Jack's Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Newark

I took my wife out for Valentine's Day, 2/14/2023. Earlier today, she looked up Jack's Restaurant, and she said, it has good reviews. So we went and checked it out. My wife and I enjoyed the food. It was very good n tasty. The server name JoJo was awesome. Very professional and with a great attitude. Super nice dude. But before all that. We got to the restaurant at 7:40pm. I gave my name to the receptionist. They were two of them. A tall slim built guy with black hair and a light skin woman with black hair with a gold hair clip on her pony tail. They gave us a buzzer. My wife saw black glass coffee cups n wanted them. I asked the receptionist that I wanted to purchase 2 coffee cups. I was told to wait because he had to get the Manager. I waited n waited by the receptionist desk. I asked the woman receptionist, that once we are seated, if we can purchase the cups at the table, instead of waiting for the manger to come to the desk. She said I'm confused ... wat, and looked at me like she was irritated and I was bothering her. I didnt want to wait standing by the desk, so I sat down. A woman in a pink shirt came around. I didnt know she was the manger, no name tag, nothing. She looked like a customer, but was talking to the receptionist. The receptionist didnt even call me or say anything. I'm right there about 10 feet away, but neither one of them said a word, nothing. 18 mins later, I got up and walked up to the receptionist desk, the woman recep. was just standing there. The manager was behind her and she just looked at me very rude, like I was bothering her, again. I had to ask her, is she the manager, the woman behind you? She said ... yes ... I was like wow, really, okay. Finally, I got the cups. It felt like I had to go to war, just to get these cups there. I told the manager, we been waiting for 20 mins. to be seated, because we were in a rush. We only have an hour. Manager told me, no ... you only been waiting 19 mins. Good god. Manager and Receptionist people really need training on how to be polite and go the extra mile for there customers, and most of all, how to smile. Smiles there are very hard to get, from the reception desk. I guess these people dont know, without us ... the customers, they wont have a job. I saw one of workers there wearing a black shirt. His shirt said ... Make great food. Be nice. Great food, I agree. But Be nice ... is wat your receptionist n manager lack. I dont think my wife and I will...

My partner and I visited Jack's for the first time ever on Friday night this last week (first week of November). We were not familiar with Jack's or their brand, but I had heard good reviews from friends and coworkers that have eaten at the San Mateo location.

It was a great experience!! We have definitely found a new favorite restaurant to frequent!! Although it is attached to the mall, you would never know. It's not connected to the mall so you do not get mall traffic coming through the restaurant. So don't think of it as a Mall Restaurant even for a second!

The atmosphere of the restaurant is comfortable and very clean, open spaces, and nice big booths and seats for patrons. We found everything to be nice and new as well.

Our waiter's name was Chris and we would give Chris 6 out of 5 Stars if we could. He was very nice, he had great suggestions for food and drinks - and his raspberry lemonade suggestion was spot on. We will try to ask for Chris each time, if they allow that.

I got the fish and chips and I was pleased with my meal but not blown away. It was a HUGE amount of food!! Holy potatoes!! I seriously could make this is one meal into three different meals hahah! The portions are gigantic! The beer batter on the fish was also good, but seemed a little off. I hope they are dipped fresh into the batter before they get fried, but I was afraid they were from frozen...not sure and don't want to make any assumptions.

My partner got the French Dip sandwich with garlic fries. I found the garlic fries to be a nice twist to their French fries but the garlic mix tasted bottled and not fresh chopped. Again, I'm not sure how it was prepared, I can only comment on what I saw 🙈 and tasted 🙊. The sandwich looked like it had fresh cut meat as I saw some rare meat and some cooked edge meat. There could have been more, but I know places are cutting down because of higher costs of products right now. Regardless, it tasted great and the leftover half was also very good the next day!

10 out of 5 we will be going back to Jack's. I can't wait to try breakfast and dessert!!!...

My whole experience here was just bad. We made reservations in advance since we had a large party. There really wasn't a point since we still had to wait over 25 minutes for a table. Once we were seated it still took another 10 minutes for our server to appear. I ordered a water & a Iced coffee. I didn't get a water and had to ask 2 more times for a water that I never received. My iced coffee was not iced coffee at all, I have no idea what it was... Carbonated watered soda water with maybe some coffee??? It was awful. I told our server this and she brought another iced coffee and it was just as bad. It tasted like hot coffee poured over ice.... For dinner I ordered the Jack's burger medium well, it came with thousand island dressing, carmalized onions & cheese. What I got was an over-cooked burnt burger with no carmalized onions and what I thought was thousand island dressing but it wasn't, it was a spicy Chipotle aoli sauce. I had to wait for our server to come back so I could tell her the mistake, by the time I got the carmalized onions everything was cold including my sweet potatoe fries. The rest of my parties food was so-so they said, one of them said their entire meal was cold like it had just been sitting there. All in all, I wouldn't eat here again. There was no point to make reservations since we still had to wait, service wasn't great, food was incorrect...