The service at The Jones (great name) is overwhelmingly courteous, without ever being cloying or annoying. The bartender, the waitress, even the hostess checked in repeatedly but were willing to disappear quickly; drinks were refilled before being emptied; great advice was offered on wine choices, food choices, even our choice of table. This is the kind of place that would cut the crusts off your grilled cheese without your even asking. In fact, this place did cut the crusts off my grilled cheese.
The Jones is an elegantly homey 2-year-old culinary experiment in Maple Leaf, almost equally (in terms of square footage) bar and restaurant. While my dining guest and I found the three different football games on three different televisions in the bar annoyingly distracting, in general the dining room's booths are intimate and private, and both halves of the room seem to function successfully. The menu follows on this bar/restaurant split personality with a "Casual Fare" column of $5â$12 chicken strips, pizzas, burgers, and sandwiches (which we snootily ignored), and a higher-end column of $15â$24 entrĂ©es and fancy starters.
Our meal didn't quite follow the starter-entrée-dessert plan. Instead, we ate more family style, with, ultimately, six or seven plates arranged in front of the two of us. On this particularly snowy and bone-chilling winter night, the French onion soup ($8) was a perfect way to warm the insides, especially when paired with a grilled blue-cheese sandwich ($6). The soup balanced the sweet of the caramelized onions with the meaty richness of the stock and the wine beautifully. Matched with the grilled blue cheese (sweet from the butter and sharply bitter from the cheese on house-made bread), it was a perfect haute-cuisine version of mom's snow-day lunch of Campbell's and grilled cheddar (crusts cut off and all).
The risotto with grilled radicchio and prawns ($8, also on the starter menu) was another intriguing way to launch the meal. The dish was a medley of tastes, all of which somehow remained distinct while swimming around the risotto mush. For all of the cold-night warmth and comfort of the dish, it remained bright and interesting, the bitterness of the radicchio reminding you of itself with every bite, without ever dominating the dish.
The first stumble of the evening was the bouillabaisse fish stew ($21), a traditional French concoction that was beautiful on the plate but lacked any punchânone of the flavors spiked their way through the recipe. While it was perfectly passable, the excitement implied by the plating wasn't followed by excitement in the mouth, and the dish was perhaps the one culinarily monochromatic creation presented in the meal.
If the bouillabaisse stumbled for a lack of complexity, the ravioli ($15) was a triumph of simplicity. The house-made pasta, stuffed with black truffles from Oregon, celery root, and ricotta cheese, were little packets of earthy richness floating in a light and straightforward butter and herb sauce.
Even after this incredible savory feast (and respectable portions of everything) there was still room for a couple of scoops of the house-made Meyer lemon ice cream, served conservatively with a simple dollop of freshly whipped cream on the side. It was perfect.
One of the most charming things about The Jones is the degree to which everyone there seems completely devoted to successfully hosting your experience. From the menu planning to the plating (head chef Jason Jones is another Herbfarm alumnus, joining folks like Sitka & Spruce's Matt Dillon in opening some of Seattle's most interesting new restaurants) to the front-of-house service and design (co-owner Michelle Steele was the Liquid Lounge lead at the EMP), everything about this place feels like there's an intent behind it, like someone personally wanted you to enjoy the part of the evening for which they were responsible. An evening at The Jones feels like an evening at a friend's houseâa friend who loves to entertain, a friend who owes you a favor or two, a friend who's definitely trying to impress you. And it works.
