Jay J's -- the Crispy Pata massacre

BEFORE:



AFTER:

If the "after" picture does not say how much we enjoyed Jay J's Crispy Pata then I don't know what will.

Aside from the crispy pata, our barkada package included the following:

Rice and extra Sinigang soup

Pancit Canton

Bonoan Boneless Bangus Sinigang

Kare-kare

Turon

We opted to add P100 to the P1,100 package price so we could get a 1.5 liter bottle of soda.

The Jay J's we went to was in SM Fairview but the barkada package we ordered is also available at all their branches.

While we immensely enjoyed the food, I did not fancy the slow service.

Getting someone to "welcome" us and find a table for us was a disappointment -- nobody paid attention to our group as we entered so I just pointed to the first available table I saw.

Nobody even bothered to hand us the menu -- I got one on our way in.

After we have settled in and finally got somebody to take our order, nobody bothered to set the table up and give us plates and utensils. I had to point this out because the table behind us had plates and utensils even before it was even occupied. And, the people who occupied that table (who came in minutes after us) were served water in glasses as soon as they were seated. So, what gives? Are they getting better service because they were a bigger group and our group only had 3 adults and a 2-year old kid?

For an establishment that does not charge a service fee, you would expect the crew/servers to work doubly hard to get some tips -- and a bigger group does not necessarily mean they would give a bigger tip. I give tips based on the service I get and yes, I did not bother to leave them even a measly 20 bucks. It's just that every server seem to disappear into the kitchen and nobody was around to respond to a customer waving to get somebody's attention except for a server who was either attending to another group or bringing food out of the kitchen.

Fortunately, their food, especially the Crispy Pata, more than made up for their lousy service. I would give their food and the package price 4 stars -- but their service not even a fraction more than 2 stars.

I couldn't say much about the place's cleanliness or ambiance... it was rather dark inside and I was too hungry to nit-pick about anything else than the service, but it was definitely hot in there despite having 2 split-type air-conditioners, if I'm not mistaken.

I was about to ask to be moved to a cooler spot but my husband said the warm temperature might have something to do with keeping the food warm and the soup smoking. Hmmm... made sense and again, I was too hungry to want to move so we stayed put. You can probably tell how hungry we were by how fast the Cristy Pata was devoured... the time on the pictures record a difference of 35 minutes but it was really faster than that -- 15-20 minutes maybe. I just forget to take pictures soon enough so that accounts for the longer time lapse.

Over-all, Jay J's gets 3 stars. I would have given them a higher rating if not for their crummy service.

And, as they say (or did I coin this saying myself?), "Bad service comes in 3s" ... we got another round of bad service at Sakae Sushi -- more on them in my next blog entry.

So should I except one more round of crummy service to break the jinx? I'll find out this weekend.