Jacks Monterey

My family and I dined here and while I am giving it 5 stars, I still would like to share my experience and provide feedback. Upon arrival, it was apparent that it was a busy evening. The desk was empty and a few minutes later, the hostess shouts from another side of the restaurant that she’ll be right with us (long line forming at this point). She was obviously very flustered. When she made it to the desk, there was not any greeting but she made eye contact, so I approached her and asked how she was and I received a “overwhelmed!”. Asked for a table for 4, and was told she needed to ask the servers. Then she came back and asked us to pick from a booth or table. We picked the table and when handing us a menu, told us that the servers were extremely overwhelmed and we needed to be patient with them. My husband comes from a background in this line of work and was extremely annoyed by this and her approach about it. I’m not sure if she might not have been in this role for long but her doing this almost ruined our dinner and gave us a bad first impression of the restaurant. We contemplated if we should leave at that point for faster service, as we had our small children with us. We were anticipating a longer than usual wait, but surprising we were greeted by our server Izabella within 10 mins. We had waters, lemonade, and our food about 10 minutes after that. Izabella was very polite and prompt and went out of her way to find crayons and a kids menu that the hostess had passed out to every child but ours (I say this because I watched her pass them out after restocking them. They were all out when customers were being seated). Izabella went above and beyond and was very friendly and professional. She is definitely the reason this review became 5 stars. Other than the super weird experience with the hostess (which is the first impression of every restaurant), the food was great as well as the dessert and we really enjoyed it. Food came out promptly and was hot and fresh. Lots of flavor and great presentation. Kids menu was a plus and had good options for the littles. The ambiance was great and would love to return but hope we don’t get the same hostess.

When we looked up this restaurant we didn’t know that it was inside the hotel. But we found it. 🤣🤣 It was really nice inside but we were looking for more of a romantic place. Also the menu we seen on the reviews was not the menu we received, it was like half the options we seen online. The waiter we had was really nice and got everything we asked for. Our food was really good too. In the end we had a really nice time. It was more of us just celebrating of anniversary together. O and the sweet potato tater tots were amazing.