P J’s Boulevard Cafe

1 Reviews on “P J’s Boulevard Cafe”

• Ajay

  Quirky outdoor dining. I’ve never done the dine and dash, but I have a feeling that if I had it would have been here.This restaurant has always been a curiosity to me because the few reviews you find on the Internet are so scalding, and yet it always seems reasonably busy when you walk by in Old Town. Having been inside now, I realize that it’s not all that busy and just has a small indoor space. It has four booths pretty close to a long counter, and an L-shaped table in the corner. It feels a little too cozy in there, so I always opt for the outside. There, they have several sturdy but plastic tables, with similar plastic chairs and wood-pole umbrellas coming out the middle.Since the place is so small, one waitress covers both the inside and outside, and has to keep remembering to come check on the guests at the outside tables, most of which can’t be seen from the inside. This is the source of a lot of the complaints you’ll find. Both times I’ve come here I’ve walked inside to let them know I’d be eating outside because I wasn’t sure how they’d realize it otherwise. (The outdoor section is just on the sidewalk instead of being a patio from the inside.) I also had an awfully long wait for the check my second visit, and ended up walking inside. That seems to be the effective approach (just treating it as fast casual) but it will probably irk a lot of patrons, even though the waitress is pretty friendly.The food I’ve had is above average taste, but not by a lot, and pretty plain offerings for lunch. The lunches are mainly sandwiches, with a few Mexican items. My grilled turkey had nice, crisp bread, plus surprisingly thick turkey meat inside and a mix of a few ingredients like avocados that ended up working pretty well from a texture standpoint. My coleslaw was a little strange in that the sauce was nice and sweet but the cabbage was bitter as if it either wasn’t fresh or had been left in the sauce for way too long.The Spanish omelette I had for breakfast was pretty good — a big step up from my omelet from The Breakfast Cafe. They’d clearly taken some care in mixing in the cheese well, so it blended pretty well with the avocados and olives inside and formed an interesting two-cheese pile on top. The hash browns that came with were large in size (like the omelet), and a bit soggy but still kind of average in taste. I did notice that like the sandwich bread, the English muffin I got had an awful lot of butter, so you might want to make a request about less or none.All in all, it’s not bad, but it’s hard to picture going to lunch here when there is such fierce competition in Old Town.

  January 2, 2010, 12:53 am

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