Drake R.
Yelp
Alright, at this point I'm a full blown tiki bar nerd, and made a special visit to Sacramento just to check out Jungle Bird. I had what I would call an "ok" first time. First with the decorations and ambiance, it's pretty great, very tiki, very well thought out. Loved checking out the mug collection and all the stuff on the walls.
The food, decent for a bar that's for sure. The pupu platter was fun, and the Pork Belly Bao was actually spot on. The Bahn Mi fries had killer flavor, but the fries were wildly too soggy. Could be a one off, if I go back again I'll make to request extra crispy fries to work with all those toppings. The Kahlua Pork, we did not like, very salty, not much else goin on.
Now the drinks, the Plankwalker itself, is a fantastic cocktail and Jungle Bird really knocks it out of the park with that one. Everything else though, just fine. Very very sweet, and the spirit doesn't really shine through in any of them. We navigated most of the menu and really just felt like the drink program could use some work.
Service, so we started at the bar up front and hung out for about 30 minutes before our table reservation time. This was fine, our first bartender was quite friendly, but the second one not so much after the bar got a bit busier. Now onto the table service, honestly it was awful. It's not really at fault of our server, his section was just absolutely way too big and he was balancing a party outside at the same time. This is just bad staffing and planning though because we were really neglected the entire time. We would have stayed longer but once we got to the table it just kept going downhill. Piles of stuff left on the table, way too long I between even seeing him, extended waits to get drinks, waters being left empty. That wasn't a great experience.
All in all I probably would go back and give it another try if I'm in the area, but won't be going out of my way for it. Another weird thing to tack on, I'd been following Jungle Bird's instagram and had my eyes on a couple things they had posted, one even that same day. Once I asked the waitress about the drinks on instagram and even the swizzles in them, she said "oh we haven't had those for years, or those drinks, must be old photos." It's kinda lame to be posting pictures and merch of stuff that you haven't had for years, it's a bit misleading. If you have no new pictures to post of your drinks and what not, that may be a sign that you need to refresh your drink program.