Brunch at Jane

So we had been planning to get tickets for the Bills Jets game on Sunday for a couple of weeks now. We both took Monday off so we could go early and tailgate without any worries for the next day of work. Unfortunately fate intervened and took all of our money basically.

In the last week BOTH of our televisions, the living room one and bedroom one broke, and our Laptop stopped working. We basically had a technological meltdown in our apartment. Luckily our laptop is still covered under warranty, so we just mailed that out in the hopes that we will see it again soon fixed (knock on wood), but our TVs were another story.

I hate to say it but we have both become slaves to technology and couldn't last a day without the stupid thing. So we spent many late hours going to Circuit City, Best Buy, J & R, basically anyplace in the city that sells Television's- we went to.

In the end we came home with two fantastic new television's that should hopefully last us for a while. They should at least for the amount of money we spent on them! But the week really left us quite penniless so we decided to have an easy stay at home weekend and not buy the football tickets.

As Sunday rolled around though I was getting antsy and really needed to leave the apartment. Mr T was happy just gazing at the big new TV all day but I needed to go out and do something! So since it was a nice day and the football game wouldn't be on until 4:00 I thought we go out for brunch.

I jumped on Opentable Sunday morning and was surprised to see a reservation still available for Jane at 12:15. I have heard tons of positive reviews of Jane for brunch all over the Internet. A lot of people say it's the best brunch in the city, up there in the ranks with Balthazar & Five Points. So seeing a reservation still available I grabbed it.

Once I got Mr. T up and ready (he doesn't really function until about 1:00 on the weekend) we were off!

We got to Jane right on time and there were already about 15 people in line waiting for one of the walk-in tables. We went to the hostess station and immediately were seated in one of the two people tables against the wall.

I had heard the seating at Jane could be cramped and uncomfortable because the tables are so close together and was expecting the worst. I was pleasanly surprised to see the tables, although close together, were quite sizable giving you enough room to comfortably enjoy your meal. Compared to our table at the Spotted Pig, where the plate of food barely fit, this was roomy!

Once we sat down we were handed our menus and a basket of bread was promptly dropped off by another server a few seconds later. We decided on what to order and then tried out the bread.

The bread basket was pretty to look at but nothing special. The flatbread crackers were surprising spicy, which I actually didn't enjoy but the other pieces of bread had a nice flavor.

I thought it was a little strange that they gave us our bread so quickly, but as I would soon find out these other servers were a blessing in disguise as out waiter was not the fastest man in the room.

It was about 15 minutes after we got our basket that he finally arrived to take our order. I went for the Country breakfast and raspberry mimosa. Mr. T went for the Vanilla french toast and the bellini.

We handed our menus and started to get into a discussion about the upcoming week.

Literally about 3 minutes later a server was at our table, plates of food in hand.

Now I don't want to complain, but this was a little too fast for me. When I go out to eat I want to enjoy the experience, not have my food and run. We hadn't even been given our drinks yet! We didn't end up getting those drinks either for another 10 minutes or so. Our waiter seemed to have disappeared somewhere during this time.


Anyway onto the food! This is my Country Breakfast.

As you can see there's quite a lot of different things on this plate but it still looks boring, no? Anyway the grits were cooked perfectly as were the eggs and the bacon was some of the best I'd ever had. I wish they had given me more than one slice!

The biscuit and gravy were pretty forgettable but the sausage had a nice taste without being overly spicy.

Here's Mr. T's Vanilla Bean French Toast.

I have to say this was pretty good. The slices were nice and thick but had a milky texture almost when you cut into them. They were very sweet though. So sweet I could almost feel the toast giving me a cavity as I chewed it.

After we were both finished it took us about 20 minutes to finally flag down our waiter and grab the bill from him. You would think with all of the people waiting the waiter would want to turn over his tables more quickly.

Once we paid and got outside the line of people waiting had doubled in size, which leads me to this question. Our brunch was very good indeed but nothing special. I actually thought the country breakfast dish I had at Acme for brunch was better than this. The french toast was great but only slightly better than we've had at other places as well. Why does this place get all the hype? I certainly wouldn't wait outside for an hour to eat there again. Maybe I missed something?!

http://janerestaurant.com/index.asp