AJ's Brooklyn Pizza Joint — Restaurant in Vancouver

Was in a party of 5 and placed our name down for the group. Was advised it would be an hour wait. No problem.. Halfway through the wait, I went back to see how long the wait would be and was told it would still be about an hour. I was then told by waitress Brandy that they were trying to clear room for our party at either the bar section, or a table by the window. I said no problem, we understood that it was a small business space and it was a Saturday night.

Nearing our updated hour mark. The 2 sections Brandy said they were trying to clear for us, had now been cleaned by waitress Nicole, and were being provided to other smaller parties by waitress Nicole. Waitress Nicole went outside the restaurant for a brief moment and on behalf of the party, I tried to advise Waitress Nicole that we noticed she had seated other smaller parties in the sections that Brandy was clearing for our party; so I asked if we would be waiting longer than an hour again.

Waitress Nicole proceeded to flick her hand toward me and curtly stated, “okay… You can relax,” and walked away without bothering to communicate. We simply were just asking for an update and just some communication regarding the tables that were being cleared for our party. Instead we received unwarranted attitude by staff. It would have been no issue if it was just communicated to us that there were smaller parties ahead of us and they were changing the seating to accommodate everyone. But instead we were given unnecessary attitude and no answers..

The Bar Manager came outside to offer a free round of drinks, which was much appreciated. But when I tried explaining the behaviour from waitress Nicole, the Bar manager ignored our comments regarding his staffs behaviour; and did not wish to engage in addressing our concerns..

Waitress Nicole returned outside the restaurant to provide takeout to another customer outside and in passing, waitress Nicole said they were clearing a table for us. I greatly appreciated their efforts and thanked Waitress Nicole.

Waitress Nicole responded overly sarcastically, “YoUrE sO wElCoMe…” and continued to past our party. As we were about to leave due to how we were spoken to, our table opened up. We were greeted by Brandy who was beyond apologetic for the delay.

We were given amazing food, good drinks and we salvaged a night out downtown.

The Food is a 5 (when we were not given the wrong pizza we did not order), the atmosphere is good, but other than waitress Brandy, the service is not worth it!!

We received the wrong order and it took an additional 30 minutes to receive the right meal. When we asked for a box and the bill, it took an additional 20 minutes to get our to go box and bill… As we paid our bill, the servers said we should have reserved a table to begin with. We initially tried to reserve a table but we were originally told by other servers (at the start of putting our name down on the list for a table) that the restaurant did not do reservations.

In total, this was a 3hr regrettable experience…

I don’t know about any other customer, but we would rather have respectful service than a free round of booze to make up for the unacceptable behaviour from waitress staff. I’ve worked in the service industry and completely understand that it can be a frustrating job at times and servers can have a tough day. But waitress Nicole’s behaviour crossed a line..

Unless the servers improve their level of professionalism, spend less time giggling and chatting behind the bar while they drink, we will not return to this business any time soon.

Brandy is amazing and we’re sorry she had to pick up the slack for the rest of...

I’ve been to this pizza joint twice. I loved it both times!

First I’ll talk about the first time I came in. I went there for lunch after getting some badly needed work shoes from Mark’s across the street. I had been hoping to get some sushi from my long standing favourite sushi place in town, Hime Sushi, but sadly they weren’t open. So I thought I’d give this place a try.

This was a small pizza place, but interestingly it also had the feel of one of the cheap hipster food joints I used to be able to find in town (remember 5$ plates at the Warehouse? Delicious.) Yet simultaneously it also had local beers on tap and the television screens for a sports bar. The little barrels and sports memorabilia around though gave it more character than most sports bars though-in the tradition of an American export joint, the guys at AJ showed that they deeply cared about both pizza and the sports bar experience. Despite my years of antipathy towards sports in part as a result of the 2011 hockey riot, I stayed.

I noticed that they offered pizza by the slice, so I tried a slice of artichoke heart pizza and a slice of the pepperoni. Since it was just me and I didn’t feel like drinking alcohol I had a root beer to go with it.

