I think they're still working out a few things but in general the place is pretty good. Â I think they could unbend a little on how they present the menu (no substitutions is fine.. but refusing to cook a burger medium rare or medium well? Â Lighten up folks!). Â
The service was painfully slow during this visit. Â It's a small venue and gets a little loud - thought to be perfectly fair, the service was so slow it was getting on my nerves and that could account for the feeling of noise and confusion. According to the Yelp scale, three stars is "A OK" and 2 stars is a "Meh"... so three is about right.
I'll come back in a few months and will update this review!
The Laurel is my favorite neighborhood restaurant. The staff is friendly and the atmosphere is charming. It's one of the few places in town that is both family and "date" friendly. I'm going to be a breakfast regular. The fresh fruit is really and truly freshly cut (strawberries, pears, bananas, apples.) Eggs are fluffy and tasty and the coffee is the best in town. Chicken salad for lunch is delicious. And the chicken pot pie, macaroni and cheese and vegetarian stew for dinner are hearty and heavenly. Highly recommend this place to anyone in the Maplewood/Millburn/Short Hills/West Orange area.
Review Source:Experienced The Laurel for the first time this past Wednesday. There was a good crowd in there for a Wednesday night. The atmosphere is much like the menu - simple, yet eclectic. Definitely veg/pesc friendly! We had the chickpeas, mac and cheese, one of the salads, the mussels and the vegan stew. I've never had chickpeas prepared that way. They were great! The wine sauce the mussels were in was fantastic. The stew was delicious..perfectly spiced and kept very well. Â I had it for lunch the next day and it was still great. I'm very excited to try the Fall menu (once it comes out) and I will definitely be back!
Review Source:Quality of the ingredients are top notch. Â A different mac n cheese than most are used to with an interesting 3 cheese sauce. Â Unfortunately, the cheese sauce is poured over the noodles and then baked only for a few minuets. Â It really doesn't have time to permeate the noodles and absorb the goodness of the cheese thereby making the sauce soupy and separating it from the noodles.
Very large tasty burgers.  I'm  not really a fan of brisket in a burger as it's a little gamey for my taste.  The buns are dense and too bready making the ratio of meat to bun off.  Adding to that is that the bun is served  cold over the burger.
French fries have a good cut but for me dark and overcooked.
Great tasting but unnecessary condiments are their own made ketchup and butter pickles.
I've been here once for dinner with my husband and once for brunch with my in-laws and son. Our overall impression was that the food was good, the atmosphere was sweet and the staff was lovely - all-be-it overworked. I'm giving it four stars because I support what they're trying to accomplish and I think there's massive potential. Improvements could include an expediter, or busing/second-string help for the wait staff. It's true that there tends to be a wait for food, and it doesn't necessarily all come at the same time, but all of our meals were tasty and I appreciate the direction they're going in. We'll def be back and will continue to monitor and report any progress - I hope they're able to get it together, because I think it'll be worth it!!
Review Source:I have to agree with Jim L. When you walk in the staff is very friendly and I appreciate the vibe and intention of the new restaurant. It has such potential! I have been to both dinner and breakfast. Most of the time if you come around 8, expect some menu items to no longer be available for dinner. Breakfast is delicious but a bit pricey for what you get and for how long you wait. All in all, I think if they work out some kinks this could be a fabulous restaurant and I plan to return to see if they're doing better.
Review Source:EDIT 8/25: In response to the manager's comment - we waited three weeks after your opening to visit, understanding that it takes new restaurants some time to work things out. If, almost four months later, you are writing off mistakes as "kinks being ironed out," I don't know what to say. As I said, we were one of two parties early on a Saturday morning. The place was not bustling. And the eggs were nowhere near "soft." The yolks tasted like very well done hard boiled eggs, and the dried out whites were completely caked to the bottom of the pan. Whoever cooked this dish had to know it shouldn't have been served. And on top of that, the waitstaff lied when I complained. Your comment that I should have requested them runnier shows me that you still don't understand the magnitude of this dish's hideousness. In retrospect, we should have just sent them back and asked for a refund, then picked up a sandwich down the street.
ORIGINAL REVIEW: I went here with my wife and two-year-old son a couple months ago for breakfast. Let me start by saying that the servers were very nice and the place is well-intentioned, but our experience was really bad.
We got there a little before nine, not realizing it wouldn't be open yet. That's a personal annoyance for me. I think if you're a place with a full breakfast menu, and you want to capitalize on that in Maplewood--a town with a lot of young families--you need to open an hour earlier. But that's just me. Regardless, they didn't even open on time. It was only five minutes late, but it's annoying. Still, all of this would have been just sort of unfortunate except...
They clearly weren't even prepped for breakfast. There was one other table of customers. We sat down at five after nine and ordered coffee right away. It took TWENTY FIVE minutes because they didn't brew it ahead of time, and they had to fill their huge mega-vats before doling me out a cup. And about that coffee--say what you will about the source and craft of the coffee. I thought it was pretty bad, really.
Anyway, we ordered banana pancakes for the lad, and the wife and I both decided on the skillet-baked eggs. I hadn't heard of this before, so we asked the waitress about it. She explained how they were made, and said they were served with runny yolks, unless you request otherwise. Sounds great, we love runny yolks.
I don't remember exactly how long it took to get our food. It had to have been at least a half hour. And still, there was only one other table in the place. The egg yolks were like golf balls. They were more set than hard boiled eggs. Eating the whites was like trying to chew through gym mats. It was easily the worst egg dish I've ever ordered at a restaurant. My wife and I started asking each other - "Did she say they're NOT served runny unless you request it?" There's no way this is the dish they meant to give us.
So I asked the waitress to clarify. She walked away and asked the other waitress. When she came back, she said something along the lines of, "I might have misguided you on that one. I think sometimes it just LOOKS like their runny, but I guess they're not." So it's pretty clear that the other waitress had her lie and tell us that this was how the dish was intended. If that's the case--if the dish was meant to be that way--that's WAY worse than if they were just accidentally overcooked. She offered to replace them, but we'd already been there at that point for almost an hour, so we just muscled through.
With a tip that cost us $42. I'm no champion of Maple Leaf - they're food is total run-of-the-mill diner food. But I'd rather spend $22 on a straightforward breakfast for three that's not trying to be something it's not. All that said, it seems a lot of people in this town don't have great taste in food, and I'm sure this place will do just fine.
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