but I prefer that rather than being rushed every few minutes.
When I went, it was around 5 pm and it was really quite. The place itself is beautiful. Definitely fits into dressy attire. Nothing too fancy but probably no ripped jeans and tee.

Attended the Thanksgiving Buffet today. The food was good but at the $ 45 per person price level that is the bare minimum. The Turkey, the Prime Rib, Ham, Ravioli, Deserts were all good… But the service was HORRIBLE.
We arrived on time and were seated. We waited 5 minutes for our server who never showed up… finally we went up to the buffet get food… we had our salad… then our main course and still no server… finally, almost half way to three quarters through, I seriously needed a drink to wash down the food so I asked the manager who basically told me that she would send the waitress over. she did come five to ten minutes later. and finally we got our drinks…
I would have to describe our experience as having thanksgiving dinner in the middle of Grand Central Station… It was a big hall with fifty to a hundred tables. And, Yes, it was that busy… And the server to table ration was horrible… I just expect more from Café Escadrille. I expected to be able to get a soda with my meal and I expected to be able to get a refill on my soda without having to chase someone down.
Given the price there are many more options (Landana, Capital Grill, ect…) that would offer similar to better food and actually provide adequate service… yes, I would say we may have gotten better service at a chillies today. and maybe even McDonalds… At least I would have gotten to have a soda with my meal at McDonalds.
And the craziest part of it all was that they had a fixed 17 to 18% tip worked into the check… I should have argued but I decided to let it go given the holiday. But yes, we were forced to substantially overtip, especially given the poor service.
Management should have made an adjustment. Honestly don’t think we will be going back for some time… and certainly not going back next year. There are just too many fine dining options in the area.

I was expecting perfection at Café escadrille after hearing so much about it. It was good, just not great (to me). I had a sirloin steak with mashed potatoes. I did not enjoy the mashed potatoes, I thought they had a funny taste. My steak was decent, though!
My parents ordered salads that were supposed to be mixed greens with and orange vinaigrette (among other toppings) the toppings were there but with iceberg lettuce and balsamic dressing, so they were a bit disappointed.
We tried the apple crisp for dessert. This normally comes with ginger ice cream but I substituted vanilla for dislike of ginger. I was a bit disappointed there was a strong ginger flavor to the apple crisp itself! Oh well.
I am definitely coming back. They have a good variety of entrees, sides, apps, an desserts. I think I just need to try more items!

This place is past it’s prime. This was my father’s favorite restaurant for business customers 20 years ago — and I think those waitresses are still working today. I regularly lunch here for business — and granted there are a lot of blue hairs — the food is pretty good, and the service generally efficient. It’s one of the few places in Burlington that takes lunch reservations.
We went for dinner last week and it was terrible. We seriously felt like we were on an episode of the Sopranos. Atmosphere VERY loud, live music that sounded like an animal waiting to be put out of misery. Our waitress was surly, service was slow (and it was not very busy — on the later side after the dinner rush). We were seated almost 15 minutes before even being greeted, and then someone (not our waitress) dumped stale bread on our table and when we asked her for water she rolled her eyes (but did comply — so we appreciated that). We still had not been greeted at this point and my husband wanted to walk out — I was too hungry to leave.
My husband had swordfish which was, in fact, excellent. I had the surf and turf — shrimp was chewy and flavorless — like it’d been sitting and overcooked. Came with a clams casino which was inedible (rubber).
Dinner was $ 150 for 2 for entrees, 2 glasses of wine, and one shared dessert. Food was ok, but the service was really, really bad — almost like she got stuck with us when she was about to be cut from the floor (and I waited tables for years — I get it — but an average dinner here is a $ 30 tip — probably worth another hour of your time).
With so many new restaurants to enjoy in Burlington, hungry for business, we will not be back.

