Joe Italiano's Maplewood — Restaurant in Moorestown Township

• Update March 2024 * This place has so many ups and downs. I find that after a year, we’re still hacking a load of bread with a very small steak knife. Come on guys, all restaurants have better utensils than this place. The tomato sauce, this time, was plentiful. But it tastes like jar sauce, nothing special at all. Even Olive Garden has a better tomato sauce. The salad is also subpar - any Italian restaurant has a better salad, even Olive Garden. The music is also very depressing - 40’s and 50’s.

• Update October 2023 * We recently had a party of four and there were a few problems that we noticed: (1) Be sure to ask for a sharp bread knife, otherwise you will have to hack it to death with the unsharp serrated knife they provide. (2) If you order a salad w/o dressing you may likely get a salad that still has dressing of some sort. (3) if you order Eggplant Parmesan, there will only be a little drizzle of tomato sauce underneath the eggplant. Come on guys. There should be ample sauce on top of the Eggplant Parmesan. I subtracted 1 star.

• End Update *

• Update: August 2023 * It’s been 3 years now since my 1st disappointing visit. However, I am delighted to raise my review to 5 stars. My friend and I were comfortable in a booth and our food was quite good. Be prepared for an crowd when you dine at Maplewood. Much of the music they play is from the 30s & 40s.

• End of update *

This was the 1st time I and my friends elected to eat lunch at Maplewood. The square tables for 4 people are too small. I had to sit the salad bowl on the spare chair. We started with a house salad for the table along with bread. The salad was soaked with dressing, the bread was stale and served with small diner-style single-use containers of butter. Any real Italian restaurant would have served olive oil & herbs for dipping. My grilled chicken entree was a bit tough. One of my friends thought his Shrimp Scampi was very watery. Two of us ended our meal with a cannoli. I’m sorry I asked for one. The cannoli shell was not very crisp (as of excess moisture had accumulated) and the ricotta cream was not very flavorful. Any good restaurant (especially those with pricey entrees) would store the cream filling and shells separately and only fill the shell once an order had been placed. Since I do not think this Maplewood location is a good restaurant, I suspect that the cannoli shells were filled hours before one was served to myself and one of my friends.

So instead of 1 star I give this restaurant 2 stars since one of my friends didn’t have any complaints other than the bread we were served. I hate to be harsh, but there is only one ‘first impression’ possible. I value my time and money and will gladly go elsewhere.

• It is almost 5:30 PM (our lunch was at noon) and this will be my 3rd and final edit for this review. As I think over our lunch experience, I keep forgetting some of...

I normally don’t write long reviews, but I really want to share my experience so others know what to expect. A few nights ago, I ordered the seafood pasta with red sauce. What came out was one of the most impractical dishes I’ve ever been served in a restaurant. The seafood — lobster, clams, and crab — was all still in the shell, and the red sauce was poured right over the top of everything. Think about that for a second: the meat is still inside the shells, so the sauce doesn’t actually flavor the seafood itself. All it does is make the shells slippery, messy, and impossible to handle. Instead of enhancing the dish, the sauce actually made it nearly impossible to eat.

I explained to the server that this just wasn’t working and asked him to please take it back and bring me something else. His “fix” was to move the sauced seafood (still in the shell) onto a separate plate, add plain pasta without sauce, and provide a little bowl of sauce on the side. This wasn’t a solution at all. To make matters worse, when I pointed out the issue, the server actually gestured to the seafood crackers on the table and said, “You have crackers,” as if that somehow solved the problem. This was a ridiculous response — no amount of crackers can make sauced shellfish any easier or cleaner to eat.

After repeated failed attempts to explain why this presentation was unacceptable, I finally gave up and asked for a different entrée. I even said I’d pay for it just to get things moving along. When the bill came, sure enough, I was charged for both entrées.

The whole experience was disappointing from start to finish — not just the poorly conceived dish, but also the lack of common sense in how it was handled. Shell-on seafood with sauce dumped over it is unworkable. The server’s dismissive “you have crackers” response only made it worse. I left frustrated, hungry, and feeling taken advantage of. Needless to say, I will not be...

The food was horrible. We ordered the coconut shrimp, which were average. The shrimp tasted like boxed prepackaged fried shrimp (not hand breaded, no coconut flavoring on the shrimp), and had a side of sweet dipping sauce that didn't taste like coconut. The garlic bread was extremely salty. I couldn't eat it. The salad dressing was so acidic that my tongue felt "burnt" afterwards. Its as if the dressing was just vinegar. No herbs or spices, just vinegar. I ordered the crab stuffed flounder. It was so flavor-less. I was completely disappointed. It tasted like an unseasoned filet of flounder with just crab cake breading on top...because as much as i poked around the crab stuffing, I didn't see any crab. It honestly looked and tasted like plain breading. And even the breading wasn't any better than a box mix. The only flavor the fish dish had was from the wedge of lemon I squeezed on it. The side of homemade spaghetti was disgusting. The pasta itself was average, but the sauce tasted like they dumped canned tomato sauce on top. It was so plain! No herbs, no seasoning, no garlic, nothing. It was seriously disappointing. My husband got the shrimp fra diavlo. It came out as a huge mound of pasta, the flavorless sauce but with hot pepper flakes, and 3 shrimp...3! He only ate the shrimp and hated the pasta and sauce. He was also disappointed with his meal. All together with tip, we paid about $90. I feel like we were seriously ripped off. I do not mind spending that amount for good, well prepared food, but not on food that tastes like chain restaurant, prepackaged quality. Maplewood in MAYS LANDING has been one of my favorite restaurants for over 20 years. Looks like Joe Italianos kids/grandkids are trying to expand his legacy, but are seriously cutting corners on the quality of food. Very...