Circle J Cafe

Trippy and orgasmically delicious. The sign says they cater to renegades and rebels, and if you are lucky enough to meet the proprietor, you’ll see why. Ambience is thrift-​store chic; you’d better pray there’s never an earthquake when you eat here or you’ll be buried in tacky artwork. The soups are like drugs: a real rush and addicting — never the same one twice it seems. Pizzas and sandwiches both feature weird and eclectic ingredient combos. The biggest problem is deciding WHICH thing to order. Keep a list and check off each new thing you try at respective visits.

I have been going to this wonderful place since it opened. They get to see me a couple times of week. I go there because the food is not only excellent with great variety but healthy and organic and they happily accommodate my crazy allergies!!! The wait is definitely worth it!
The staff is top notch and the owners are awesome!

Love this little gem! The mood is eclectic and fun. Our favorite fish taco in town!!!

I suggested this place after eating with a few friends about a month earlier. From my first experience it was pretty good, amazing interior decorating. Good selection of tasty food, good beer and wine list, we had pretty good service. So my mom, my boyfriend and myself decide to grab a bite of eat after a running some errands. We get there and we are the only ones there, awesome! That means we should get pretty dang quick and good service right? HELL NO! Our waitress was one of the dumbest humans i have ever spoken to. We repeated all of our orders at least 3 times and she even had to come back to double check what she had was correct. We get our food in a decent time, everything tasted fine then we wait for our check. The waitress, her boyfriend, a friend and the cook stood in the back of the restaurant talking to each other as we sat and waited for 40 MINUTES! Yes, we counted 40! Finally i said something and they glared at us and kept on talking finally we were ready to get up and walk out and she came over to hand us our check and stood there waiting for us to pay her. Waitressing 101: NOT OKAY! She brings the bill back after running our card and just stands there watching us sign and sees that we don’t leave her a single dime and instantly gets annoyed and eventually walks away. Never have I ever had such TERRIBLE service nothing has ever compared to this terrible place. We will never return and will never recommend stepping foot in this place.

This little hole in the wall café is very deceptive on the outside, not looking any different from most storefront bistros… but once inside, a spell is cast. The walls are literally covered with quotes from past patrons. Not only do they allow you to write on the walls, they actually encourage it. The beer selection is great for a small restaurant, consisting of mostly locally brewed favorites. The menu is eclectic but casual, full of sandwiches, salads, pizzas and the like with very reasonable prices. The service is amazing — friendly, fast and efficient — and the food is freakin’ amazing. My wife and I ordered a pint of a local porter and decided to try two different burgers and cut them in half to share. She ordered a burger called the Timbuktu — fried egg, tomato, pickled beet, Greek peppers, caramelized pineapple, 1000 Island dressing — with sweet potato fries. Does it sound weird? Yes, but OMG, is it delicious! My burger choice was the Go Nuts — bacon, peanut butter, pepper jack cheese, raspberry chipotle bbq sauce and mayo — with coconut curry lentil soup. To rant with labels like sublime, euphoric, heavenly, sinful, etc would be an extreme understatement. Remember THAT scene from When Harry Met Sally? Let’s just say I wasn’t faking. These guys take farm to table ingredients to a whole new level of deliciousness.

Good food! Not the best service, wait staff seems very rushed and almost like you’re bothering them (this is how it feels every time I’ve been here, so 7 – 10 times) Customer service is so crucial, especially in a small town.

Very nice décor, makes you feel welcome when you walk in, had good service and good food as well, yummy French dip sandwich! I’ll definitely be back again!

A solid 3.5 stars.
The interior of the restaurant was crazy and wonderful, and I had a fun time just looking and walking around. Our server was also extremely friendly and helpful.
Now, on to the food:
French dip sandwich: pretty good; no complaints here.
Salad: granted, salad is hard to mess up, but it tasted decently.
The dumpling soup was where I was most gravely disappointed. The soup tasted as if it were from a can and full of artificial flavorings, and the single dumpling was abysmal.
Overall, the food quality was on the average side, though the décor and the service were good.

Both the food and service was underwhelming. The servers appeared rushed, spoke to fast, and were constantly looking around while interacting with the customer. This could be a staffing problem but regardless, I as the customer did not feel the love. The food was okay and I possibly missed the boat by not ordering a burger, since those looked good. We did order the lunch special of soup and sandwich. The broccoli cheese soup was actually pretty good because they did not back off on the pepper or overpower it with cheese. The half a tuna sandwich was pretty abysmal, the toasted bread was nice and crunchy but the tuna itself was a flavorless glop.

Ok I can at less say that the food was good but the bill was not right. We had lunch here with my parents and I wanted to pay for the four of us. The bill was 61. 70 but there was a hidden fee of 15% of my bill added to it making my total 70.95. They added a gratuity fee of 9.93. I have never see that charged at a restaurant in Grants Pass before and after charging me this they wanted more money for a tip. Are you kidding me. Very mad and won’t go there agin ever. There is other places in town that has better food with out any added fees added. Not right!

Delicious food and great ambience. I had the deep fried portabellos and the Mushroom and bleu cheese burger and they were great.

Good food and service. Cozy and very artfully decorated. I’d go back.

