Jilly's CupCakes and Cafe - Visited June 2013

Today was my lunch pick and I was trying to decide between someplace we had never visited and one place we had not visited in a long time.  I ended up with the latter, and we ended up at Jilly's Cupcake Bar & Cafe in University City which we had not visited since before their expansion. Our former neighbor loves their Sunday Brunch, but we were going to visit for Saturday lunch. Jilly's had earned some notoriety by winning the Cupcake Wars on the Food Network and the expanded location was much more roomy and had more amenities than their previous tight quarters. Their cupcakes were out in a large display when you were entering from the lot on the west of the building.

We first decided we were going to split a Chocolate Thunder cupcake at the end of our meal and then we decided on lunch. I looked for one of the items marked as "NEW!" so I went with the Pork-A-Palooza since I love pork! My son went with the Chicken, Bacon & Spinach quesadilla, my wife selected the Chicken Apoliana and my mother-in-law selected the Chicken Caesar salad. There was definitely a lot more seating than there had been before and we were able to find a roomy table for four.

We did have to wait for a while and we saw many patrons entering, including many with small children. It seems the standard "child management" strategy at Jilly's is to purchase a single cupcake and to place it where the child can see it, but they cannot eat it until after they eat their lunch and they behave. That seems to work well, as the children all behaved pretty well. That is a good thing too, since the food took a while to arrive. When it finally came, the portions were quite generous and we were hoping we would have room for the cupcake.

I would love to have stated the food was extraordinary, but in reality the lunch food was good but nothing special. My wife said her Chicken Apoliana was good but lacked some spices that would make it more appropriately Greek, and it seemed to be stuck somewhere between Mediterranean and Greek. My son said the bacon in his quesadilla was subpar although he did eat it all. And my mother-in-law chimed in similarly that her caesar salad was okay but not great. As for my giant pork sandwich, it was messy and the pork was very tender and flavorful, but as a full sandwich it did not have any special flavor or sauce to it to make it stand out. Like everyone else I would say it was good but that is it.

Finally, it was time to split up our cupcake, and it was indeed good. Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. How can you go wrong with that? The cake was good and moist and the icing was solid and flavorful. The cupcake definitely topped the lunch food. If it were just me I would have preferred going to House of India for lunch and then splitting a cupcake, but nobody else likes Indian food!