JBs is hosting the post-seminar bash on 5 March. As [url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/that-start-up-conference-for-foreigners/15670/1 seminar[/url] is being sponsored and admission is not expensive that means everyone has an opportunity to try out the food reeeaaal cheap.
Just received an email from the man at JBs. He informs me that JBs will be serving some microbrews, hopefully from today onward, assuming that the equipment gets installed according to schedule, but remember, this is Taiwan, so anything could happen!
They’ll have a “JBs steam beer” and a “JBs porter.” Sounds good to me.
JB, when are you going to begin selling the Lincolnshire sausages packaged to take home? Everyone I know who has tried these has voiced an interest in buying them this way. WE WANT THESE SAUSAGES! NOW!
General,
The sausages are available at JB’s however due o the high demand we are selling evrything we make through our menu. Please come along and try them in our giant all day full british breakfast.
I would just thought I would mention the post-seminar bash will be down there tomorrow - I reckon it will be quite a party. I’ll be there. If it was anything like the opening night it should be a good laugh.
So the post-Enspyre entrepreneur seminar dinner will actually be at JB’s itself and not catered at the event location?
Sweeet 
[quote]The bill came to just over NT$1,200 with a shared sweet, a tea & coffee. Marginally more (read a few NT$) than I had expected for 2x fish & chips. As a reference we often eat at Carnegies (a place considered by some as expensive) 1 day during the weekends and usually pay between NT$900~NT$1,100.[/quote] 
WOW, that’s tooooo expensive. I’ve never paid close to that at Carnegies either. Sorry if l seem too harsh and l’m no tight arse, but l didn’t expect the prices at this new place to be so steep.
I agree. 1200nt is 38.50 usd or almost 50 bucks cdn. 20 pounds for brits. That is INSANE for 2 plates of fish and chips.
I don’t think there’s anything great about this place. OK food at above average Taipei prices, OK service but hardly stellar, and non-Happy Hour drinks are just average Taipei prices too. This place is currently enjoying its honeymoon period, but it’ll have to do lots more to succeed long-term.
Several of my friends have raved about the food at JBs, and given the quality of buffets I’ve experienced at other establishments recently I went to the post-seminar bash at JBs on Saturday with high expectations.
Let me start by saying that I really don’t like the Tavern. There’s nothing objectively wrong with the place, and I don’t wish anything bad on them, but it’s just not my kind of environment. I do have to admit, however, that the food laid on by Michel at the last happy hour was fantabulous. I’ve also had great buffets - free ones, even - at Carnegies. I just want there to be more alternatives. I went to JBs with a very positive attitude.
And when I walked in I found a group of people being a bit disconsolate around a small table containing a) a bowl of soup, b) a bowl of curry, c) some salad, and d) some bread. There wasn’t a lot of bread, which is a pity because it tasted great, but I only took a couple of pieces out of consideration for the other guests and ate it with my soup while waiting for the staff to replenish the table.
They did replenish, but there never seemed to be a lot of food available. I had to wait for bread on my second pass, this time to get some curry. The curry was good, so good that someone else had already taken the meat etc. out by the time I got there. So it was a bowl of curry soup and eventually some bread for my second course. I took salad too, which was good and very fresh.
The main course didn’t really fill me up, and I’m not a big eater. So back down I went on a quest for seconds, only to find a bunch of people looking disconsolately at a bowl of white rice.
That was all. Just rice. Great! I looked at one of the staff, who made an indeterminate gesture that could have meant ‘wait 5 for the roast pig’, could have meant ‘sorry, no more’, and could have meant ‘fuck you’. I don’t know, and being in a good mood I decided to just buy a drink while I was waiting.
I waited at the downstairs bar for a few minutes, watching a guy eating a bowl of white rice, and eventually the server came back from wherever she had been. She walked past me, to the other end of the bar, and started a conversation. When it became clear that she wasn’t actually serving anyone I waved, called hello, and she came over to serve me.
Aparently, asking for a drink in a long glass is too much trouble. Her response was, and I quote, “Why don’t you buy your drinks upstairs?” to which I could think of three possible answers.
- “because I don’t smoke and this is supposed to be the non-smoking bar”
- “if you don’t like people buying drinks in the downstairs bar then why do you have a downstairs bar?”
- (my favourite) “Don’t be fucking cheeky. I have asked you politely to do your job, now serve me a fucking drink.”
Somehow, against my better judgement, I replied politely that I was waiting for some food and her answer was that they had stopped serving food at 6. This was at 7:30pm, and I had had enough. I was starving hungry, very disapointed, and now being told I couldn’t even accomplish a simple task like buying a drink from a bar.
I did the decent thing and simply walked away. I got my drink upstairs without any problems, and have no complaints about the staff behind the bar upstairs. They were actually very good, but the same can’t be said for the staff on my side of the bar.
I was in conversation with someone at the bar when one of the wait staff pushed between us and had a shouted conversation with the people behind the bar. He did it three times. There was nothing to indicate that we were standing in a serving area or anything, and he didn’t even acknowledge our presence. WTF?
Ian, if you read this, I try to be polite to people in the hospitality industry. I didn’t come and make an issue of any of this with you because I just wanted to relax and enjoy myself. But if my next visit to your establishment is as piss-poor as the last one I shall complain loudly and vociferously to everyone involved. Bohemian Bob is only half-joking when he describes me as his second-worst customer. If you want me in there bitching about rude unhelpful staff, or grumbling about how crap things are then just keep doing what you’re doing.
It won’t last long. There are alternatives in Taipei these days, and I’d rather just take my business elsewhere. It would be a pity to have to do so, as JBs seems to have the potential of being a great place.
