James Restaurant & Bar

Small but excellent menu! Nice atmosphere! Service was flawless! I will definitely recommend this restaurant! The lump crab cake sandwich was to die for! Good selection of beers!

I positively wonderful place serving American fare in a prime location. Not overly busy, yet not empty. The food is tasty and creative, and the service is great. The live music on Fridays isn't bad either.

Their lunch menu was not very broad. I had the burger which was good. The wait staff was great!

We held our daughter’s Baptism here a little over a month ago and we were so impressed with this restaurant! It was our first time at the restaurant and the manager as well as the staff were extremely friendly and the service was superb! Organizing the event with Matt was very easy and everyone did a wonderful job in making sure we had a great experience. All of our guests loved the food and had a wonderful time. We will definitely be recommending James Resaurant to all of our family and friends and we’ll surely be dining here again and again!

Updated review Feb 2019 - I have since been back to James (which is under new management) and the service was much better. The atmosphere is more welcoming and the staff seemed much more positive. It looks like the previous manager had such a negative impact on the environment but now the new manager Morgan is so focused on bringing the quality up that there is a noticeable difference. Our server Mark was very helpful and accommodating. Happy Hour is lively and the patrons seem friendly, professional and generally a nice crowd. The food was good, needed extra seasoning but generally good overall. The lighter bites such as the flat breads, chicken wings and meatballs were a hit and very popular among diners. Personally, I very much enjoyed my Wedge salad and the serving sizes were quite generous. I will be back to check out brunch - their new menu looks appetizing. Thank you again, James for caring about your presence in the neighborhood. Will see you soon! I am a local resident (2 blocks from your establishment) and I have been to James for both dinner and brunch probably over 10 times. My husband and I have a 3 month old and we were excited to find a local place where the food was quite good as there are not a lot of choices in Logan Square for restaurants. It started off fine, there were a few inconsistencies but we overlooked them as the food was still good. The our experiences just declined, food became sloppy, service rude and downright bad. We gave James many many chances and after this past weekend we reached our limit. We have experienced the following incidents in our visits over the past 3 months: *waiting 20 minutes to be given water or a menu *waiting 70 minutes for our meal (brunch) to be served *ingredients missing from the meal we ordered and then when we asked about it, we were told the kitchen was out of food *only 1-2 servers working when there were large parties holding an event in the back room, servers complaining to us that they were short staffed *an owner telling us our meal would be complimentary after waiting for so long, when in fact we received a check and paid it *waitress chewing gum with it falling out of her mouth while talking to us *bacon burnt to a crisp twice (a waitress tried to tell us it wasn’t. Rung it was just because it was pepper crusted) *chicken breast undercooked and pink inside *i cannot eat gluten and was told eggs Benedict had no bread but the crab cakes had bread crumbs, which I found out too late *a guy who wears a check shirt (worked the past 2 Sunday’s for brunch) was rude when I told him the bacon was burnt, he said across 3 tables ‘what did you say??’ then said he would come back but never did *same guy talking to staff and chatting while there were tables who had not ordered and dirty plates on other tables Reviews are something I do not usually write, but I am so disappointed that I feel I will write one as the message I get is that James Management just doesn’t care. Speaking with other locals, it seems that these experiences are very common at James and you’ve lost many customers. Unfortunately you also lost us as customers which is a shame as your food has potential.

We had a great brunch last Sunday at James. They had the Easter bunny walking around and the kids absolutely loved it! My child enjoyed the bunny while I enjoyed a mimosa. Win win! The food was delicious and the staff very courteous. I look forward to more brunching in my future.