So, on Saturday Lucy and I went to brunch at Jam on our way to a comics convention. We ended up furious, hungry and with me having to bow out of the comic con trip because by the time we got out of there, I had no time to make it to Rosemont and back before a 3 PM appointment.
A previous version of this post went into great detail about why I was so frustrated with them, in a way that may or may not have been constructive and was almost certainly bitchy. For example:
Speaking of our waitress, I’d noticed her as soon as we walked in to get a table because she was extremely attractive in a hipsterish sort of way. Not even beautiful per se so much as composed, like she’d just stepped out of a hip fashion mag. The other waitstaff were less skinny, smiled more, made more eye contact. We got the girl who’s probably waitressing only until her music/modeling/fashion design/interior decoration/etc career takes off. (Which it won’t.)
Personal insults weren’t called for, but she was a terrible waitress. She forgot to bring my coffee, and when we complained about waiting a full hour for our food, she tried to just deflect our anger with a pat explanation about how Jam makes all its dishes “from scratch,” to order, which is why they take a bit longer. But she didn’t apologize for the wait, and we only got this explanation after we’d been waiting an hour, and then only because we complained. This is a problem.
After talking to a couple of friends who were really impressed at Jam, I’m willing to give the restaurant some benefit of the doubt. However, I want to offer some (hopefully) constructive criticism of the service in hopes that it’ll inspire the Jam management to up their game a bit.
The concept behind Jam, in short, is fine-dining breakfast food in a casual breakfast setting. I’m not sure it works. Jam’s chef previously worked at Charlie Trotter’s, serving seven-course meals designed to be eaten over three or four hours. A fine meal in a great restaurant like Trotter’s is as much a performance as anything else: of course the food must be good and good food takes time. But the diners also need time enough to experience the meal, and time spent thinking about an empty (or absent) coffee cup or the like is time spent not watching the performance. It’s like if you went to a rock show and the sound was crappy—it would make it harder to enjoy the music no matter how good it was.
My point is, to elevate breakfast food without first elevating breakfast service is possibly a waste of material. Replacing ham in a dish with pork belly is nice, but not if the diner is so hungry that they wolf down the food without really appreciating the difference. And while an eater may have the luxury of patience around dinner time, you can’t fuck around with breakfast. If the haute eggs benedict will take a while, why not offer guests a pastry or two? Make sure their coffee cups are full? Check in with them, offer an apology?
You could say Jam is trying to be for brunch what The Violet Hour is for cocktail bars. Violet Hour (one of my favorite places ever) takes 15-20 minutes to make and serve a cocktail, something new guests are warned about both in the menu and by their server as soon as they sit down. This is a great move: it puts the experience into context so the focus can be on the great drink you’ll eventually have, not wondering why it’s taking so long. (The waitresses are also always ready with an apology if things are too slow, or anything else is out of place. TVH can be an intimidatingly hip place, but I’ve never felt at all unwelcome because their service just rocks.)
As for the assertion that “elevated” breakfast food requires an hour-long wait, I have just one word: Lula. Lula is possibly the most popular brunch destination in town, and I’ve had some of the most imaginative, wonderful breakfast food of my life there. They not only do elevated breakfast food, they’ve done a completely new menu every weekend for years. When we go there (and my girlfriend and I go there a lot), we frequently have to wait an hour or more for a table, but never for our food.
To be clear, I’m not saying I expected a personal apology from our waitress (or her bosses) so much as an acknowledgement that things were not up to spec. In the whole time we were waiting to eat, she only asked if we wanted something to drink once (and then she forgot to bring my coffee), and never asked how we were doing. I could understand rookie mistakes like these if this brand-new restaurant was being run by a first-time restauranteur. But not only did I go in knowing the owner had run several other places, they’re places I’ve been to and really enjoyed, and those experiences at Chickpea and Sugar were why I expected better than we got.
