BlackJax American Pub & Grill Restaurant — Restaurant in Amity Township

This place is doomed by poor decisions. We stopped in with the hopes that the revitalized interior and menu might turn this place around. We prefer to support local businesses but this place just can't seem to get it right or attract the right crowd.

The good: the remodel looks great. The menu is nice in theory. Has great facilities for live music. Live music was there during our visit.

The bad: remodeling decisions: really small TV's over the windows, no foot rest at the bar, lots of echo, bathrooms untouched, still broken and rusty faucets, dirty, smells like urine, someone emptying their tobacco spitter in the urinal.

The bad: tap selection: awful. In a time when micros are abundant and attract crowds, this tap is full of light beers and domestic majors and similar/surpassed by the likes of Applebee's and TGIF's .

The bad: service: hasn't changed, no personality, often still slow while the bartenders fraternize with friends. You have to ask for a refill rather than being asked. Generally inattentive even with a small crowd.

The bad: menu selection and execution. IMO, this place would do way better with a much smaller menu, so they could focus on quality and execution, master that then introduce ever changing daily or weekly specials. See the attached: steak quesadilla. Without reading the description, we assumed real steak sliced and integrated into a quesadilla. The reality was steakums in a flour tortilla, literally swimming in grease. We also got nachos which had an unappetizing bean mixture? spread on them and the $4 chicken add-on, which was basically chunks of unseasoned chicken thrown around the plate as an afterthought as though it was forgotten during prep. We ate only half of each and the bartenders didn't think to ask our opinion on the food.

In summary, we don't have a lot of local options and we need them desperately. It's been long enough now that mere chance isn't the reason blocking their success. We want you to succeed. Bring us quality food, drinks, service and entertainment and we will patronize and...

I attended a birthday party at this restaurant and initially thought oh the staff is much better than last year. Nope the service ended up being worse. We asked for a mop and 15 minutes later guarding the spot so no one slipped I had to go and ask if the mop was coming? I immediately got an attitude that they didn’t know a mop was needed and the person holding the party did ask for it. The girl obviously forgot and didn’t want to fess up to it. Also, At a table of 10 people she messed up 8 orders. When asked if they had chicken soup and French dressing for soup she said yes but later was told by someone else they didn’t and why would she tell you that when we don’t have it. A child’s meal was completely forgotten. Chicken parm sandwich was put in as a dinner and was given an attitude because “you didn’t say you wanted a sandwich”. Which he did. Crispy chicken wrap was grilled chicken. Was not asked how we wanted our burgers and were over cooked. When a meal comes with soup or salad you Should ask and not assume because not everyone likes a Caesar salad. FYI. The list goes on and on oh and as stated by obviously the man in charge at the time “she is our best waitress” if she is the best you are definitely in trouble. When you know a party is going to be held you need to have extra help because at the end we were the ones who cleared your tables FYI as you chose not to send someone down to check on us. I don’t care if you think I was unreasonable at my requests like can we please get some ketchup when all three bottles were empty and I was told “I already brought some down”. There was never any replacements and a little cup on ketchup was brought down for a table with 10 people. Maybe the owner should be around more and check up on these situations. This business have a great space to hold parties but needs to improve on there service. By far one of the worst experiences every and last year at this same place was bad...

July 12 my husband and I wanted a date night. Being new to the area we googled and found this place. It looked pretty good from the outside. Reviews were iffy...we asked about the “chef creation or special?” On the menu... she said they weren’t doing that. Ok no big deal. We ordered a drink from the bar and they didn’t have the right stuff to make it... ok... we ordered another drink that was mediocre and not mixed well at all. We mixed it ourselves at the table with a straw. We ordered an app of crab bites which were ok. Not bad but not great. In addition we ordered the pork platter which again was ok. I know good bbq and this wasn’t the worst but nothing great and nothing we’d come back for. The worst was the crab Mac n cheese for one main reason: the sauce which was like an Alfredo was fine and tasty but crab?! This is a 20$ meal... you’d expect real crab or lump crab.... it was shredded barely there canned crab.... so we paid 20$ for a can of crab and noodles and sauce!?! Not worth it. Charge me 20$ for crab Mac n cheese and stick some real crab in it! Not something I could whip up at home for a couple bucks . We asked if our two entrees qualifies for the 2 for 39$ or was it 29$ ? Anyways no because we got “seafood” .... that was an expensive can of crab... We asked what the desserts were and she didn’t know. After a long wait we got a dessert menu which she tells us: they don’t have a couple items on the very limited menu.... wow shocker... This was not a good experience. Shame. We had a 70$ bill and we both left feeling utterly disappointed to have spent that amount on sub par food and wished we would have stayed home. We...