Went to Burt's with
labmom53 last Saturday at 7:45 for an 8pm reservation, i.e., 15 minutes early, as per the prior conventional wisdom of adherents to The World Scheduled According to Burt. The place was pretty well jammed with us getting the last available table.
Our prior pizza order was confirmed and we added a salad and two glasses of the house red, a Nero d'Avola, to have while we waited for our pizza to finish. I did have to exchange my glass since it arrived with some smears & grit that shouldn't have been there. Unfortunately, I also had to exchange my fork for a clean one a couple of minutes later when it came with the salad. The salad itself was better than the old house salad, having asiago cheese, green & black olives, and yellow bell pepper to spruce up the base of iceberg lettuce.
But time ticked on to 8:45--an hour after being seated--and still no pizza! When I flagged down someone to ask when it might be showing up, given that they obviously were slammed, I was told that they'd been sort of sabotaged by a group of 7 or 8 that had camped on their table for over two hours and had somehow kept orders from being filled because they hadn't left sooner. I'm unclear on the mechanics of how one group caused such a delay, but it seems like something that could possibly repeat any number of times without warning, unless the management started running a timer, then actively encouraging people to leave. So, it seems there needs to be
some kind of adjustment in their logistics. Jerry, one of the owners, comped us a second glass of wine, and our pizza showed up some minutes later.
It was a fine "Burt's style" pizza, with its caramelized cheese-on-the-crust, that I'd be happy to return and have again...especially after the reopening frenzy quiets down a bit (and they install their new dishwasher to replace the one that recently broke down.)
To those on the fence about whether or not to go yet, I'd recommend giving them a little more time to straighten out some of the kinks...or at least consider not going at Prime Time on a Saturday night.
--Matt
"If I have dined better than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants...and got the waiter's attention." --Sir Isaac "Ready to order NOW" Newton
"You worry too much. Eat some bacon... What? No, I got no idea if it'll make you feel better, I just made too much bacon." --Justin Halpern's dad