JG’s Cafe

This place is clearly under new management since the last time I was here. The service is friendly. The food not so good. For a place that has six different eggs Benedict options you would think they would get it right. My plate was clearly left under the heat lamp for a long time. The sauce was congealed, the poached eggs were hard. The «famous» potatoes weren’t even cooked all the way. They were extremely bland. Needless to say I won’t be going back.

The service was okay until I found a French fry in my sangria, told the manager about it and he didn’t believe me because he says he personally makes it himself. He tried to bring me a new glass and said I didnt want it and he made me pay for it. Terrible customer service I’ll never come here again.

We got here around 10 am on a Saturday and were happy to find that this place was practically empty! (Blu Jam Café was packed!) Seated immediately and brought delicious coffee!
I got the Greek Omelet and it was perfect. Fiancé got lobster Benedict. It was also amazing.
I think this place rocks and is definitely well priced for the location.
In regards to negative views about the food and staff, we had super prompt and nice service (Saturday breakfast) and didn’t have any issues.

My partner and I live just a block away from JG’s and we frequently go there to have breakfast. We are amazed at the stupidity of people that would wait 1 to 2 hours to go to BLUE JAM for just Breakfast? I mean, who does that?. The menu at JG is amazing and the atmosphere is fantastic. The sitting space at JG is way better.
I give JG at 5 stars. BTW we tried blue jam one time and we hated it because the waiter had a big attitude.

Had guests from out of town and wanted to take them to Blu Jam Café, put our names down the wait was about 1 hour. After a bit of waiting we decided to walk around and went across the street to Vienna. The place wasn’t that busy and it look about 10 minutes before they sat us down. Once we sat down another 15 minutes went by before we decided to flag someone down to take our order. Once our order was taken literally it took 30 minutes before we got our food and one of the orders was not even made correctly. They also charged us for the wrong orders.
As we were waiting for our food we overheard a big guy with an apron walk up to the table behind us, apologizing and then telling them that he gave them a 5% family discount. Then he tried to get on their good graces by telling them that he has homemade crepes on the grill for them that is on the house, but the group left anyways. I turned around and look at one of the plates on the table and it was an Eggs Benedict with a poached egg that was a fully cooked yolk.
Just a FYI, if you are waiting for Blu Jam and decide to go else where, DONT! Just wait it out, there is a reason why there is a long wait.
Food: Mediocre
Service: Bad
Price: Not worth it

Food: Like everyone else said, mediocre.
Service: I’ve had better.
We ordered a Margherita pizza with pepperoni (if you want to add toppings, it’s an extra $ 3.00).
Our food comes (after what seemed like an hour) and it’s a plain cheese pizza. We told them it was a mistake and we wanted pepperoni on the pizza. The tall man with white hair (may be the manager or the owner, not quite sure) takes it back into the kitchen to fix it. After, maybe 20 more minutes of waiting for the pizza the same tall man comes out with the right order.
He also decided to blame us for the mistake that the waitress made. These were his exact words, «You know why it was wrong? It’s your fault, you ordered pizza with PEPPER.» Umm, excuse me? First of all, who orders a pizza with PEPPER? Second of all, you should NEVER tell a customer that it’s their fault, EVER.
If your food is not that great and you’re going to blame the customer for your waiter’s mistake, you can bet that I won’t be going back and I definitely will not recommend anyone to eat here.

This is the kind of place on Melrose you go to when there’s nowhere else to go.
Slow service, mediocre food. Open tables so you give in.
Shame, too. The Maître D’ could not have been nicer. They just need to hire some people who know how to cook, because i’ve had better buffalo wings at dive bars, and they need to hire servers who move a bit quicker.

We came here after hiking in the Hollywood hills. We actually wanted to go BluJam but the wait was a hour. Do not by any means resort to come here for that reason like we did… Service was slow even with no customers, food came out burnt, best was probably the free bread. Waitress was kinda weird, but attentive… she seemed socially awkward trying to make small talk… Food was plain, we’d probably be better off at a Dennys.
They had a drink specials and bottomless mimosas but why would you get that here?

