J Alexander's Restaurant

J Alexander's is a pretty good spot for a casual lunch or dinner.  It's not very inviting inside, but people love it because they have certain favorites.  To me, it's looks and presents (menus) like a high-end coffee shop, with considerable prices for undistinguished  sandwiches and ridiculously large salads.   Lunch for two with tea (for me) and coffee (for my friend) was $44--no appetizer, no dessert, no wine, no beverages other than water.  You be the judge!

Way overpriced, servers are rude and the food was not that good. I will most likely avoid this place forever.

I need to start off with saying that I should have listened to Yelp.  A friend suggested J Alexander's for dinner tonight so I pulled it up on Yelp, read the reviews and a group of four of us went.  Parking is always a challenge over there but we found a pay spot in front right away tonight.  At 7pm they were dead.  Maybe 20 people tops.  Bad sign.   To make things worse the few patrons that were there were not really the kind of people I want to dine with.  Sure we didn't have to sit with them but they were still located in the same enclosed space as me.  Loud, obnoxious and just not the type of crowd one would expect to find in this great area.  In fact, we were waiting for a fight to break out or one of them to stand up and announce a robbery.  I'm not kidding.

Very nice hostesses greeted us and sat us at a table that was way too tight.  At my request they moved us to a larger table.  Nice decor but kind of a fancy step up from a greasy spoon with dimmed lights.  No really.  Kind of nice like trying to be a Chicago steak house but on a super tight budget.

Wait staff was competent and attentive with a decent menu.  Here is where I made my mistake though.  So I tell my group that Yelpers said to get the Mac & Cheese, or the roasted chicken or the veggie burger.  Did any of us listen?  No.  I got the hanger steak and fries.  Very low end steak with garlicky butter melted on top.  The butter killed it.  The exact opposite of Ruth Chris.  Fries were good though.  I started off drinking water but had to switch to soda to wash down the lousy taste of the garlic butter.  Another Yelp review said that your soda glass would never be empty.  That was true.  

Right about now several other groups of unassociated undesirables walked in and were seated.  Now they are all around us.  I could just see it in the faces of the wait staff.  I'm sure they're thinking, "Oh no.  These people are going to work me like a dog and not leave a tip."

The other guys got the prime rib sandwich.  One was cold and the other two were "OK."  I'm not saying we didn't eat our food.  We did.  We were hungry.  But if I had a time machine I would warp back two hours and eat something else.  No.  Eat somewhere else.  

I guess that says it all.  I'm going to find a large roll of antacid now.