Nick and Jake’s on Main: a location with a curse, a menu with potential, servers with an itch

I’ll say this for the waitstaff at Nick and Jake’s: They’re looking out for my figure. At the two-month-old restaurant on Main, servers whisk away plates as though under strict orders from Jillian Michaels. You can measure a dining experience here in bites rather than in portions.

Ask anyone who has done the job whether he or she is forever more critical of servers, and most of them — most of us — will say no. That’s a lie. Of course, I try to imagine that my own time as a waiter made me more sympathetic to front-of-the-housers doing a difficult job. But sloppy service still drives me mad, no matter how delicious the food.

And the food I’ve eaten at Nick and Jake’s isn’t delicious. Some of it is good, and the place has better-than-average potential to become the kind of cheery bar and grill that the close-knit neighborhood around it would likely support. (The last few tenants in this space were short-lived flops, though not for lack of interest.) But owners Kevin Timmons and Doug Watkins need to seriously up the service game in their place.

After three visits, I’m still puzzled by this restaurant’s complete disregard for timing and pace. Moving courses from kitchen to table is an art that isn’t perfected without a lot of experience, so the first time my dinner was served 10 minutes after the appetizers arrived, I was disappointed but not alarmed. Several nights later, ordering from a different server, my table got its salads before we had finished the starters. I had taken three bites of my salad when suddenly the entrées appeared. And no, I’m not a slow eater.

“Do you think they’re trying to kick us out?” my dining companion asked. There would have been no reason to light a fire under us; the spacious dining room wasn’t even half-full then, and I didn’t see it approach capacity during my other visits.

This is the third Nick and Jake’s restaurant in the metro. It has been a couple of years since I dined at the original, in Overland Park (the other one is in Parkville), but I recall the service there being professional and attentive. Something apparently has been lost in the process of moving the brand close to the Plaza.

The new Nick and Jake’s has a talented young chef, Devin Wilson. His kitchen, like those in the other two locations, is at its best when it sticks to traditional American creations, such as a very good meatloaf. The one I sampled on Main properly avoided dryness, and it came with hot mashers and crisp snap peas. It’s a diner staple, perfectly executed. Less impressive was the chardonnay chicken, an uptown name slapped on a decidedly downtown chicken breast, sautéed and draped in cheese and dripping in wine butter. It came with pan-seared gnocchi (not house-made) as chewy as saltwater taffy. And don’t even think about bold flavors. This Nick and Jake’s, like its suburban counterparts, courts the family crowd, so nothing is too spicy here. The generous bowl of jambalaya jumbles shrimp and chicken with the mildest andouille sausage I’ve ever tasted. The wan sauce is called “creole” but is closer to Canadian.

For now, this is a decent place to try a few bar snacks: meaty and vinegary Buffalo wings, for instance, with crunchy house-made potato chips that come with Maytag blue cheese and bacon. (Smoked pork is all over the menu here.) Avoid the “Irish nachos,” an unfortunate spin on that great trashy potato-skins appetizer. Your best bet among the more exotic-sounding stuff is the Thai shrimp, flash-fried and served under a blanket of fiery aioli. I would order it again.

You can get the $15 lobster mac and cheese as a starter, but it’s enough to make a light meal. The orange cheddar sauce on the cavatappi noodles looked disturbingly thin the day I tried the dish, but it had a robust consistency once I stirred it a little.

By then, I had accepted that a certain amount of work was involved when dining at this restaurant, along with some patience. I had endured, for instance, the server who stacked five or six dirty plates on the table as though clearing a table at Waid’s. And I had humored another server’s lackadaisical approach to selling desserts: “Yeah, we have a dessert tray. Did you want to see it?” (I tried a couple of the desserts; I wouldn’t be all that eager to show them off, either.)

As for the rest of the menu, the grilled salmon, brushed with a discreet brown-sugar vinaigrette and sided with an impressive array of sautéed fresh vegetables, was very good the night I ordered it. And the fork-tender short ribs were outstanding — perched on a mess of grits, sprinkled with what the menu says is gremolata, the lovely condiment made from lemon zest, parsley and garlic.

“What is gremolata?” my dining companion asked our server.

“It’s a kind of grated hard cheese,” she said, earning points for the confident answer — even if it was the wrong answer. And, of course, she said it very quickly, eager to keep moving.

I preferred her to the apathetic server who hovered around my table the Sunday I tried brunch here. Nick and Jake’s still does this buffet-style, a rarity around here anymore for the very good reason that it’s not very rewarding for diners. Here, the line is an unassuming collection of obvious choices (scrambled eggs, butter-logged French toast, at least one unidentifiable puff pastry, chicken fingers), adding up to what a few loving grandmothers might pull together after a long church service.

The server would have been better off going to a long church service instead of helicoptering over my table, trying to pull away dishes before we were done. She inquired on our progress now and again by asking, “How’s everything working?”

Uh, not great, Nick and Jake’s. Not great.

I really want Nick and Jake’s to succeed in this location. I don’t believe, despite the lengthy list of saloons and dining rooms that have failed here, that this address is cursed. This stretch of Main Street has four or five commendable dining venues, and 5031 is one of the most appealing buildings on the block. Anything that opens in the space should have a shot at success, and Nick and Jake’s, with its positive track record, could still beat the bad mojo.

To do it, the owners must tweak the menu. And they really must train the waitstaff.