Jeffrey's Grocery Visited 2/5/2012 3.5 Forks

Jeffrey's Grocery 172 Waverly Pl., (between Christopher St & Grove St), New York, NY 10014

Jeffrey's Grocery is from the same people as Joseph Leonard and Fedora, so I kind of knew what to expect here.  In the same vein as the other two places, Jeffrey's Grocery is in the West Village and just a super cute neighborhood joint serving solid American food.  Dan S. and I went there for brunch on a Sunday afternoon and surprisingly we were able to get two seats immediately (at the bar).  Looking around, I can see how this place can get super crowded on a busy night because there are probably at most 20 actual seats and then there are a handful of seats at the bar.

I actually love sitting at the bar and watching the either the bartender or chefs.  The "kitchen" at Jeffrey's Grocery is literally the size of my bathroom (i.e tiny) but it's kind of nice to see the two chefs work their magic in such a tiny space.  And at least you know that your food is coming from a clean place.  The brunch menu is an interesting mix: they still offer the raw bar that they are well known for (oysters, shrimp cocktail, clams, lobster, crab legs, and plateau of seafood) plus more typical brunch-y food of omelettes and egg sandwiches and they also have a burger or brisket sandwiches.  I was super tempted to order off the raw bar that there's something that seems weird about ordering raw seafood at 11AM (and expensive).  They had a smoked salmon dish ($16) that everyone seemed to get and I hadn't had smoked salmon every since I moved out of Park Slope, so I had to get it.  Dan got the sausage, egg and cheese biscuit ($13) and a coffee (Only at $1!!).

Now to be honest, the smoked salmon dish was just a toasted everything bagel piled high with smoked salmon, capers, red onion, tomato and cream cheese.  It's something you can totally get at a local bagel shop for less than half the price they had here.  But despite that, it was a great sandwich.  The salmon was delicious and not overly smoked.  There was the right amount of cream cheese and tomato in portion to the size of the bagel.  Although I have massive love for my old bagel haunt, they used to put so much freakin cream cheese that you had to literally scrap half of it off with a knife but then it would ruin the whole structure of the sandwich.  But here, everything was portioned just right relative to each other and you could get a mouthful of bagel, salmon, caper, tomato and red onion in one bite.  I didn't try Dan's sandwich but it did look quite hearty.  


The overall vibe of Jeffrey's was super cute and I would totally come back again. The reason I'm not giving it a higher rating is simply the fact that I just had 1 dish that, even though it was good, wasn't a super complicated dish.  I am curious to see how dinner would be there.  Anyone interested?  Total bill $19/pp with tip and tax. 


Photo Credit: Yelp