De Beker - Hertsmere

Visited here this weekend, for the first time. Cute place, with a cycle theme going on. As a vegan, I was excited to see a handful of breakfast brunch items on the menu. I had the vegan breakfast and my friend had the avocado wrap both were great. Friendly service and fair pricing. Definitely coming back.

Concerned about food safety, I contacted the Hertsmere food safety department. I spoke with a man who was familiar with the restaurant, De Beker, and he informed me that both employees had recently undergone additional training, which he found disappointing given the circumstances. Shockingly, De Beker had received a 1 star rating, the lowest possible, during their last review in June 2020. This was troubling as it put customers at risk of health issues. Despite their poor and sloppy service, I must note that their toilets were impeccably clean. My interaction with the council was very helpful, and it was clear that the person I spoke to genuinely cared about the issue. It was disheartening to see a business disrespecting their customers in such a way.

This restaurant offers a wide variety of choices, including traditional cafe, vegan, and Turkish options. The Dutch breakfast comes with a delicious rose cheese wheel! The vegan pancakes are excellent, and they also offer a large selection of herbal teas and cakes. If you're on the go, they have take away options like granola bars. The prices are affordable!

I have enjoyed lunch, coffee, cake, and now breakfast at this restaurant and each meal has been excellent. The service is friendly and everything is freshly made. My lunchtime salad was delicious and a good portion size. Today's smoked salmon breakfast was superb, with very good scrambled eggs, avocado, and salad. The pot of tea was decent and there was good, relaxing music playing. The restaurant is lovely and clean. I highly recommend it.

I’ve given four stars which is a tad generous for our visit but I believe there was a little issue on the day we came in and I think we were a little unlucky. We stopped here as a charity bike ride en route to a London hospital and found our pre-booked table had been given to another group. Not a huge issue as they moved a few tables together elsewhere for us. Service was slow and I think there was a slight language barrier as I asked for my sausage (as part of a full English) to be well cooked twice and still had to send it back twice.! The flat white only contained one shot of espresso and was really a cappuccino in disguise, I ordered another to top it up and it was ok. As I mentioned, service was incredibly slow considering we didn’t order a great deal and it held our ride up a bit but the people are nice and I did feel a little sorry for them and even left a tip so it can’t have been that bad. The food was decent enough, the omelette breakfast looked the best of the bunch but they do need to learn how to make French toast, my wife was told they had none left and when I explained how to make it fresh they didn’t really get it. We’d come back though, the cakes looked amazing but hardly ideal mid ride so we didn’t get to try them out. Maybe next time..