Left Bank Downtown — Restaurant in Jersey City

FIRST. THE BURGERS WERE GREAT. So, go there for the food alone. The burgers, were gosh darn fantastic. So, if you want an excellent amazingly filling burger. Go there. Get one.

But, the servers or at least the two that I dealt with were complete hipster douche bags. And this isn't me being a stick in the mud, difficult customer who has the poor man mentality where I go out to eat just to treat people like garbage because I want excellent service and I'm important and haven't done anything in my own life so I must treat others lower than me. None of that, I figuratively am incapable of that. I've waited tables and tended bars for around 10 years, so I get the not liking your job but still having to be that world. But when people act as if you are interrupting there oh so important life, and then having to transfer servers because the original girl couldn't deal with our party of six not all being on the same page and knowing exactly what we want the moment we walked in.(not McDonald's sugar, we need to read the menu and not just shout the numbers) So, she transferred us because apparently waiting 3 minutes for us all to get our orders together is such an inconvenience, for a waiter.... A WAITER, a person in the SERVICE INDUSTRY whose job is to take our order. How did you mess that up? All you had to do was walk up, say ready, we say no, you walk away and wait until we stop staring at the menu's. That's all you had to do. What social cues do you lack and what service orientation did you skip to not know that simple step? So, we got another guy who had the personality of a dead moth. When two of us got a refill of water the fantastic man who was trained in the highest order of ethics and hygine grabbed out glasses from the top. So, if your reading this and imaging it, don't think about grabbing a glass and holding it the way you would drink from it, think about sticking your fingers in so they get mixed in with ice and liquid and pinch your fingers together. We then watched him after sticking his fingers in our glasses, begrudginly fill them with water and then bring them back to us. Then, actaully appear offended that we wanted a different glass that he hadn't stuck his fingers inside of. I want you to know, since I've started writing this, it went from 5 stars. To 3. To 1. Again. FANTASTIC BURGER. Loved the food, we all did. If you can order food to go, do it. It would save you having to deal with the super angry at life take it out on everyone and miserably walk through my day people that work there.

So, that's my vent. I'm sure they will read this and laugh and say, yeah, ha ha... this guys a jerk. He doesn't know anything. But I've had these reviews on me. It made me look at my life and go, if I suck at waiting tables, or suck at writing reviews or suck at doing backflips no matter how you dice it, I suck. And me personally, I don't like being bad at anything. Because if you are okay being horrible at one thing then you are okay at being horrible at all things. You have that personality where you shrug your shoulders and make excuses.

Good luck with that.

Amazing food though. Can't say...

My two buddies and I came in on Sunday night, November 24, 2024, we had a very very nasty experience at this restaurant. We entered the restaurant and were seated right away, but then we had to wait 15 minutes, even though the restaurant was fairly empty, until our server came to provide us with water and take our orders. Our server, Lisa C, recommended to us the “ghostface burger”, stating it was the most popular and that it was seen on Food network. However when the burgers came, they didn’t taste very good, the patty was very thin and the sweet potato and the patty mushed together in a nasty way. Furthermore, my patty was extremely undercooked, even though I ordered medium, the patty was straight pink all the way through w one millimeter of brown. The entire patty was mushy, tasteless, and unappetizing. I had only taken two bites of my burger when I requested that the burger be either cooked further or replaced w/ the same or even a different burger if possible. The waitress called over the manager who then asked to take my food into the kitchen. Then the waitress came back and informed me that if I wanted another burger I would have to pay full price for another one. They refused to cook the burger further or provide a complimentary alternative. We were very disappointed at this, but what was absolutely disgusting to me in their treatment of my friends and I, is that the manager never ever came back w my food, nor even came to talk to us. They took away a customers food and didn’t provide an alternative nor try to at least work with the customer which is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you as an established restaurant take away a customers food like that? Also, my friends and I had ordered multiples orders of wings, and as any wing eater, we requested extra sauce. The server was reluctant to provide us with the sauces and then when we saw the receipt we saw that we were charged $1 for every tiny sauce cup. However the server never ever once stated that sauce was at an extra charge. Overall, this restaurant is simply not it. The food was tasteless and nasty, and some of their burger combinations are disgusting, the service, inadequate and unpleasant, especially the manager who didn’t even show face to the unhappy customers who paid $130 for their food, and the atmosphere is just simply icky. I would never ever ever return here ever again. The manager should be fired asap, idk who trained him, but that guys not a manager in any way. As a JC native my entire life, that place doesn’t belong in our city, they have no hospitality and treated us like trash. 0...

Came in on a Thursday around 7:30 and the place was only half filled. I thought it would be more packed seeing that happy hour wasn't even over yet (M-F 5-8 $3 Miller Lite and house well drinks, $5 house white/red, cosmos, dirty martinis, and apple martinis).

I opted for the cosmo - the only 'girly' drink I'll drink, but only if it's strong! Unfortunately, this one was not and was just too sweet. Your safest bet is to get the house wine or well drinks (because let's be serious, who really wants to drink dirty dish water...er...I mean, Miller Lite).

To start, we ordered the chilltown fries (chili, cheese, smoked bacon, and jalapeños). The toppings were good. But then again, I'm a sucker for any combination of bacon and cheese. Throw some chili on top of that? What's not to like!? Besides the actual fries themselves. I feel like all of the fries were only made from the outer layer of the potato, so all I really tasted the whole time was potato skins. We also had the spinach artichoke dip. Nothing special, but you can't go wrong with this one.

As for the burgers, I went for the Mac Daddy (house blend patty, fried mac and cheese, smoked bacon, and grilled tomato). I ordered medium rare but it came out more medium well. We told the waitress and they brought out another one, which was still more medium than medium rare but I didn't want to send it back again. Even at medium, the burger was still good. It was nice and juicy. The grilled tomato was a nice way to somewhat balance out the greasiness from the rest of the ingredients.

My boyfriend ordered the Ghostface Killer (espresso-rubbed patty, ghost pepper jam, smoked Gouda, sweet potato bacon tots, red onion, and mustard BBQ). This was good too but it definitely was nowhere near as spicy as its name suggested. Could have used a little more spiciness, actually.

As you can see, I was not doing my arteries any favors that night. But I do want to try all of their burgers so I'll deffo be back. I guess I'll just have to take one for the team and for the good of...