We were shopping on Melrose Ave, when we started to get the hunger. I wasn’t super hungry, but being on holidays, I sure was getting thirsty for some booze. We stopped in here since it was one of the few places we spotted that had a bit of a patio and we don’t get nice weather like this in Vancouver, so we needed to soak up every last minute of it that we could.
We decided on sangria, since it’s such a fun summer drink, and we were starting our summer early. Our waitress who was as quirky as she was attentive, suggested that she could make a couple pitchers of sangria for us to make it a bit cheaper. The BF and I also ordered a margherita pizza to share since we both weren’t super hungry, unlike our friends who had just landed that day. (There were 7 of us that flew down for a wild weekend). I feasted on sangria, while the others just feasted.
I liked this little spot, we had lots of attentive service, our waitress was funny, we got to relax on a nice sunny patio, isn’t that what vacations are all about?

Only came here because Blu Jam was packed! Service was okay, but the food was definitely Meh. All of it. I’m not sure if the chefs know what poached eggs and eggs benedict are supposed to look like, but ours was overly cooked. The potatoes were pretty dry, and no one was impressed with their meal. It was reallly overpriced for breakfast too, about $ 11 – 15 per plate and you don’t even get a big portion. I wouldn’t come back here again.

After a lovely hike, my friends and I wanted to eat lunch in the area. We drove up and down Melrose Ave. and decided on Vienna Café since it was one of the few restaurants open today.
The interior decorations were modern with a Spanish twist. Coincidentally, soft Spanish music plays in the background. There was just enough lighting from the outside that made the inside comfortable so that I didn’t have to squint to read the menu because they didn’t really have any inside lights. The service was prompt and amicable.
Now onto the food portion of this review…
Complimentary bread with a dipping sauce which consisted of black olives, bell peppers, carrot bits, and etc. in this olive-​oil type sauce. It was quite tasty!
Most of the items on the menu sounded delicious. The main problem was the execution of the entrees. I ordered a Lobster Benedict (egg, lobster bits, asparagus bits, on a toasted English muffin) which also came with potatoes. The concept is there, but my English muffin was burnt, so I picked off the burnt areas. The asparagus wasn’t the most fresh as it lacked the vibrant green color. Lastly, my potatoes were burnt as well. Therefore, it made it hard to chew.

We wanted to go to Blu Jam Café instead but they had a super long wait so we came here instead. We didn’t know whether it was going to be good or not but it turned out to be nice!
They have complimentary chips and they serve guacamole which was pretty cool. Except they told us they’ll get more but they never came back. So that was disappointing. The food took an okay time for it to come out. I had one of the paninis and it was good but the bread soaked up all the oil and my hands became oily by grabbing onto it.

Before heading out to the Fairfax flea market, my friends and I wanted to get breakfast at Blu Jam café, but the wait was almost an hour so we opted to go to Vienna café which was right across the street.
THAT WAS A BAD MISTAKE.
There was no wait and so we were seated immediately inside.
I ordered the Sonoma Panini expecting it to be just as good as the other variations I have tried at different cafes/​restaurants… I mean how hard is it to grill some vegetables and put it on 2 pieces of bread?
I get my food at the first thing I realize is that the bread is NOT the type of bread you use for a panini. It was some softer type of bread, maybe ciabatta?, but the restaurant did NOT SPECIFY the type of bread on the menu. I mean how can you call it a panini and not have it come out as a panini? Might as well have named it the sonoma sandwich.
Anyways, I decided to give it another try although I was very disappointed because I wanted a panini and not a sandwich. So I took a bite and was again disappointed. There was NO TASTE. The grilled veggies were soggy and tasteless and the bread started to turn into mush because of the juice from the vegetables. I barely took 2 bites and stopped eating it.
I was so disappointed at the meal and at myself for not just toughing it out and waiting an hour at blu jam.

After a good shopping trip, it was time to eat! It was pretty packed but was able to get seated pretty quick. The atmosphere was interesting; the décor by the wall of the table I sat had what looks like a garage door painted it was neat. FREE BREAD! oh yah it was pretty good too and went nicely with the relish in olive oil. Besides that I ordered the margherita pizza which was a good portion sized. Very cheesy but fresh. I also got to try the black forest ham croissant which was hearty and as well tried the lobster quesadilla which was pretty bomb. I love lobster! haha. Our waitress was intentive to our needs and friendly too! She even told us about the tweet/​check-​in on fb media deal where we got a good discount! SCORE! How nice of her to even mentioned it to us :) cute place to each brunch and lunch!

