BJ's

Last Tuesday, mein family and I visited a new branch of a restaurant that had newly opened near us. We've been to this restaurant, named BJ's, before but it was a different branch located quite a long ways off from our place. Knowing that a new one had opened up a day or so ago, we didn't wait long before we began our invasion.

This one was similar in decor indoors and out, which I assume would make sense - why would they make the same name of restaurant with different themes and decorations serving the same food, right?

It was only their second day of opening and yet they were already pretty filled up. Our time of arrival was most fortunate - after we had sat down and ordered more people steadily trickled into the restaurant. We commented about the busy-ness of the place to our server who seemed quite surprised by the whole thing as well. We all wondered what kind of marketing they had... didn't seem to recall if there were TV ads, print ads, flyers, etc. I guess just having big signs outside the place was enough to promote the place?

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Or maybe it was the food.

We ordered a half a baked potato (which came with soup - New England clam chowder) for my grandmother. My cousin got a small deep dish pepperoni pizza while my other cousin got a Chili Cheese Angus Burger. My other aunt and I both ordered their spicy Jambalaya (which I was no stranger to) with a side of rolls. As for beverages we got soda, lemonade, and strawberry lemonade.

The baked potato was quite huge. It had chicken and broccoli topped with molten cheese.

The pizza, while small, was pretty hefty in itself. The burger looked like a yummy heart attack waiting to happen, served with potato wedges on the side. The jambalaya had chicken and sausage and pretty spicy.

The lemonade's rim was coated with sugar for that extra "mmm~"

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Yeah, it was definitely the food.

We also had the dessert in mind when we came here. Oh yes... definitely the dessert. Simply called a "Pizookie" and according to their website is a "freshly baked, hot out of the oven, rich and delicious cookie topped with two scoops of vanilla bean ice cream and served in its own deep dish. Your choice of chocolate chunk, white chocolate macadamia nut, peanut butter or oatmeal raisin walnut." We picked macadamia nut.

Yes, you are drooling.

Prices are pretty good considering the food, which is a bit above-average for your normal run-of-the-mill poor college student like moi. Definitely worth a revisit, if only for the dessert (definitely for the dessert!). Here's their website if you're interested: BJ's Restaurants.

- West

Oh, and by the way: