Café Marie Jeanne

Try Café Marie Jeanne for dinner! The smoked ½ chicken is fantastic! We were a party of four and stopped in for early dinner Saturday night. The bar is very large and the staff was very helpful in our wine selection. We hung out at the bar and then grabbed a table. We had olives and pickles with pickled garlic, and veges and dip to start. Yummy!
I ordered Meyer Lemon duck soup which was served with House made sourdough. This was a full meal in itself. So Delicious! Then we shared the Onion Soup, apple and fennel salad, mushrooms, squash with hazelnuts and 2 ½ smoked chickens. Every dish very tasty and well done… we could not finish it all and brought home the leftovers.
Very attentive staff that did not rush us but, checked in often.
They had house made a monkey rolls (pecan, brown sugar brioche) at the counter and I had to take one to go for my Sunday morning treat! Several vegetarian options on the menu and everything is simple and delicious. Just good food and a great price point!
I enjoyed it so much I am taking girlfriends for lunch next week and can’t wait to try on of the savory pies and maybe some oysters! Take a look at this menu and try it!

Sooooo yummy! Checked out this place last night for the first time. Great selection of beer and wine, priced well :). We tried a few things. The squid was AMAZing and my boy friend was sooo happy with his omelette.
Cant wait to try more.

I want to love this place. I was soooo excited when I heard the neighborhood was getting a small grocer. I really hope they expand on this– I think that’s what the neighborhood really needs and wants. I hope it can be a place that families who have lived here for years can also enjoy and not just the newbies. A new restaurant is great and all, but I think what got people excited was hearing there’d be a grocery!
I would just love to see vegetables, noodles, pasta sauce, condiments, lettuce, crackers/​snacks and stuff that people in walking distance could use to whip up a quick dinner or lunch, and pick up a cheap bottle of red wine while they’re at it. Last time I was there there was still no to-​go alcohol.
So far the food tastes great, wines are good, but I hope to see way more things for the grocer section soon. When I ate there once, I ordered a simple meat and cheese sandwich and it came with just the meat and no cheese. Everything else has tasted good. Wish the soups came in 2 different sizes. The salads are amazing. Haven’t tried coffee yet.
Even though I’m a bit of a foodie, I hope the space can be a bit more inviting to non-​foodies and families in the neighborhood :)

Great new spot on the exploding corner of Augusta and California. Menu is really interesting (the steak tartare was great and the chicken comes highly recommended). Good cocktail and wine list, and the bartender on my visit was truly an inspiration. I’m looking forward to going back for brunch, lunch, and more drinks in the future.

I easily find myself spending most of my week there. Breakfast lunch and dinner, all the best. The new neighborhood spot. I highly suggest checking it out! The bread rules.

mmm. mmm. That was a tasty chicken dinner and a great value, too. It’s butchered perfectly for sharing or for just pounding it to completion. (as I did) The bartender was great, and recommended some really unusual wines. I also had the grilled endive, the ham and butter, and the potato side dish. All great. The ham melted in my mouth, and I’m sure they’re putting those ham bones to good use in the soup if it’s anything like the rest of the dishes I had.
I look forward to going during the day to try their breakfast and to bring home a loaf of that delicious smelling bread.

Great to have a place cooking high quality french inspired food. Loved the cocktails, tartare, and champagne mushrooms.
Very friendly service. Looking forward to trying more items from their menu.
Brunch looks good as well.

Just had a crazy feast of a dinner here and beyond impressed.
Oysters, olives, veggies and dip, smoked fish plate, half chicken, mushrooms, acorn squash, and red snapper special paired w wine, beers, and cocktails.
For a first time visit, I think we nailed it and really, Café Marie Jeanne nailed it.
Oysters — these were described as deep water oysters that were larger than average and were fresh, well shucked and served with horseradish, cocktail sauce and mignonette.
Olives — large serving with tasty olive oil at the bottom, maybe castelvetranos but unsure.
Veggies and onion dip — awesome mix of carrots, radish, endive and apples w good dip. Veggies were the star.
Smoked fish plate was BOMB. 5 different fish varieties served w awesome bread, cream cheese and capers. Hot damn, best smoked fish plate I’ve ever had.
Half chicken– holy mother of god. This was mind blowing, the chicken tasted like a ham and was perfectly prepared. Best chicken dish in the city imo.
Snapper special– served whole and was amazing. I wish it was permanently on the menu.
Mushroom and acorn squash sides were good but not especially memorable against all these other stand outs.
I’m quite impressed w the meal we had and hope this restaurant becomes a long time staple like rootstock, which I heard is where the chef owners came from.
Bravo!