The plates they served the food in looked dirty!!! There was residue all over the plate with streaks and finger prints… Gross!!!
When i cut into the Royal Benedict a bunch of salty water sprayed out of the egg and flooded the plate like a damn tsunami… I ask for another and after 20 minutes they brought me two poached eggs… Just two eggs by themselves lol so I explained again and they finally brought me a new plate. Only with less potatoes this time. I also tried the Belgian Waffles wich were ok, nothing special.
The guy making the seating reservations out front was trying to be entertaining, an he gave us some free tickets to a comedy show there. Over all i wasn’t really happy, food is over-​rated and over priced. The only good thing was the bread they serve before your meal, it was freshly made and delicious! The oil for the bread was pretty good too but the food was a let down.
The only reason we stoped here was because I wanted to go to The Blue Jam Café across the street but it was a 2 hour wait and I already had pumped my parking meter full of coins…
Don’t waste your time or money on here.

So apparently this is place people come to when blu jam gets too crowded… and I can see why. While the location is good, and they technically serve the same stuff as any other breakfast place, Vienna is just not as good somehow.
I got the VeggiEx, which was sunny side up eggs baked with spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms and goat cheese, topped with sage hollandaise sauce and served with Vienna potatoes and toast. I asked our server to put the hollandaise on the side, since I had just went hiking for the first time in ages and want to continue feeling like I am a healthy person.
We must have sat there for at least 30 minutes, and they still didn’t bring out our food. We had unintentionally (or was it intentional?) finished all the bread at this point. Side note: the bread is pretty delicious, especially with the homemade olive oil mix. But anyway, we eventually ask the server to check on our food, and a minute after this, she promptly brought out our food. Were we supposed to have to ask for it?
My friend and I both thought that the food looked like it had been sitting out for a while. Like it had been ready for the last 20 minutes, just waiting on the counter to be brought out. And mine had hollandaise all over it. I’m not one to make a big fuss when servers forget my special requests, but still, I take note of it.
My dish was okay — nothing special. Maybe it would’ve tasted better if it were warmer. And seriously, they were having too much fun with the hollandaise.
With all the breakfast/​brunch places along Melrose, I probably wouldn’t be back.
P. S. if you’r goal is blu jam, I say just wait it out. Don’t settle!

The food was not good. Sorry to say this place really is an overflow for the Blu Jam Café.
Improve the food, improve the service. Allow substitutes, even if you ave to charge more, some of us cant eat dairy!

So the wait at Blue Jam Café was like 1 hour and 15 minutes long… and there was no way we were going to wait for that length of time or in the rain, so we went across the street to Vienna Café to be pleasantly surprised.
It was busy, but we were immediately seated. The food came with complimentary bread and some olive oil dipping thing with cucumbers, and it was really good. There was an assorted variety of breads in the basket and it was served warm and slightly toasted. Really yummy. I warn you not to eat too much of the bread or you might be too stuffed for the entrée like mee.
We ordered the lobster benedict (~$ 12)and the french toast with blue berries, banana, and mascarpone ($ 9). Very delicious. The lobster benedict was really tasty and the ingredients looked fresh. The french toast was not too sweet or overpowering and I thought the servings for both entrees would’ve been good if we had not eaten so much of the bread.

I’m curious how many people have gone to Vienna because Blu Jam was too full?
I had an eggs benedict which was very average. The service was a bit on the slow side. On the upside there is outside seating on Melrose which is great on sunny days. Wait — I’m in LA, they’re all sunny days.

It’s pretty decent food, but I prefer Blu Jam across the street. If Vienna Café were in a different location that didn’t offer a better alternative, it would be 4 stars. Location… Location… Location.
I eat here when Blu Jam’s wait is too long.

I’ve been going to Vienna for years. The service has always been hit or miss. The food occasionally isn’t as good as other times. One reason I went back time and time again was the manager Kamryn, who was always talking to customers, especially the regulars, and trying to fix whatever problems had occured. I really nice guy and cared about the customer. Saturday we went for brunch. Kamryn is gone and it shows. Not really sure if I will go back.