Johnny's Beef & Gyros - Joliet — Restaurant in Joliet

I'm late in writing this review because my actual visit that I'm detailing here was about a week and a half ago, but I'll keep it simple... I don't know if some workers at this place has a personal problem with me (which i can't imagine since there's never been a problem voiced and I've certainly never done anything to anyone employed there), or if it's with people who look like me (I'm a black man) or if it's just plain happenstance incompetence, but the last time i ordered food there was the latest instance of this establishment serving me sub par food with obvious instances of bad food preparation!

To make a long story shorter, after previous times where i was given a partially burnt pizza puff with a hole in it and some of the filling missing, and another time where i was given a Gyro on a pita that was used straight out of the pack with no warming or toasting on the griddle. This time i again ordered a Gyro (2 of them) and i made a point of requesting that the pita be warmed on the grill, and i also ordered an Italian beef with hot peppers and a combo with sweet peppers.

While they did indeed manage to grill my pita this time, they decided to totally ruin the rest of BOTH of the sandwiches by absolutely DROWNING the sandwiches in tziki sauce! Absolutely disgusting! And it was definitely done on purpose because from the top it looked fine if i were to check my food before leaving, but all throughout the rest of the sandwich it was like they dipped all the rest of the meat in copious amounts of the stuff and on top of that it didn't taste the same at all, it had an extra twang of sourness and bitterness that it normally doesn't have, so i unfortunately suspect something was done to it purposely (maybe extra lemon juice squeezed into it??), i don't know for sure but like i said this was overt bad food preparation which makes me think of all the these actions as intentional, so needless to say me and my wife couldn't finish them. And while my stepdad said his combo was ok, my mom's beef with hot peppers, though it had a nice flavor to the actual beef that i noticed after she asked me to taste it because they absolutely smothered her sandwich in the hot peppers and even after she took most of them off it was still extremely spicy as if they poured some of the juice on it! And we are not people who are averse to spicy food at all so it was glaring!!

I'm totally disappointed to be having to write this review because I've been there maybe 2 or 3 other times outside of the ones I've named and I've had good food, even the gyro when it was made normally and their big daddy burger as well. But a 50/50 shot at getting my food prepared correctly and without whatever malice that seems to surface at times when i patronize their establishment is not good enough to remain a loyal customer, so i will not be going back to that place, and whoever reads this is gonna take away from it whatever they will, but just know that this review is real and it's what i have actually experienced and that's the only place i can speak from. So i don't care if you've had a million visits without issues, that doesn't make their dealings with me ok in anyway with the incidents I've described here. So...

Love the Big Daddy Buger and Greek Salad. Always fresh and delicious.

UPDATED REVIEW: Used to order from Johnny's every week. Love the Big Daddy and Greek salad. DO NOT love being told I'm a liar. The older woman who I believe owns the place has an attitude problem. I checked my usual order (two Big Daddys, Greek salad and hot dog) to make sure the burgers didn't have onion. One was good, but one had onion, no big deal, handed it over and just going to wait for a new one. Not look for any free food, a discount or anything extra. Then this woman gets involved and tells me there was never onions, after the cooks took the sandwich in the back and scaped (most of) the onions off. She made a big show that there were no onions and did I want the sandwich back. I said fine and took the sandwich back so as not to make a scene in front of the other customers. I get home and my husband opens his burger and shows me the onions the cooks missed when the scraped them off in the back. Would not have been any problem, EXCEPT this woman wants to tell me there was never onions and make big deal about it and trys to make me look like a liar. Used to be a big fan but will never spend another penny with them. The food is good but not good enough to make up for her terrible attitude and even worse customer service. There are other instances of her terrible attitude this was just the ladt straw for me. DO...

Okay...We have passed Johnny's by for the past 15 years, but tonight my wife just whipped into the parking lot and said "Time to try this place out". When I walked in, it kind of reminded me of the many small 'Dive' (not used in a negative way) restaurants in central and southern IL.

I wasn't really hungry, so I just ordered a 10 piece wing zing. My wife ordered the 1/4 lb. Angus burger. The coating on the wings was really good, but extremely salty. I'm on a low sodium diet, so I had to deskin the wings. Luckily, the meat was perfectly cooked and the barbecue sauce was well above average. Unfortunately, we both thought the burger tasted more like it was a generic frozen one that had smoke sauce added to it. I'm sure their signature burger was better, but we weren't hungry enough to take one on. The cost is reasonable enough to give Johnny's a try. Clean environment- even has an adult game room. TV's are available should you want to watch something, but shows nice art work if you want a nice ambience to just sit and talk. Don't expect a 4 star restaurant, but the staff was very accommodating and the free chocolate chip cookie was a great way to finish our meal. Will we go again? Probably not , but I wouldn't discourage you from trying Johnny's...