Jak’s Grill

Love to come here for my birthday or any other special occasion I can get away with! The filet mignon with baked potato is my favorite dish, but my boyfriend loves to get the UFO pancake. I’ve always had friendly servers and they do their best to be quick. Of course on a busy night it can be a bit slower, but you can only expect them to do their best and they do! The biggest downside I’d say is they don’t take reservations so it’s either best to go on a weeknight, or just be prepared to wait a little while on the weekend, but it’s worth the wait :)

Let me just start by saying I’ve been a customer since before they closed down in the Admiral Junction and returning a few years later in the Alaska Junction at a spot that had been several different types of venues previously. In any event it was fantastic to have Jaks back in West Seattle! Life was good again.
Over the years we went to Jaks for special times and also for a nice, relaxing midweek dinner, a fantastic lunch and a brunch that will take any restaurant in this city to task. Their potato pancakes are the best I’ve ever had, very hard to find that good, fresh, shredded potatoes, scallions and whatever magic yhy use but they do it well. One of my brunch favorites is their version of eggs Benedict, instead of using an English muffin potato pancakes are the base, thin cuts of rare filet mignon and perfectly poached eggs topped off with a silky and rich Hollandaise finish the dish. Really worth the calories. Another favorite is the 509 casserole, kind of a fritata meets quiche. Super delicious. Of course their are ups and downs with any business. On a recent Saturday wewent to Jaks with some out of town friends it was a Saturday and Jaks doesn’t take reservations so we arrived early. I had called ahead and been told if we got there by 6 we wouldn’t have much of a wait so we arrived at a
About 5:20, just after opening. They were semi busy already and so after waiting about 5 minutes the hostess, Lindy or Lindsay told us there were no booths available unless we went upstairs, as one member of our party is disabled and not able to use the stairs we were then told that we’d have about a 45 minute to 1 hour for something downstairs. We could see empty booths and since
Jaks doesn’t take reservations we were confused and said so all this 20 minutes after the restaurant was open? I mentioned the empty booths but for whatever reason she seemed unwilling to accommodate us on any level. I admit I raised a bit of a stink and at some booth was miraculously found. Albeit, right next to the kitchen. I did think that for a person in the hospitality business her bedside manner was terrible. If pyou don’t like people you should maybe not have a job in the industry. We did finally get a table and the rest of the evening went pretty well. Our waitress was wonderful and went a long way in making us feel better after the complete rudeness of the hostess. As always, the potato pancakes rocked, I ordered the filet, Oscar’s, overall it was delicious but would have been better if they had used crab legs instead of the kind of gritty body meat. The hollandaise was good. Both of my friends ordered the 22oz cowboy steaks and were very pleased. My husband ordered the Chipotle Prawn dish whose exact name escapes me now but he orders it often and I can attest that it is consistently good. Prices are high at Jaks but really no more so than anywhere else around here. The drinks are always yummy although they pour a really short glass when it comes to wine. Crème brulee for dessert was creamy, light and delicious as well. Would I eat here again? Absolutely but save your money if you plan on coming because you will need it. Finally, the first impression is always the most important and I would hope Jaks understands this and either trains their hostesses on what good customer service is, especially in the hospitality business or cleans house to rid itself of those who are more a detriment than an asset to the company.

Haven’t been here for dinner but I have been a few times for brunch and I love it! The sweet southern steak hash is SO GOOD. It’s one of my favorite brunch dishes from any restaurant, a great (big) portion and comes with egg and a biscuit. I did have the strawberry (?) lemonade and that was very boring so I wouldn’t recommend that, but I come for the food and I haven’t been disappointed yet! Good service and the atmosphere is nice for brunch too. No reservations, but I haven’t had an issue with that yet either.

Was a great experience, a little crowded for walking in. Had about a 45 minute wait at the bar, but the bar service was fantastic. Sitting at the front watching the kitchen send out all of these amazing plates, everything looked so tasty and well made. Helped us to figure out what to order without even seeing the menu yet!
I had a filet mignon and it was the best steak I have had in years! The potato pancakes were amazing also! Everything we had was so great, I ate every last bite off of my plate– which is hard to do for me! But I couldn’t let it go to waste.
Only disappointment was I wanted an after dinner drink and they don’t have espresso, so my espresso martini wasn’t possible. And the drink i ordered from the menu they were out of the main liquor that goes in it… So no after dinner drink for me that night. But it was still all in all a great experience and great food!