I have been waiting for this place to open for months, and I couldn’t be happier. For all of you Unilocalers hung up on price, the price point for this restaurant is perfect. Everything is made in house and quality ingredients and labor come at a price. If you want cheap, Mcdonalds serves breakfast all day now. If you want incredible food served by people obsessed with quality, become a regular.

For the sake of storytelling, every person mentioned in this review other than my girlfriend and I are white.
As soon as we walked in, we were waved off by a hostess who said she’d get to us while walking away without looking at us. The bartender saw and (I think) tried to save face by saying she was just clearing a table for us.
After five minutes of waiting, a couple with a child walked in and were immediately offered a clean table by a second hostess. When my girlfriend told her we had already been waiting for a table, this hostess also rudely dismissed us and told us it was open seating.
We were confused by the contradictory information and the fact that we had to hunt for the only clean table way in the back. Once we did sit, we were ignored by staff for another ten minutes before someone plopped two glasses of water on the table without saying a word to us. After listening to a waitress have an in-​depth conversation about the a-​la-​carte menu with the table beside us, we elected not to spend our money there and left.
The couple with the child already had a full spread of food on their table when we walked out.
tl;dr — Rude, racist staff. Don’t support this.

Damn fine. Slinging some of the best sausage and hash browns around, and who’s gonna argue with cheesy broccoli. The Griddler (flapjacks, sausage, eggs, cheese, stacked) hurts so good. It was like it was having drunk, alley sex with my arteries. Dope service, strong coffee, and the chef is muy dreamy.

Went for breakfast on a Saturday. It’s definitely inviting, though sitting in the front of the café is less desirable to the coziness of the back. While I was really looking forward to a new breakfast and lunch spot in the neighborhood, I was pretty disappointed with our first visit.
1. The a la carte menu is expensive. Waaaay expensive. And I’ll pay for a lot of money for good food, but the bill really struck me as excessive for what I got. I guess I was charged extra for the dismissive attitude of the hostess.
2. The eggs I ordered were super gross. I’m guessing they were going for the Chef Ludo style French scrambled eggs, and they got the color right, but damn, these were the greasiest eggs I’ve ever had. And not like, buttery tasty greasy, but like industrial-​lube greasy.
3. One of my a la carte choices was toast and jam. Three dollar toast and jam. The options were a tomato jam and an apple butter. I got two paper-​thin slices of day old bread and a thimble of apple sauce. I had to beg the bus boy for butter.
4. Our waitress disappeared. There were three servers and a counter person for 5 tables, and our waitress never came back to give us coffee or salt (which was sorely needed) or to even see if we needed to order more items to supplement a truly stingy meal. I regret not palming the busboy a tip because he was basically our waiter.
I was going to give this place 2 stars instead of 1 because the coffee was decent and it just opened so I wanted to allow for space to improve, but then I remembered just how inhospitable our hostess was and I went back to 1 star. I can forgive a lot if the staff is genuine and friendly, but that is clearly not the case here. For now I’m sticking to Haywood and Feed and Dark Matter and the Flying Saucer and Spinning J and CC Ferns.

They’ve just opened, and I’ve already gone twice… that is how much I liked it.
I went with several friends and it was recommended to share. I don’t like to share, but I wanted to sample as much off the menu as I could. Price isn’t cheap, but the quality of ingredients (farm to table) is very high. You get what you pay for.
1. The ½ sandwich (ham and gruyère) and bean soup w/​pork was excellent combo for Chicago in the winter.
2. My friend ordered the new potatoes and slapped my hand for eating too many of them. Fried and salty, so good. I probably shouldn’t know what they are fried in.
3. My co-​pilot ordered the roasted squash and hazel nuts, very good.
4. Homemade English Muffins, amazing!
5. Off Color Brewing has become one of my fav. local breweries, and at 2 miles away, you can’t get more local than them.
Only Con: is that they hadn’t built out the grab-​n-​go section. I think the idea is to get farm to table meats, eggs, cheese, milk, etc. I look forward to see how that plays out.

