Jen and I had a gaggle of friends and family staying with us last week for my master’s recital. At some point someone pointed to the June Bug Cafe around the corner and asked how it was. It’s crappy. I’m going to write about it here on the Festivus G so that next time people come visit I can avoid having a flashback of eating there.

June Bug Café

403 Centre St.
Jamaica Plain, MA
(617) 522-2393

The June Bug Cafe is located right in the heart of Hyde Square in Jamaica Plain. However, hidden between Bella Luna and a bank ATM it’s easily missed- especially since it’s usually closed: morning and night.

I know people usually want coffee in the morning, but the June Bug Cafe has only recently decided that it would open before 10am. Want to chat with friends after dinner or find a place to study away from your boisterous housemates? Keep looking. The June Bug doesn’t stay open late either.

But let’s just say you get lucky and the June Bug is open when you want to go there. What you’ll find is a swankily decorated affair with a table and chairs area on one side and a couch are on the other. The couch area even boasts a big screen tv for those of you who like television.

If you are going to the June Bug accompanied by friend or, even better, an enemy who is to dine with you, ask them to order for you. Just sit down on a comfy couch or sidle up to one of the tables and let them face the people behind the counter. The last thing you want to do is deal with them.

Here’s a list of observations other customers have made about the service at June Bug (compiled from other web reviews): rude, curt, abysmal, surly, lousy, quite slow, lacking basic manners, do not smile, horrible, less than apt, less than stellar, unfriendly, inattentive.

I’ve never been ignored by someone so close to my face as I have at the June Bug Cafe. It’s a great place to feel like you’re a total inconvenience to humanity. I repeat: stay away from the people behind the counter! Make someone else order.

The only successful eating experience possible at the June Bug is one where you don’t see them, and they don’t see you. Since they won’t see you if you stand 6 inches from them, the job is half done.

Coffee at the June Bug is so-so. Since I don’t think much of coffee when I go out, I guess that doesn’t mean much. They use too much milk in their espresso drinks, but it’s probably on par with $tarbucks.

The food is actually pretty good. They have incredible bagels which they refuse to sell to me for less than $1 a piece (so I can make them at home and never return there). I’ve heard great stories about the sandwiches and their breakfast bagel thing is really good. It’s all a bit pricey, but what can you do.

If the service wasn’t appalling I probably wouldn’t mind so much.

One more complaint. There are too many tables and chairs in the place. It gets hard to get in and out of there and you end up practically pinned up against the customer next to you when it’s only marginally full.

It’s really a shame that there is a coffee shop on my corner that sucks so badly. If there was a coffee shop with halfway-decent coffee that stayed open past 10pm, I’d probably be there a couple nights a week. But maybe it’s better that I haven’t wasted money at a coffee shop. Which is just plain good advice: don’t waste money at this coffee shop.

• Festivus Gastronomicus Rating: Crapicus

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Reviews, $. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.