J. Baldwin's Restaurant & To-Go

Great place. Amazing bar selection of cocktail drinks and great menu. Wait staff needs work but that's only item keeping it from having 5 stars

My family and I (2 adults and 2 children) dined at J. Baldwin's last Friday night to celebrate our Anniversary. The restaurant was nice and busy, and we were seated right away (I did have a reservation). I wish I could say our service was really good, but it was just ho hum. Perhaps our server was having a bad day, but regardless he barely did the minimum. When we declined appetizers it went down hill. No explanation on the dough balls (we had to ask another server), no refreshers on my husbands ice tea, my sons meal was cold. My husband had to ask more than once for a condiment for his sandwich, which took forever since it appeared our server was avoiding us (my children sit very well at restaurants, we have no issues with them).  When my husband took my sons to the bathroom, the fire exit was blocked with boxes and it looked like the hallway was being used for storage.

My salad was the probably the highlight of our dinner, it was excellent. I had the salad with the baked goats cheese.

We have another gift card to J. Baldwins (only one of ours was honored), but I doubt my entire family will be going back. Perhaps I'll try their lunch service. I really hope it's better.

Based on all the five star reviews we were looking forward to trying J Baldwin's. Unfortunately, there was nothing about our food that would excite me about going back. Granted, all three of us had burgers so we didn't have a varied sampling of the menu. The "ultimate baldy" burgers appeared to be cooked to perfection (medium rare), but they were dense, tough, dry (not a drop of juice on the plate) and not seasoned. The lamb sliders were juicy, but lacked complexity in flavor. The whole grain buns had good texture and flavor.

Of note, our server hit us hard with up selling throughout our meal. It started as soon as we sat down with suggesting that we get bottled Jones Soda ($3.19) instead of the soda on tap "because it's not very good here."  (Shouldn't they do something about improving their soda dispenser?) I bet she asked us five times if we wanted to add fries, soup etc, to our burgers.

If I pay $9 for a burger (not including any sides) I want it to be mouth watering memorable. These were forgettable.