The artichoke pizza especially was a pleasant surprise. I never thought I would like artichoke on pizza but here it was executed masterfully. The pepperonis on the pepperoni pizza were unusually small and extremely flavourful for North American pizza-I suspect that they were able to get Italian import pepperoni and then slice it. Awesome!

The small batch Boylan root beer, as I always find, was quite good.

My sole complaint about that first dining experience was that the thin pizza crust had a bubble that baked hard and then shattered in my hand as I was trying to eat it-the one flaw of an otherwise beautifully cooked pizza!

I saw that they had St. Patrick’s day specials, so I thought I might come back to try those.

And, since the Irish bars downtown were utterly packed after my shift on St. Patrick’s Day, I did! My boyfriend was with me for this. We ordered a custom two topping pizza with their spiced pineapple and prosciutto. They gave us the option of having the prosciutto put on the pizza after the baking process which we took, keeping the thin slices nice and moist. Probably it was the best Hawaiian-esque pizza I’ve ever had.

I also had a traditional Guinness (it was canned, since it wasn’t at an Irish bar downtown. I can’t even be mad at that point though-this is why I usually have my one St. Patty’s Guinness in the afternoon.) but we also had an Irish Mule-a special that they were offering uniquely for that occasion. It had ginger beer, mint, lime, and an Irish whiskey (I think it was Malone’s? I forget). In any case, I actually really liked it-usually I find the taste of ginger beer in these drinks far too overwhelming, but the interplay between the unusual flavours gave it a fruity character that I quite liked. We ended up getting a couple of those.

AJ’s Pizza Joint, I can thus conclude, is great for a slice or two-but even better if you can bring friends for a freshly baked pizza or two and some...

🚨🚨 DO NOT EAT HERE 🚨🚨

Went to AJ’s before an event downtown a little while back with a group of 6. We had made a reservation and everything was all good. The owner “AJ” himself greeted us at the door, clearly drunk. Words slurring, and not making sense. He said something like, “I’ll get one of the girls to take care of you they don’t let me do anything around here”. Weird thing to say as someone who clearly was an owner/operator. He proceeded to then sit at a table towards the back area/washroom with 4 people. They had a bottle of wine they were just finishing and had egg nog drinks (w/liqour ofc) on the way from the bar.

Anyways, for dinner we ordered a few different pizzas and a pitcher of beer. Spent a good amount of $$ but I digress. Throughout the the service we noticed the place starting to fill up and there was barely any room to move in the entire restaurant because he started bringing his “friends” in and letting them stand by the bar to order drinks while they waited. The logical thing to say to them in that moment would have been come back in 20 minutes or so and we’ll have an open table for example but he insisted that these people just hover over us while they drank. We finished our pizza and had about 30 or so mins until we had to leave for our event so we ordered another pitcher of beer. Then as the server is putting the pitcher on the table, the owner had the audacity to come over to our table and ask us to leave as soon as possible. We understood that the place was filling up and people we were waiting by the door. We said no problem, we’ll finish this pitcher and get outta here. We said we’d be about 30 mins or less, but he proceeded to say if you could make it 15 or less that would be perfect. All in his drunken slurred speech. And instead of removing himself and his friends from their table which they had been at since before we arrived, he sat back down with his group.

Wow. We couldn’t believe it. Asking a table if they’re okay to get a move on is one thing, but having patrons hover over tables and not even getting up yourself to open up a table is was BEYOND unexcusable. New York trash behaviour from a guy who clearly doesn’t have any respect for patrons or the establishment he owns. That’s not how we treat people on the West Coast. We won’t be going back and wouldn’t reccomend anyone else going there during peak hours. You’ll be treated as a second class citizen once the owner’s buddies come through the door.

Edit: Just had to say..I’ve dined at a lot of establishments over the years. Have had good and bad service. I’ve also worked in the food service industry for almost a decade. But this is the first time I’ve actually gone back and reviewed an establishment because of what happened while I was there. That’s how bad the taste it left as this...