Joe's Italian Restaurant & Pizza @Duval & Reid — Restaurant in Moberly

Wow... So many times in my life, I have eaten at a restaurant, had a great meal, then based that decision on eating at another restaurant in the same family or chain. I can tell you about 9 out of 10 times it has just not been a great idea. This is NOT One of those times! Recently, my wife and I had an amazing dinner at the Venezia restaurant in Kirksville Missouri. While we were there, the waiter mentioned that there was a location in Moberly Missouri as well. Our business brought us to Moberly tonight, and I asked my wife if she wanted to try that Moberly Italian restaurant and see if it was as good as the one in Kirksville. We decided to go ahead and give it a shot. In my opinion there were two stars of the show tonight, the lobster bisque was just as sensational as it was in Kirksville, terrific consistency, creaminess, flavor and the large generous chunks of lobster were cooked perfectly. But as I said that was only one of the stars of the show We decided to try the stuffed mushrooms and ordered that, with the Alfredo sauce. In my mind I was expecting something like what you would see at a Chinese buffet The cap of the mushroom stuffed with whatever the material is with a little cheese on top. What came out was a long oval bowl with six large mushroom caps stuffed with seafood swimming almost to the top with a delicious Alfredo sauce and then generously covered with gooey wonderful mozzarella baked just well enough to melt the cheese and lightly brown everything around the edges, while cooking everything perfectly. But that wasn't the second star. When our main courses came out I ordered a special that they had on a chalkboard outside the restaurant. I ordered the shrimp scampi. Every shrimp scampi I've ever had anywhere was basically just a bunch of shrimp in a little bowl, usually swimming in garlic butter and stuck under a broiler or a salamander to make it hot. Historically, I have never really cared for any wine-based sauces, most had left a almost musty flavor in my mouth. The shrimp scampi was served over a bed of perfectly al dente linguine noodles, with just the right amount of a lemon-white wine sauce with a little bit of fresh basil and other flavors mixing together to make what I can only say is the most amazing wine sauce I have ever had. The brightness of the lemon with the basil and it was reduced perfectly to eliminate that wine sauce flavor that I had grown to dislike, was an Italian symphony of flavors. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like this was a regular menu item, but I highly encourage them to put it on! My wife had the manicotti. Again, the pasta was cooked perfectly The flavors in the ricotta cheese filling were outstanding, the marinara was fantastic and the blanket of soft, melted, mozzarella cheese on top made a perfect finish. Part 2 coming, see review...

Part 2 from Jaberwok74 profile: I got to speak to four different employees here. We were greeted politely and enthusiastically, by what we found out later, was one of the co-owners wives. She was delightful and charming, and sent our waiter over shortly. Our waiter was Ardo, while his English was self-admittedly "no so good", his charm, personality and sense of humor made him very enjoyable to talk with and he made some excellent suggestions for our meal. We got to speak more in-depth with The owner's wife later, and she was just as positive and charming as before. If you haven't tried one of these restaurants, either the Venezia in Kirksville Missouri, or Joe's Italian in Moberly Missouri, you must take the opportunity to sample some of the best, fresh-made, Italian food that I have ever had. To my understanding, most of their dishes are literally made to order from fresh ingredients. And when I say, " made to order ", I mean if you order the lobster bisque, they make a single, delicious, bowl of lobster bisque, fresh. Not ladeling out a bowl from a stock pot that's been cooking all day. They literally cook the ingredients and mix it together in your bowl. These places are fantastic, and I highly encourage you to take a tour of Italian flavors at either location. I understand that they also have locations in Texas, Kansas, and I think Iowa. I can only expect that those locations would be just as stellar. Okay, stop reading this review, go get some amazing...

Please read the whole review. A year ago I left a fantastic review. 5 Star across the board. Until today, we've always left a 50 % tip or better. We even remember to tip on our to go orders. We ate there today. We were extremely disappointed. We arrived at 3pm. There were 2 other tables already eating when we got there. We were seated well away from the other 2 occupied tables. We got our food by the time the other patrons left. So it was just us. A woman came in with 2 children. Our server, seated them right beside us with a shared bench seat. The kids sat on the shared bench. They immediately started bouncing hard in the seat. It is very uncomfortable to eat with someone shaking the heck out of you. Our food was NOT as described. Our server never checked on us. We always get dessert to go. She didn't even ask if we wanted any. So we stopped somewhere else for dessert on the way home. This was the same server we had last time we ate there that we gave close to an 80% tip that day. We pointed out to our server that perhaps she should not put people right next to each other in an otherwise empty restaurant. She said "well they looked normal when they came in". I guess we didn't look normal today, because she didn't seat is right next to another customer. After eating at this restaurant for over a year, telling everyone this is the best place to get the best food for miles around. I am seriously considering...