Lunch at Jamie’s

I won’t spend too much time here going over the folksy and divey wonderfulness that is Jamie’s atmosphere.  It was already written about in very lively prose here in the Bee a few weeks ago.  Suffice it to say that if you do go to Jamie’s, leave your chauffeur and Phaeton at home.  You’ll probably want to borrow your brother’s car with the mismatched fenders and the plastic Jesus on the dashboard.  But you come here because you want to know about the food, right?  To that end, a group of us from the Sacramento Food Group went to Jamie’s yesterday to test the grub.  All told there were four of us, Melly, Jenny, Robert and me (For the sake of clarity and in case another person named Robert enters into this piece, I will heretofore refer to my dining companion Robert as “Cobra Commander.”).

So, a little in advance of the lunch hour, we grabbed a cigarette scarred table in Jamie’s main dining room and looked over the menu.  The options were pretty basic, burger, club, open faced turkey, steak sandwich and a few salads.  I opted for one of the specials, a tri tip sandwich, and my companions had similar dishes save for Cobra Commander who went for the crab cakes.  When our food came out in a rather staggered fashion a little while later, we all looked at it with anticipation mingled with just a touch of fear.  You see, the meat in our sandwiches was cut to the thickness of a piece of sheetrock.  Jenny’s Rueben had only three slices of pastrami, but each slice was enough to rip out any dental work she’d had done since childhood.  Undaunted, we filed our incisors to a razor sharp point and dug in.

The verdict from all four of us was that the food met the standard of “OKness” without being “really good” or anywhere close to “great.” (We opt for a sophisticated rating system over at the Food Group.)  Cobra Commander’s crab cakes were heavy on the cake and light on the crab, decent but not special.  The fries and potato salad were also decent without being memorable.  Melly’s steak sandwich was thin and a bit underwhelming.  In fact, the most memorable thing was that the waitress referred to each of us as “sweetheart” at least thrity times a piece.  Overall, a slightly disappointing experience  for the afternoon.  As much as we wanted Jamie’s to impress, it failed to do so, just like I am going to fail in having that whole Cobra Commander thing pay off here at the end. 

Jamie’s Broadway Grill-Broadway and 5th st, Sacramento

Food** Atmosphere*** Service***