This place is interesting. It was featured awhile back on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and apparently was very overwhelmed for awhile. When I was doing a little research beforehand about the place, nearly all the comments were about how slow it was. I am not sure if the business has died down a bit since the show first aired, or if they have just gotten a handle on it. It certainly isn’t fast, that’s for sure, but I thought the wait was reasonable (about 25 minutes to get our food). Maybe that was just because I was expecting so much longer. Our server was also really nice I thought which also probably helped.
So I guess one of the things they are known for are the Philly Cheese steak style sandwiches, and they have a ton of different variations of them on the menu, but I was intrigued by other things and went a different route. The sandwich I had was called the “Ham and Egg” ($8.99 with a side). So it was enormous for sure, that was the first thing I noticed about it. The bread was that really thick cut soft Vienna loaf bread. The toppings were smoked ham (really thinly sliced), bacon, egg salad, grilled onions (they call them “onion rings”), American cheese and a pepper parmesan sauce. I really liked this sandwich a lot. Of course ham, bacon and eggs go perfectly together, but the ham was nice and smoky, which added nice flavor. And the onions added some texture variation and a little more bite to the rich ingredients. The bacon was crispy and tasty too. The egg salad was how I liked it, not too fancy, just simple eggs, mayo and salt and pepper. It was really big like everything is at this place—I only ate about half. For my side I got the mustard potato salad (they also have red skinned potato salad) because I tend to like the kick the mustard adds, but honestly, after having a bite of my friend’s red skinned salad, his was better. It was creamy and just had more flavor to it. The mustard salad could have stood to be a little creamier.
My friend had the Parsippany sandwich which is a cold hoagie type sandwich—the toppings were ham, pepperoni, capicola (a pork cold cut that taste similar to prosciutto), olive tapenade, roasted red peppers, provolone cheese and a bunch of lettuce. My bite of this was pretty tasty too—I really liked the olive tapenade with all that meat. I didn’t really care for all the lettuce and other things piled on top—it looked like it made it hard to eat.
All in all, my experience at Jersey’s was a good one—it does get quite crowded at lunch—we went a little early to try and avoid the crowd and did a good job. And since it does take a little while to get your food, if you get there on the early side, you are still eating close to lunch time right? But by the time we left, it was pretty well packed. The menu is huge and I look forward to trying a bunch of other things on the menu there, including one of the Philly-style sandwiches (I was sort of attracted to the “Bronx Bomber.”) Anyone been and found something they really liked? You know I want to hear all about it!
Jersey’s Café
13710 North Meridian Street
Carmel, IN 46032
317/846-7760
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