I’ve lived in Humboldt Park since 2009 and I’m excited when new places open in the neighborhood and always happy to support local. My first impression of this place was that they opened before they were really ready. No window coverings or art on the walls, it felt sparse and cold. Well, whatever. I guess not the hugest deal. We sit down and are given the vaguest menus I’ve ever seen. Several of the menu items are in French and there are ZERO descriptions of the ingredients used. This is a nightmare for a vegetarian. Also, this place is SUPER over priced. And I’ll be the first to overspend on food or an overpriced cocktail, but just tell me what I’m getting. On the chalk board it says «breakfast sandwich» — $ 11. Well, what the hell’s in it? I had an extremely hard time finding anything on the menu that sounded appetizing and I really didn’t feel like asking the server 10 questions, as they didn’t really walk us through the menu. Everything is also a la carte. It’s just a very weird over complicated process to order. My husband wanted to order the vegetarian sandwich, but she didn’t seem to even know what was in it — market vegetables. Hmmm okay. Helpful. Well, the sandwich came and there was a hair in it. The cortado was excellent. I ordered a biscuit and a beer, because I honestly couldn’t figure out what else to order. We won’t be going back.

Visited this place this past weekend — very happy to see something take the place of the beloved Knockbox, as that place is missed greatly. I have high hopes for this spot, but think they still have some work to do. The place needs some artwork up on the walls, and perhaps even more seating — it feels pretty sparse and cold in there still, but I assume (hope) that with some more touches that will come. I believe it was described originally as also having a deli section for take out items, so I was disappointed to see that that section really just consisted of a couple types of meat. The menu is fairly pricey; I was unprepared to pay $ 17 for two coffee drinks and a pastry. Coffee was good, the pastry was mediocre. Menu looked interesting, (though I would appreciate descriptions of the menu items, as there currently are none), and I’ll definitely be back to try a meal there. The staff seemed a bit frazzled, which is understandable for having just opened, but were quite friendly. I’m sure that the owners will eventually bring this place together and it will evolve into a great neighborhood spot.

Really, really enjoyed our dinner last night. Wine menu was very nice, with some interesting and new to us selections. Everything we ordered from the dinner menu we did not regret! Started with some olives (unassuming appearance but interesting cure/​pickling flavor that made them stand out more than normal), shared the romaine and bacon salad, which despite it having bacon still felt pretty light and really nice. For the main we got the half chicken with sweet potato side. Prepared to perfection, both of them. Chicken was moist and insanely delicious with crispy outer skin. This was set on top homemade bread and onions that were very good. The service staff we experienced were all very nice and helpful in explaining menu items. I feel like value matches the price point. I will definitely be back and really want to check out the breakfast menu, where it appears that in-​house baked goods abound!

I went today and it was a miserable experience from beginning to end. I am sorry that this place exists and feel bad that I spent money there. I was made to feel unwanted, stupid and a burden.
To start they make ordering food very hard, the menu is not only not customer friendly but also not server friendly. By writing food in a foreign language, then not describing it and using vague terms for the food items in English I am forced to ask the server multiple questions and wait for answers. This is especially frustrating when everything is al carte; it takes forever to figure out the most basic order. Also why in the world would you bring a whole table coffee but no sugar or cream and then act put out when it’s requested?
It’s not surprising that they had issues filling the order, that it arrived cold and I was still hungry but didn’t want to order anything else because of the high prices/​small portions and that I’d have to wait forever for it. This horrible menu system also makes it no surprise that food orders arrived wrong. What was surprising was that the server’s response was aggressive, accusing and generally insulting. What you brought out wasn’t what was ordered, was gross and frankly you shouldn’t speak to customers like that.
On a whole the experience was a sad and depressing evolution of the neighborhood. I was made to feel uncomfortable and I’m their ideal customer– a white, educated individual that has disposable income to spend on food by eating out more than I should. I was sitting with a group of well-​traveled individuals that could understand most of the menu and they were also made to feel less than. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be any of my neighbors; lower income people of color that have lived here for years. If I was made to feel small and unwanted in this establishment I can only imagine how damaging a dining experience here would be for them. This place is not meant for them, or me. It sends a clear message; move out already, we don’t want you here. This place is for the new people we hope move here. It’s even more depressing when you reflect that a friendly neighborhood coffee shop was kicked out to make way for this pretentious hipster haven.

This place is fantastic. Exactly what the neighborhood needs. My hubby and I went there on Saturday for a breakfast date and we had a variety of items off the a la carte style menu. It was perfect because it allowed us to try lots of different things. We tried a yogurt that had hazelnuts, green apple and fennel… such an interesting combo of flavor and textures. It was so delicious. Also tried something that starts with a «g» (can’t remember the name), that was like homemade Nutella (but waaaay better) with delicious crusty bread. To balance things out with some savory stuff, we had the pork chops with beans and a fried egg on top. Stellar. Also tried the baked sweet potato with sheeps milk cheese. This place is the real deal. Go… now.