Jones

Jones
700 Chestnut St.

Outside the restaurant

Monkey Bread

Banana Pancakes

Biscuit sandwich

My goodness. Sometimes it feels like I only eat at Stephen Starr restaurants. And I am kinda embarassed by that. When my parents were in town visiting, I really felt challenged to take them anywhere besides SS eateries. Yes, there's the whole BYOB scene and the cute brunch places in Old City, but sometimes if you don't want to wait forever to get a table, you have to look for alternatives.

We went to Jones for Sunday brunch. We arrived shortly after they opened (they don’t take reservations) but there were tons of tables available.

Now Jones is known for its 1950’s kitsch: i.e. comfort food galore. It’s a brilliant idea for a restaurant, yet I expected them to capitalize on the theme much more then they did – going the whole diner route. I sort of expected the décor to match the theme, but it was much more modern – dark wood, dark lighting, etc.

I guess when you come for lunch or dinner, the menu is more apparently kitcsch: mac & cheese, devils’ food cake from a box mix, etc. The brunch menu is a little more subdued, it looked like a standard brunch menu: French toast, banana pancakes, omelettes, etc. I had a biscuit sandwich with scrambled eggs and cheese. Good, but the biscuit wasn’t quite as good as Morning Glory. The eggs were done perfectly though, nice and dry. Oh and it came with tater tots, I guess those are pretty retro.

The one miss was the pancakes – giant, dry, with just two small banana slices plopped on top. Disappointing.

Oh we started with a house specialty, the monkey bread (is that retro?). it wasn’t very fresh unfortunately – if they had fully heated it up it probably would’ve been a lot better. It was topped with way too much powdered sugar icing, and served with an additional little cup of the icing. Strange.