I spent a grand total of NT$160 in your establishment, and the crowd was thinning out when I left at 9:30 in search of decent food and service. I started out with NT$2000 in my pocket and was execting to spend the lot. That’s what usually happens at these kind of events, but you apparently don’t want my money enough to make me stay and spend it.
Possibly the poor showing with the buffet will be blamed on Enspyre for not spending enough money. All I can say is that, as the caterer, you have a duty to tell your client what his customers are going to expect and as a businessman you have your reputation to think about. I would have willingly spent more for a good feed and the crowd at the Tavern a few weeks back apparently felt the same way.
Nobody I spoke to was satisfied with the buffet, although everyone seemed to agree that the quality was there.
There. I’ve tried to be as constructive as I can, and give credit where due. But I’m really not happy. I hope you’ll sort things out and that JBs will become popular enough to put the Tavern out of business.
I can understand your displeasure Loretta, but remember eating buffet or catered food is a lot different than ordering items from the menu directly. I would say that the fault lies with Enspyre on this one.
If course, the serving staff could improve at JB’s – that is for sure. But these things take time to iron out. I remember Alleycat having difficulties on finding “good” servers when he first started. It takes time to find the “right” staff and to familarize them with “Western-stlye” service.
I still stand by my original comments on this place. The menu-food is very good. Try it again 
Have you had a buffet at The Tavern or Carnegies?
For many of us this was our first introduction to JB’s. It left a much less good impression than my first eating experiences at the above two. If someone suggests another HH at The Tavern I won’t have the heart to complain. Suggest JBs and I won’t be the only one not wanting to do it.
You get one chance at a first impression, and you’re in competition with quite a few people who did better when they got their chances. Imagine if forumosa had insisted on a cheap buffet at The Tavern? People don’t mind paying for quality, but if something’s no good - even if it’s ‘free’ - you’re not doing yourself any favours.
Thanks for the comments regarding our Complimentary Buffet supplied to the delegates of the Enspyre Seminar last Saturday!
Well, IMO, that’s really all that matters.
JB’s had a golden opportunity to show itself off to the Taipei expat community and build a positive buzz. It failed fantastically for all the reasons Loretta stated. Not enough rice, soup, bread, salad and chicken curry for 100+ people?! I don’t think so.
The only positive I could say was the “chicken curry” was delicious. I actually thought it was chicken soup and ate it like a soup until I was convinced by my dinner mates that it didn’t make sense to have two soups. Quality of food overall was good. But the overall experience didn’t make me forget any other established pub/restaurant that I frequent.
I concur with Yellowcartman and loretta. Only one chance to make a first impression! An illusion of quality would have done it for me even with scare quantity.
I might add that dumping potato chips and 2 kinds of cookies and crackers on small paper plates during the break at the seminar was not impressive, either. It would have taken the same effort to put chips in a glass bowl…a tad more effort to nicely arrange the cookies and crackers on a glass plate. Their kitchen should already have these items, so that would have been no additional cost.
Regarding the buffet…what bread!? … the dressing was quite good though!
Anyone catch Winopete’s column in POTS this week? He says that JB’s is paying less than 50k for their 3 story location. Wow. I guess they’re getting that back quickly by gauging for their fish 'n chips.
Hi!
I was in JB’s after saturday meeting. Bread very good, I felt almost like in Europe , fresh good bread. Curry was very good.
Food (curry) could be enough for everybody if the rice was serve with curry. But for rice we had to wait long time, of course on the end it was serve only rice without curry 
. In this case I think JB’ should guess that about 50 people can eat more then one bowl of rice.
But the meeting costs 250NT, and nobody says that after meeting, we go for full dinner. I prefer pay 250NT then 900Nt, because not everybody want eat dinner after meeting in JB’s. For 650 NT you can order what you want from normal menu or just go to home and save it.
Break during sessions, true poor. But we went there for meeting not for food.
What the seanse of preparing more food, if we hadn’t long break to eat it.
Khan said: But the meeting costs 250NT, and nobody says that after meeting, we go for full dinner.
The cost was 250NT for pre-registration and 500NT registration at the door which included “free buffet” after the meeting. Buffet is to have a long table with a variety of food choices. Well, a bowl of rice, a bowl of chicken curry, a bowl of salad and a bowl of soup on a small square table is not a buffet! 
The bowls were the size you would use at a dinner for 4-6 people.
Khan said:
Break during sessions, true poor. But we went there for meeting not for food.
What the seanse of preparing more food, if we hadn’t long break to eat it.
I was not implying more food at the break. But food during any type of event, big or small, should be displayed in an appetizing way. Anyone can open a bag of chips or crackers and dump them onto a plate. WHen I went to get a snack, I picked up my small paper plate, and then saw a bunch of other small paper plates on the rather bare table ahead. It was both confusing and disappointing.
If the cost was that big of a factor, it would have been more effective to spend it for finger foods at the break. Then afterwards, suggest meeting at a designated place, in this case JB’s. The seminar was organized by Enspyre but I think that the major responsibility lies with JB’s because they were supplying the food. JB’s got free advertising (my guess) by being a sponsor but they really came up short. Heck, they weren’t even close to professional.
:noway: :noway: :noway:Of course it wasn’t professional at all.
I went down to take a bit food, and when I saw bowl of rice, I started wait for curry. But in this time they close “buffet”, and I stay with plate in my hands, still hungry :fume: .
So we should have hope that next time Enspyre will be better prepare with food, JB’s too. I hope that Elias and JB’s Laoban are reading our comments.
This first a bit bad experience shouldn’t cover the fact that in JB’s is nice and Enspyre seminar was very interesting.and worth to go.