Jake's — Restaurant in Palm Springs

Pretentious and overpriced. We called ahead to reserve a table for three. When we arrived, the place was virtually empty. The prissy host, nevertheless, couldn't find our reservation and made us wait while a slew of servers hovered, waiting to pounce. After much ado, we were finally seated. With great ceremony, the waiter approached the table and introduced himself. We ordered several appetizers and our waiter commented "Excellent choice!" as if we needed his approval. Then, another server approached and announced that we were being offered an "amuse." I guess she hadn't learned to say "amuse-bouche" yet. We were eventually presented a plate with a charred Brussels sprout leaf onto which some seaweed had been applied. My bouche was not amused. The appetizers followed and the waiter congratulated us again on our choices. Although we were trying to have a conversation, the waiter acted as though he should be the center of attention. When he left the table, another server kept interrupting us, refilling water glasses after every sip, whisking crumbs, and generally being intrusive. The entrees arrived with great flourish and I hoped to be able to eat it without interruption, but every minute the waiter appeared and demanded attention and affirmation. And more water and plate or crumb removal from the underling-who had apparently not graduated to the higher level of unctuous solicitousness required to be a waiter at Jake's. Then, our cell phone rang and it was the reservation clerk from Jake's front of house, asking whether we were going to be there soon, as they couldn't hold our table much longer. He seemed even more confused when we told him we were already there. Could anyone be less competent or off-putting? Yes, how about the kind of waiter who congratulates a diner for cleaning his plate? And interrupts a conversation to make his final speech of the evening. The food wasn't memorable, but it was overpriced and the awful attention-needy staff was intrusive, pretentious and incompetent. Why do waiters have to make themselves the center of attention? As we were on our way out, I overheard diners at another table reply to the same waiter's query regarding the food. They weren't happy and expressed their displeasure. Jake's? Not an...

I am a small business owner and never post negative reviews because I know how damaging they are. However, our experience was horrendous. My husband, my three children ages 4,6 and 9 and I were strolling through downtown. We asked a couple we bumped into if they had any recommendations. They said Jakes had great food and amazing dessert. Unfortunately, at the time they were closed between lunch and dinner. We moved on but decided to save room for dessert and stop by on the way home. When we arrived back at Jakes we were met with opposition and hostility. Despite the fact that the restaurant was about half empty they did not want to seat us for dessert. I have a long history of waiting tables so I knew they profiled our table as low ticket and a bad tip because we were a family. They told us they had tables in the past that only ordered a piece of cake. I assured them we would ring up a considerable bill and would get an appetizer and that we tip well. They reluctantly sat us at a table that was available due to an abandoned reservation. As we sat down my 9-year-old suggested we leave because she did not think we were welcome. We brushed it off and stayed anyway. However, after considering the menu we opted out of an appetizer, but we did order two cocktails, two mocktails, three desserts and an order of pasta. Apparently, the manager or owner was not satisfied with our order because he rushed to our table to scream at us and call us liars because we didn't get an appetizer. He even threatened to call the police. All three of our children were in tears and scared we were going to jail. It seems weird that a half empty restaurant would turn away business and publicly berate customers in front of their children, but that is what happened at Jakes. Hopefully they treat Jake, their dog, better than they treat their customers. Edit: wow! Just looked at the owner's response to some of the reviews. Now I am not surprised we were treated that way. The poor staff...

My husband and I came here for brunch for my birthday. We made a reservation for 10:00AM via OpenTable and requested to sit outside since we were going to bring our dogs. Jake's is totally dog friendly since it's named after the owner's West Highland Terrier! (Sadly Jake passed away Feb 2016).

Jake's opens at 10AM and there was already a huge line forming outside. Lucky for us, we did have the reservation so they would check us in first! After taking a seat, they brought two individual bowls of water for our dogs. I ordered a Mango Faux-ito and the Avocado Toast and my husband ordered the Monte Cubano Sandwich.

AVOCADO TOAST ($15.00) - crushed avocado on nine grain toast, two sunny side eggs, radish, daikon sprouts, queso fresco, Mexican sour cream with mixed green salad

MONTE CUBANO SANDWICH ($16.00 or $18 with sunny side egg) - turkey, Duroc smoked ham, Swiss cheese, pickles, Dijon garlic aoili on egg dipped brioche bread

Our food did not take long to come up. We noticed they were playing our fave music; Hawaiian Reggae and asked our server about it. He mentioned that they play it when he's working on the weekend since he's from Kona /Hawaii; that's awesome. The food was SOOO good. The dressing on the salad was really refreshing and nice citrus flavor. My avocado toast had A LOT of avocado on it and eggs were cooked perfectly. My husband ate his sandwich so fast I didn't even get to try any! Everyone was really good with our dogs and at one point, one of our Shih Tzus was laying on her back in the middle of the floor... She had a good time too and didn't want to leave when we were done eating!

Anyway, yummy food, great service and even the people who sat around us were really nice to us so we'll definitely be back again...