Jackson Heights Life

I am turned off by the condition of their windows, just like the restaurant to their left, dirty.  A few stores up is a shop that keeps sparkling clean windows.  The first thing I notice when looking through a storefront is their windows.  If you can't maintain your storefront, I wonder about conditions in the back of the house.

The soup is good, and the grilled chicken salad and salmon sandwich I had was also good. I agree that the appearance of the store is a negative in terms of attracting customers. It does look sketchy from the outside, and inside there is zero attempt to make the place look inviting. There are big, bulky tables and heavy chairs that are hard to manipulate, detracting from comfort, and the food is all served in takeout containers, so they don't seem to want to encourage eat-in customers.

It seems set up to be takeout and delivery primarily. Which is too bad, because the offerings are good and different from other neighborhood places. It could become a nice little health-food cafe, a nice hangout with coffee drinks and a much broader menu than E77 has. But not as it currently stands.

Also, I think the appeal of the acai-based offerings is more limited than they seem to think. They stress their acai bowls in what little promotion they do--but I'd never order those. I'm interested in the soups and salads and sandwiches. I'm not sure who gets excited about acai bowls, and you'd think that's basically what they offer the way they promote them. All criticism aside, I hope they succeed because the food really is good!

granted, it could be nicer. but have any of you folks ever traveled? outside the US? or even to non-tourist parts of the south, midwest or southwest? when looking for good food, you don't consider the windows.

They should probably remove some things from the menu:
Avocado Toast, ended up being what seemed like pre-made packaged guacamole on hero style bread (higher end hero style bread) in a sandwich config. It seemed like a guacamole hero.
Poached eggs, ended up being hard-boiled eggs in the shape of poached.

They don't know how to do either one of those items, maybe it was just a bad morning, but they were so far from what they were supposed to be it was a shame to spend the money on them.

It could be that all they had was some guac and that type of bread, but that isn't Avocado Toast, don't try it or attempt to pass it off or phone it in if you can't do it correctly. Also, don't say you can poach an egg if you don't know how to do that.

I really like their soups and salads, but those two items were abysmal. Beware on those two.

granted, it could be nicer. but have any of you folks ever traveled? outside the US? or even to non-tourist parts of the south, midwest or southwest? when looking for good food, you don't consider the windows.

I would hope most restaurants would aspire to be better than a dirty hole-in-the-wall that happens to have good food. To me, dirty windows and a shabby appearance often means unsanitary kitchen practices.  It's the reason I won't go back to the Thai restaurant that took over the old Arunee space; it's full of mirrors and they are all filthy.

I think they need to have the menu outside. It's huge and I still have no idea what they sell.

+1 on that, Captain. my S.O. is partial to the really, really funky mackerel dish -- which they used to try to talk us out of.