Don’t need a menu but they keep giving me one. Ribeye… with salt and pepper. Always great! Great drinks too. There at least once a week.

My amazing boyfriend took me out for my favorite steak after a shitty day. Thanks to his thoughtfulness & Jak’s amazing service my day was turned around into a perfect evening. Our server was warm & friendly & the food was absolutely DELICIOUS ! Thanks to all of you for making a shitty day into a perfect evening. The service & food was a perfect 10 !

This place is crowded almost all the time and you certainly need a reservation. The steaks are the most famous thing on the menu but they have good kebabs as well. We have the ‘petite’ filet mignon which was 80z n perfectly cooked with great options for sauces. Great place for steak

Came here for dinner last night with 3 of my friends. They don’t make reservations, but it was a Tuesday night so I wasn’t too worried. It had a nice ambience and feel to it. Not entirely fancy… But not run down either. We got seated upstairs & their policy is the whole party has to be there before you’re seated.
Service was pretty nice. Our server was really sweet and even knew some of our names by the end of the night. We ordered the stuffed pork chop, top sirloins, and New York strip, and a side of Mac n cheese. The pork looked really good. I didn’t try it though. But it was a huge portion. My 2 friends got the top sirloins. The petite is 9 oz. and JAKS cut is 15oz. It looked good and they cooked it to the right temp. My NY strip was seasoned well. Next time I will get medium rare because my medium was a tad bit more done than I expected it. The potato cakes are BOMB. they are crunchy crispy and cheesy. I will take this any day to mashed potatoes.
Anyways, everything was good, pretty well priced, and I would probably come back if dining with friends again!
Took away 1 star because it wasn’t the BEST steak I’ve had. I am loyal to the Met!

This is our family’s go to steak house here in West Seattle and we’ve never been disappointed. There’s enough variety on the menu so that even if you’re not a huge steak eater, there’s going to be something great for you to try. Easily on par with some of the other high quality steak houses in the city.
The lunch menu is very reasonably priced for very high quality sandwiches and salads so this is something we do on a semi-​regular basis. The dinner menu is pricier so that’s more of a special deal but you definitely get a lot of food there so the value is good.
Very hard to recommend just one thing in particular since everything is very satisfying on their regular menu. It’s more about your individual taste. I’d say that I actually order from their specials menu more often. That’s where you’ll find the beff wellington and excellent seafood like lobster that I’m looking for.

Loved it. I brought a client here. Steak was phenomenal, I’m typically not a fan of potatoes, these were awesome. Add a bottle of wine and it was a fantastic experience. Great value for the quality, quantity and service.
Ambiance 3
Service 4
Food 5
Value 5

Thank you for making our anniversary a special one.
Went to dinner on a Sat night. We were a bit concerned because they don’t take resevations but we arrived a little before 8pm and had to wait at the bar for just a short while. Their bartenders are great and fixed a great drink.
For appetizers we had the calamari. It was pretty good. The entrees come with a large green salad and with a big stalk of broccoli and some carrots. As for the salad. I would suggest the restaurant give a smaller portion and add some sliced veggies to it. The way it’s prepared it is a bit sloppy and not very tasty so it doesn’t compliment the good entrees. I ate 2 bites. The fresh cooked veggies with the entrée are a nice touch… but they should cut them in smaller sizes… again it looks more appetizing that way.
For entrees hubby had the cowboy ribeye. it was really good and cooked perfectly. I had the spicy prawns. There were lots of them. As for the taste​.ok​.it was edible but nothing special. I’d Don’t forget to send me picture of card to buy Lil T ticket probably do the scampi next time. To improve the taste they could ease up on the seasoning because it was a bit overpowering. I went with the potato pancake I would go with the mash potatoes in the future. For dessert we shared the berry cobbler and that was tasty.
Overall it was a good meal. Service was prompt and friendly. Bartenders were the best… I’d return and try some different things.
Parking.we got lucky with a space near the restaurant but it is street parking and a pretty busy area so be prepared to walk.