I was really looking forward to a decent caeser salad. What arrived was a plate of lettuce that wasn’t very crispy and salad dressing that was not well tossed, so some bites had dressing, while other mouthfuls had just a hint of dressing. I ordered the calamari, which was also inconsistent. Some pieces were very rubbery and chewy, and other pieces were not. I was tempted to spit out one piece because it tasted off, but that wouldn’t have been polite! I didn’t detect any garlic lemon flavor that was listed on the menu. It came with a marinara type sauce which was very soupy.
The place wasn’t overly crowded, but there was a huge lag between the salad and the main meal.
Won’t be back.

We came for the brunch on Mother’s Day it was amazing! The selection was incredible, much better than other holiday brunches I have been to and the service was outstanding. The dessert bar and chocolate fountain alone were worth the price. I will definitely be back to try the normal restaurant menu. They also have free valet parking and plenty of self parking in the lot. The outdoor patio area looked really nice as well.

To be fair I came here on St. Patrick’s day, maybe that impacted my experience. I did enjoy the music and atmosphere in the bar area, so that I give it 3 stars, but the food was just not what I was expecting. Maybe I had my mind set in a different type of meal, but I always thought this was a higher end nice place to go. I think I found out that the owner has changed hands a few times and that may also be the culprit.
Started with some Rhode Island style calamari and baby lamb chops. The calamari had a good crisp to them, however I think it was too heavy and I’ve had much better. The Rhode Island part of just throwing in some peppers wasn’t nicely presented. The lamb was ok nothing crazy and the presentation wasn’t there. There was an orange slice and a green liquid, I assume some sort of mint sauce that wasn’t over every piece.
I had the Entrecôte a’La Escadrille, a pan roasted 14oz piece of beef. There just wasn’t any flavor, even though it came in a bourbon sauce. It was cooked nicely and came with 2 portobello mushrooms.
What got me even more confused is the menu had a large selection of sushi. Again not sure if this is a new thing, I never thought this place had sushi.
Maybe I had a bad experience on an off night, but the Café Escadrille is not was it used to be.

2 visits in the last 4 weeks. We will be back!
Reservations that work, and a painless valet.
Deep wine list, and top shelf selections.
The varied apps are perfectly portioned and well presented. tasty too!
Main dishes running the gamut from steaks to sushi. Great quality and prep.
Service with attention to details
Yay.

This past weekend, I hosted a 60 yr old birthday party @ Café Escadrille. I was referred to Café Escadrille by a close friend who had also either hosted or attended a shower at the restaurant. I was so pleased with everything! from start to finish, was very happy.
*Working with the sales manager was very smooth and it was great communication.
*I found the place to be beautifully decorated– (beautiful Christmas tree, fireplace), just all around very grand and inviting.
*the buffet food was good. the bartender was friendly and attentive.
I would absolutely host another event here. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to celebrate my dad’s 60^th birthday. Thank you Café Escadrille for putting out a fabulous job! Service was great.

I have two experiences here — one personal and one business. Turns out that dining on my company’s dime was much more fruitful than leaving the house.
The first time I dined here was for dinner with the bf. Our server was accommodating but not superb (he didn’t get the hint when we wanted our bill) and the food was overpriced for the quality that we expected from a «fine dining» restaurant. We ordered the baked scallops as an appetizer, and lamb chops and filet mignon stuffed with lobster as our entrees. It took nearly 20 minutes for the scallops to arrive at our table, and immediately after those arrived, our entrees arrived, thus giving us no time to partake in our appetizer. The food itself seemed to have sat on the grill for a tad too long; my lamb chops ended up medium well and my bf’s filet ended up nearly well done. My suggestion? Servers need to be educated on meal timing and the kitchen needs to work on distribution.
The second time I dined here was for a corporate lunch. Our team was having a year-​end meeting so this was the venue of choice by our group leader. The 1:1 service was much better than the dining room experience; this time, our server was efficient at delivering each course with the right timing, and made sure that each guest was satisfied with their meal. She even accommodated our request to wait 30 minutes after our entrees before serving dessert. The salad wasn’t doused with dressing, the steak was cooked perfectly, and the dessert wasn’t melting when it arrived. I guess you get what you pay for, especially when it’s a corporate partnership you want to maintain.
Maybe I’ll be back, maybe I won’t.