I can’t tell you how awful my experience was here.  I think their whole concept just doesn’t work.

Open kitchen is cool and the grey and green interior is trendy, but there are definitely way too many tables in here for the size of the kitchen.  Is it acceptable to serve breakfast/brunch to someone after 40 minutes of waiting?  For a place that specializes in breakfast and brunch only, I found it very displeasing.  The only somewhat saving grace is the yummy breakfast amuse-bouche.  I guess they serve this because they know that breakfast will take forever to deliver!

Carrot Cake Amuse Bouche

You’re probably now wondering, “what about the food?”  I’ll give Jam credit for having “different” and “innovative” breakfast options but execution failed miserably.

Given the small but interesting menu, I couldn’t decide what to order so I requested the help of our waiter.  Immediately he said, “oh, we have hands-down, the best French toast in the city.  It’s soooo good!  We’ve eaten it over over Chicago and nothing beats our French toast!”

Malted Custard French Toast

I NEVER order sweets for breakfast but I felt that if I didn’t order this dish, then I wouldn’t have had a fair experience at Jam.  Although the Malted Custard French Toast looked pretty, the insides of it was just terrible.  It was soggy and eggy and horribly gooey.  I was so hungry after waiting so long that I just cut off the crusts.

My husband ordered the Biscuits and Gravy which resembles NOTHING like what you think it will look like – which I thought was a great idea, but it definitely needs work.  Instead of a white gravy, expect a dark brown mushroom gravy with dry biscuits and little tiny, tiny pieces of purple cauliflower sprinkled on the side of the plate.  Again, plated nicely but not very good.

Biscuits & Gravy

I think aside from the super long wait time at Jam, the most disappointing aspect of the experience was that the food didn’t taste like how I expected it to be. Or maybe after such a long wait, my expectations became extremely high.  Given that this place has been open for more than 3 months now, I think this is a very fair review.  Don’t believe the hype around this restaurant.