The prices are extremely reasonable. However the steaks are not the best of cuts and may account for the lower price compared to other steakhouses. That being said for a little more the steaks at some other places are alot better.
The service is OK at best. Main courses come with salad and sour dough bread. This comes before the meal and regularly fills me up and directs my attention away from how mediocre the steaks are
I have eaten here well over 50 times simply for convenience and it being in my neighborhood. I kick myself every time for my laziness.
They don’t take reservations are are obnoxious about having entire party stand in the waiting area. Routinely have 4 people for dinner and have to wait so we take our daughter outside for a walk. Will not seat my wife and elderly father in law until my daughter and I are physically in the door.
In summary good economical choice for steak. Olive garden and cheesecake factory model, fill you up with salad and bread so you have left overs and thus feel good about the value of price as opposed to quality and service.

Steak was perfectly cooked and top notch. The sides are pedestrian except for the roasted Brussels sprouts. And the mushrooms.

After reading the Unilocal reviews, I decided to give this place a chance for brunch. The highlight was the $ 4.50 bloody marys, mildly spicy and a total steal. Brunch was very disappointing. I was excited to have a delicious crab benedict but their benedicts feature their own version of hollandaise, which does not have lemon in it (Gasp) and was a bland, gravy substance. Both eggs were overcooked as well… so there went that dish. We also had the biscuits and gravy. The gravy was good, but nothing special. Their potatoes were flavorless and the texture was bad, tasted like microwave food. I’ve heard this place has good steaks, maybe one day I’ll come back for that. Never again for brunch, I was so mad at myself that we didn’t go to one of our usual spots, like Luna Park. The waitress was very nice, which is part of the reason why I gave 2 stars.

Happy Anniversary to my beautiful wife of many years… Had plans but feeling under the weather, we opted for something close. Wow! What a great splurge so nearby!
Monkey do:
Green Dragon– tasty minty girly cocktail
Oban 14yr– smoove and effective
CALAMARI CRISPS (curry mayo, soy sesame, sweet & sour dips) — best part of the squid cut & fried, accompanied by great dips.
TOP SIRLOIN SALAD– huge, delicious salad, highlighted with sirloin steak
COWBOY RIBEYE OSCAR– ancho-​rubbed ribeye w/​asparagus and big O baked potato. Opted to go Oscar (topped w/​dungeness crab and sauce-​on side). This present to myself.
Superb service, great tips and recommendations by our server. Décor is aged-​whiskey style with booths along the wall and tables upstairs. Lose yourself inside and quickly forget this is at the Junction. Street parking and the «secret» parking lot in back. Yes, you may leave out the back to avoid the paparazzi.

The steaks and cocktails were delicious! My fiancé had the 3 filet mignon sampler (3 oz. each all prepared in different ways) and it was really good. I had the New York strip and that was also very good. Everything was cooked perfectly to our taste and very tender.
It was my fiancé’s birthday and we mentioned this to the servers, and all they said was «Happy Birthday». LOL apparently there is no free birthday dessert.

I want to love Jak’s, I really do. It is in our rotation of West Seattle restaurants, especially for a splurge night (two of us can’t get out of there for under $ 100)… The steak is indeed great, but why is it that I’m always disappointed?
I get it, that the meat is the star, but why is the rest of the main meal so lackluster? For the price, I want to be wow’d all the way through. First the salad arrives, and you’ve lost me. It is nothing but lettuce and dressing. My 8 year old niece could make a better salad. I usually look forward to that first course to whet my appetite and get my taste buds going… a little tomato or cucumber, herb, or… anything…, to spruce it up would be nice. Fortunately, that warm bread comes out with the salad, and that ‘almost’ makes it all better :)
When the steak arrives, the meat is beautiful and always cooked to perfection! But the rest of the plate is unremarkable. The steamed broccoli is like, half a head, and often under cooked (and I like crisp-​steamed). I dream of just a little garlic sauté or something to make it shine too. Your choice of potato is, well, nothing spectacular. Ala carte sides /​appetizers seem heavy or greasy fried.
Jak’s is a pillar of the neighborhood, but it sure would be nice to see a little more creativity in the menu. Change it up one of these days, please, do it for the locals…

