Went to Juniper last night with a few friends for my buddy’s birthday. He is the one who decided on the restaurant because he had an absolutely magical time when he went two years ago and they had a $75 tasting menu. During that time, the course portions were filling and absolutely delicious.
We all decided to do their tasting menu again. The tasting menu was $110 this time, which was surprising but everything has increased in price in the last couple years so I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt that way.
Our reservation was at 8:45 for 6 of us, and about 5 mins from when we got seated the waiter came over and took our drink orders. We should have also given him food orders right then and there, because we waited about 10 mins before he came back and took our order.
We had a couple dietary restrictions at our table (two of us were vegetarian, one was pescatarian), and the rest of us had the regular tasting, which came with a choice of either pork belly or New York strip for the entree. We also put in a couple a la carte items – the bread appetizer for sharing, as well as the rigatoni.
It took another 15-20 minutes for the bread to come out, and that wasn’t a part of the tasting menu. To be fair, the bread was incredible and it seemed freshly baked, so I gave them a pass on the time it took to come out.
It took another 30 mins for the first course to come out, which was 3 small semi-cold bites on a tiny plate. To be fair, the bites looked a bit complicated with a lot of elements, and they had to make 6 sets of bites at once, so I gave them a pass for that one.
After those 3 first bites, it felt like we were waiting for ages between the first and second course. By the time the second course came out, it was already 10:30. It was a small bowl of stuffed pasta in a mushroom soup broth. It tasted fine but needed seasoning. My vegetarian friends told me their broths tasted a bit fishy. It wasn’t a lot of food for how long we waited, so we all had to share the a la carte rigatoni that my friend had ordered for herself because we were so hungry.
The third course was a single scallop with a squash risotto that felt more like a mush, and the scallop was cooked perfectly but had little seasoning. The risotto reminded me of one of the local fine dining restaurants in my hometown whose menu primarily catered to old rich people with no teeth, so everything was puréed or overcooked so they could use their gums to break down the food.
It took until about 11:15 for that third course to come out, and by then we were not in the mood to stay longer and we just wanted to get out of there, so we asked for the entrees to go and for them to just bring out the dessert.
I also talked to the waiter about how disappointed about the service we all were, and kindly asked him to relay that to the manager, and he responded in a very dismissive tone, almost like that service was expected of the restaurant and we were idiots for expecting otherwise. He also claimed that he had fired the ticket for the tasting menus only an hour ago and the tasting usually takes 2 hours. If that were true, why would he wait so long to put in the order for the tasting, when we had gotten there hungry at 8:45? Also, if it was expected to take 2 hours, shouldn’t they have put that on the menu to inform us about deciding what to get?
Before we left we got the Togo entrees in very small boxes. I’ve included pictures of our “entrees” and you can judge for yourself whether it’s worth the wait.
Overall, thoroughly disappointed and sad, because this was my buddy’s favorite restaurant and he felt bad about giving the rest of us a poor experience.
Side note: We went to a hookah bar after the meal to chill, smoke, and drink some herbal tea for a while before heading home, and to be honest, that hookah bar was worth the $110 we paid at the restaurant. Check out Heady House on E 7th!
by rvi857