I have been going here for years, and it is a dependable place for a good meal. As others noted the Salmon Caesar is one of the best things on the menu, along with the Rueben and sweet potato fries.
My only hesitation is the small dining area and how close you get to sit to everyone else. Once you have seen the décor it is not as interesting as it once was.
The food is great, service is friendly, but the physical space inside is dark, chaotic and a challenge. Eating at a table on the sidewalk with cars/​exhaust 5 feet away is not my idea of relaxing outdoor dining.

Not knowing where to eat in Grant’s Pass, we stumbled on this little gem. The art in the restaurant was very creative. Service was very friendly and fast. My hubby and I both ordered salmon burgers and they were tasty. No complaints.

Circle J is an appropriate name but not in a good way… Popped in while visiting GP for the day… I wish we hadn’t. We ordered the triple threat and the fish taco (s)… The tacos on the menu is singular not plural and the triple threat was bland and the service was worse than the food. We asked for ranch 5 times over a 10 minute span while we watched another employee sit at a six top table and do what looked like homework and she watched as people came in and couldn’t find seating for lunch but she was cozy at her large table. Very oddly decorated which have us hope when we entered but it soon went south after that. Very saddened by our experience as there were lots of promising reviews. Won’t be going back for round two.

Yusssssss. I love this kind of kitschy mishmosh space. It’s stimulatingly confusing: a mix of rocker and religious paraphenelia — is it ironic? is it a heartfelt quirky hybrid? is it completely haphazard? Who’s to know?
All I know is that I loved the music (stuff ranging from my ipod circa 2000’s: Shins, Ratatat… to present-​day: Alt-​J and some other electro-​indy stuff).
Loved the service (down-​to-​earth, she even suggested some nifty places to hit up on our drive back home).
Scarfed down the food (finally a place that has a good bun for a burger and a Caesar salad that is crispy and flavorful).
I thank them for warning me repeatedly on the menu for their prolific use of mayo on everything so I could request to hold the mayo on everything.
Fresh, simple food with a small twist (their pesto/​basil/​fresh mozza burger was nifty).
No complaints here. I left thinking that Grants Pass is a pretty hip little town after all.

We found Circle J’s on Unilocal and decided to stop here for lunch.
My husband got one Fish Taco which he really loved and the Avocado Club with sweet potato fries. We recommend getting a side of raspberry chipotle sauce for those fries!
I ordered what was said to be a Garden Burger but when it came it was a house made patty (wasn’t clear in the menu) and I didn’t care for it. The taste was bland and the texture wasn’t great.
Super casual and relaxed, which was great but we had to get our own water refills as our waitress was sitting down eating :/​
It got such good reviews, I feel like we owe it another shot…

Don’t come here for lunch if you don’t have at least an hour in which to eat. I thought I could pop in and grab a sandwich and be back to work to eat it at my desk in under 30 minutes, but it took about 30 minutes for them to get it to me once I had ordered. I got it to go, but it sat on the counter for a few minutes while the waitress attended to other customers. I do understand, but I wish I could have eaten without being late from lunch.
The food was quite good. I enjoyed the fries very much, and the roast beef sandwich was so good I forgot that I don’t like sourdough.
The price was too high.
–1 star for length of wait,
–1 star for price

We stopped into Circle-​J café on our road trip to Portland, and after all day of driving, we were ready for a serious lunch. We were not disappointed either! All three of us had sandwiches, and all of us agreed that it might have been the best sandwich any of us had tried.
We sat outside on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and were waited on by the nicest server ever. I regret that I cannot remember her name. Service was prompt and excellent.
I had a veggie sandwich and it was drool worthy. Amazing fresh bread, tons of veggies, and just all around delicious. I wish I lived closer!
Thanks for a sweet lunch spot for some weary travelers.

A surprise for your eyes and palate! Pull up a rug and sink into this delightful café that’s more like an artisan pub… with a few furry wall mounts.
Digs:
If Gaston (from Beauty & the Beast), was bred in Portland, received a culinary degree and listened to Dave Matthews Band, you might get a flavor of Circle J’s décor; rugs hang from the walls with detailed native garb then splashed with gnarly fixtures (skulls, lamps, mirrors); if a garage sale had a fashion sense with a brick-​backdrop this would be it;
Ate:
Salmon Sandwich — belly/​mouth very happy; no patty just real delicious salmon on a craft bun with balanced lettuce, tomato, caper dressing;
Sweet Potato Fries — the only real negative was the slightly soggy fries, still very much edible just not to the pinnacle of crisp sweet fries you would imagine (or I would);
Drank:
Lost Coast Brewing — Downtown Brown — on tap
Service:
Charming girl that treated us like an old friend (happy/​forgiving of our indecisive-​ness);
Service BONUS:
My lady had just ran a half-​marathon in rain and was soaked to the bra-​core and we were going to purchase a shirt for $ 20…out of shear kindness she shocked us with «just take it, no problem!» Wow. I know it’s merch-​shallow to skew a review but that was incredibly understanding for her perspective of the situation — thank you.
Overall:
I’m craving to return to this oasis in the hills of Grants Pass. Circle J has strong food presence, funky-​fresh décor, and smiling service that’s hard to say no to. The pizza is next on my hit list. Finally a keeper from GP.