You know, sometimes I just don’t get it. How is it that this place has 4 stars? Is it because it’s an institution and people have fond memories of dining here, or is it because they really believe the food, service and ambiance warrant 4 stars?
My experience was a solid 2 star experience. I came here for breakfast with my boyfriend and had really high hopes. I noticed they had 6 different Benedicts on their menu and I was soooooo excited! Eggs Benny is my favorite breakfast– and they have a crab Benedict– holy carp! I thought I was in heaven!
Of course my boyfriend and I share– we both eat the requisite 50% of our meals and then exchange, so we decided the second entrée should be the steak and eggs ~ because after all, this is a steakhouse; we needed to order what they do best!
It took some time for the food to come out, about 30 minutes at 9:45 on a Sunday morning, but we were in no rush– so it wasn’t a big deal. The food came out, and omg, it looked fantastic!
Sadly, it didn’t taste nearly as good as it looked… as a matter of fact, it was hardly edible.
The Crab Benedict– Where to start? Okay, the first problem was that the eggs were incorrectly poached. The eggs were thoroughly cooked– all the way though– no runny goodness at all, just fried eggs. The hollandaise was so, so, so bland. I don’t get it– didn’t the chefs taste the sauce before serving it? The hollandaise was essentially an unsalted, un-​lemoned, yellow colored gravy that lacked any flavor at all. The crab was O.K., but I really wish the crab were in a cake form. The crab was a shredded crab– not lump, but shredded and there was a lot of it… so much that there was the whole crab to egg to bread ratio was completely askew, not to mention every other bite of crab had little hunks of shell, or clear hard tendon in it. The bread on the bottom also lacked flavor. Just a terrible breakfast. Even the potatoes on the plate were unsalted, unseasoned and completely void of any flavor.
The steak and eggs– The steak was ordered medium-​well and eggs over medium. The eggs were perfectly cooked, and the steak was rare. Not only was the steak rare, but even in trying to eat just the perimeter of the steak, it was very chewy and «tendony.» I had one bite I could swallow, and the other just was too chewy– after masticating about 50 rounds with no luck in separating this meat I just decided to casually spit it into my napkin (disguised and low-​key of course).
I really had high hopes for this place. I mean, who messes up a biscuit? The huge good looking biscuit was soooo bland, it just left me craving a KFC biscuit so badly.
Pros: Location, ambiance, environment, service. I must say, the service here was impeccable!
Cons: The food.
One last thing worth noting: The servers leave the hot coffee pots full of coffee on the top of the banister when coming up the stairs. I witnessed one guy completely knock the pot over onto the floor, and 2 others almost knock them over on their way up the stairs– seems like this could be a huge liability– I’d invest in a side table, or new shelving over the server station.

Came here for anniversary/​Valentines day dinner. For the amount of food you get, the prices are not bad. We got filet mignon and the ribeye. Great service even though it was a busy day cause of Valentine’s Day. A lot of food so we have to take it to-​go.
***They don’t take reservations (–1 star for that) so we had to wait 2 hours for a sit :(but the area is nice to walk around before they call you and say your table is ready.
I would def come again when it’s less busy!

I should mention right up front I generally don’t rate steak places as 5 stars. So often I find them overpriced or that I could easily do better at my house by visiting a good butcher and having a good grill. I don’t think that’s true with this place.
My wife and I stopped by on my birthday for a nice little steak dinner to celebrate. We happened to show up for happy hour, so the place was packed, but we still managed to find a spot at the bar (our usual spot.) We went with a couple of cocktails and settled into the menu.
I do wish I could remember the appetizer we went with. It was a special and it was very tasty. As for dinner, my wife went with the filet done Oscar style and mashed potatoes. I went with the NY strip, but was unsure what to do for my side, until the following exchange happened:
Me: What do you have for sides?
Bartender: Fries, baked potato, potato pancake, garlic mashed and a UFO.
Me: A what?
Bartender: UFO. Mashed potatoes topped with a potato pancake.
Me: Wait — what?
Decision made!
There should really be Nobel Prizes for things like that. It was as amazing as it sounds. I don’t care what else you decide to get, you need that thing in your life.
As for the main event, the filet was awesome, but my NY Strip won in the steak department. It was cooked to a perfect rare, the meat was dense, flavorful and delicious.
Unfortunately, we were just too stuffed for dessert.
Now, if I can throw in a bonus review…
I’m putting this at the bottom because I don’t want anyone to see this. I’m being selfish. :-)
Jak’s has probably the best happy hour in the metro area, or at the very least West Seattle.
Now, it’s only an hour — 4:30 — 5:30. And only available at the bar.
But it includes $ 7 manhattans and martinis, and a $ 6 burger. And that burger is legit! Be there early if you want a spot! And if you do get a spot, please save a spot for me.