Jensen's Food & Cocktails — Restaurant in Eagan

When dining solo, I prefer bar seating to avoid tying up a table. Jensen's bartenders were most welcoming, even after my line about being "not old enough to drink." In fact, the bar served other solo diners and couples during my leisurely meal, thus adding to the comfort I felt about being there.

Over a couple of hours starting around 17:20, dinner started with a Heineken 0.0 NA, then a cup of French onion soup. After finishing the (excellent) soup, I ordered the sautéed walleye fillet without panko breading. It was preceded by Jensen's famous popover accompanied by a generous portion of whipped butter, and a green salad topped with mandarin orange slices and vinaigrette dressing.

Here's a flavor hack to enhance the broiled walleye experience even more: run the tines of your fork through the popover plate's whipped butter just before skewering a bite of the walleye.

Bartenders were glad to serve coffee with my dessert, a flourless chocolate torte with raspberry sauce & whipped cream. Anywhere else, "raspberry sauce" might be little more than a raspberry-flavored syrup, but Jensen's torte was generously covered with actual raspberries in a sauce with just the right balance of tart and sweet. The whipped cream was elegantly placed on the circumferential perimeter of the torte.

My one suggestion? Jensen's, please consider size-pricing your chocolate torte by the circumferential inch (or centimeter). A slice 1/4 to 1/3 of what you served me would have been well worth the price for me and my appetite (based on years of living and eating in Japan). Others, with bigger appetites or an inclination to share one dessert among friends, would of course be pleased to order bigger slices.

Thank you for a pleasant...

My wife and I haven't been to Jensen's for several years, pre-pandemic, at least. The last time we were there, we thought the food was excellent, but overpriced for what it was. We received a mailer with a coupon for $20 off a second entree, so we thought we'd give it a shot again.

We each ordered martinis. I asked for a lemon twist instead of olives. Our cocktails arrived and sure enough, both had olives. Not a huge deal, but we were sitting in the bar, and the bartender who made our drinks also took our order, so this wasn't an issue of poor communication between staff. He quickly made me a new cocktail, and it was as good of a martini as I could expect.

My wife asked if she could get the crab cakes as an entree, and they were happy to accommodate that. I ordered the ribeye, and we ordered au gratin potatoes to share.

We both enjoyed our salads. The lettuce was fresh and both were appointed with a perfect amount of dressing. The popovers came out hot and their honey butter is fantastic--A+ here. The crab cakes were top notch, being mostly crab with very little filler. My steak was perfectly seasoned and cooked medium-rare just as I ordered it. The potatoes did not arrive with our entrees. We mentioned that to the food runner and she said she'd get it handled. After we'd finished 3/4 of our entrees, the potatoes arrived. We chose to refuse them as we were almost finished with our entrees. They removed the potatoes from our tab without us having to ask.

Overall, we both really enjoyed our food. The two ball drops with the cocktail and the potatoes are unfortunate, but forgivable, and they handled it OK. We likely won't go back any time soon as there are other restaurants we frequent that are a better value in...

For the first time ever we decided to dine out on Thanksgiving and it was so disappointing.

The food was OK. The lettuce salad they served us was completely brown. I understand that doesn’t mean it’s “bad” but you’d think for a nice restaurant on Thanksgiving, they’d at least care enough to have a good presentation- even just adding some fresh lettuce to the top? The asparagus was undercooked, green bean casserole was burnt, turkey and prime rib were good overall. They advertised a dessert bar- it was some really awful looking apple crisp dumped on a plate, pumpkin pie and dry chocolate cake on what looked like a folding table. That’s not a dessert bar.

The biggest issue was the service. We sat down and waited a crazy long time for our server to come take our drink orders, an even longer time to take our food orders. She didn’t give us any silverware- we had to go find some ourselves because she was no where to be found. We had been sitting for over an hour before we got our dinner. At one point I asked her if there were dinner rolls because our children were getting hungry and she responded “Yes we bring those right away.” Right away when? She didn’t give them to us with our drinks - we didn’t get them until 20 minutes after ordering our food. I think she came back once to see if things were ok.

Maybe the food and service is better on non holidays but Thanksgiving...