Jack in the Box --100 E Holt Ave Pomona, CA 91767

My Meal Cost: $10.43. Health Rating A. Yelp 2 stars

My apologies for being a day late with this entry. I usually try to do these on Monday but yesterday, instead of making my way down Garey to Jack in the Box, I was in downtown LA representing our Pomona Library by reading a selection from Something Wicked This Way Comes at the Ray Bradbury Read event along with Criminal Minds star Joe Mantegna, and Seamus Dever from Castle among others. I ended up having a late lunch of small plates with the famous macrons at Bottega Louie. But that's nowhere near Garey Ave. so outside the scope of this blog.

So here I am, on Tuesday, writing once again about Jack in the Box (see previous post on the chain's location further south on Garey), full well knowing that I'll be at another one at the end of this blog as it finishes up at Foothill. Sigh.

This location is right on the corner of Holt and Garey (thus the Holt address), next to an old motel. It usually has a lot of street people hanging around on the corner so is not the most attractive one in the chain. AND it only has a 2 star rating (out of 21 reviews) on Yelp. So how bad does a place need to be to get only 2 stars? I decided to look at the reviews and the only 5 star review was from someone from San Bernardino who either had the wrong restaurant or it was very sarcastic as it spoke about having their quincenera there. So the actual rating might be skewed.

For my experience, it wasn't THAT bad. The place was clean and the staff seemed to be decent, although not overly friendly. I did have a "street person" come up to me while I was in line panhandling and during my lunch a 2-man crew from a charity (the name mission was on their T-shirts) come through with a large black plastic bucket asking for donations. If this kind of activity makes you uncomfortable (I'm only mildly put off by it), then there are other Jack options in the city.

I decided to order the buttery Jack sandwich combo and (one of my weaknesses) a 3-piece Jalapeno Poppers. I also had a medium drink. They have a CocaCola Freestyle machine which means that I had a large number of options for my beverage (as a nominal diabetic, I do appreciate a larger option of sugar free drinks). I had a Cherry Coke Zero with a splash of Dasani sparking cherry (to get a little extra cherry boost).

The meal came in a fair amount of time, delivered to my table. It did not come with any ranch dipping sauce for my poppers, but the young woman who delivered my meal was gracious in bringing some to me.

The burger was on a buttery role with a nice brown crust and was quite tasty. The burger itself was a gray color, and not terribly appealing. Fortunately they put a large lettuce leaf on the sandwich, which hid the rest of it. Not great, but not horrible. The fries were . . . fries. They do have some specialty things on the menu which I probably should have tried such as garlic fries, salads, and a nice selection of chicken sandwiches.

Unfortunately, this location had nothing that would compel me to want to return. I think I'll stick to the other local (to me) Jack on Towne and the 10 Freeway.

UP NEXT: Lily's Tacos