Joe's Restaurant — Restaurant in New York

Firstly, I love the classic family feelings I get from Joe's. I recently moved to the Ridgewood area and want to find my neighborhood Italian place. I can tell it's a very beloved place.

I gave it five stars because these small businesses need all the support we can give.

Here are my positives: Portion sizes are generous. I ordered the small antipasti, garlic bread Parm, and a entree with a couple beers. It came to $50 and could have fed 3 people healthily. The services was so great. Attentive but not hovering, polite but not fake nice. Everybody was helpful and efficient with any requests I had. Their sauce is special. It's definitely their specialty. I want to go back and just get a simple plate of pasta and sauce.

What I didn't like: The antipasti wasn't great. The greens had some very wilted leaves, some were almost dry. The cheeses don't feel like they're made in Italy. The meat was not great. It was just sliced salami I could get from the corner deli. The olives were good and I enjoyed them very much. The olives really tasted like Italy/Greece. The garlic Parmesan bread was ok, but I had to ask them to bring their red sauce for dipping. With a little red sauce on the side for the garlic bread it becomes a great side dish. Without red sauce it's too dry.

I'm not going to talk about the entree I ordered. I think I just ordered the wrong thing... Next time I'll keep it simple, their pasta is authentic and fantastic. I learned my lesson.

My least favorite thing about the whole experience was the music. They need to have a better playlist or music curation. Some Italian folk music would be so beautiful. Or just something ambient and light like classical guitar. Instead they had very generic and cheap covers of top 40 pop songs playing with a heavy beat and annoying American vocals. It didn't match the authentic Italian style of family restaurant. It sounded like a JCPenny shopping mall.

Overall, I love these places where you can get a good large meal to feed a family and support a small family business. 5 - Stars! With a couple little improvements I can see myself wanting to come back here every week. I was happy to tip over 20% and I...

My coworkers have been here several times and raved about this place. After reading some yelp reviews I really expected a pretty stellar experience... meeeh not so much.

Service: Came in around 12:30PM on a Friday, we were the only ones in the restaurant, I told the waiter that we needed a table for 5 and he said "Five? Just sit at a round table back there" and motioned with his thumb. We sat ourselves and waited 15 minutes for the same waiter to come over to us and give us menus... waited another 15 minutes to finally get our order taken. Another 10 minutes for water. Another 15 minutes for bread and another 20 minutes for our food to come out. I request for some chili flakes and he nodded in acknowledgment but never brought it to me. The server also never checked in on us a single time to ask if we needed anything else. Some of our bread plates were also dirty and splattered with oil but because we realized how bad the service was, we helped ourselves to clean plates from other tables. Meanwhile we saw people who came in half an hour after us getting their entrees, by the time we got ours, these people were already on their desserts! Maybe these people got preferential treatment because they were regulars? When we asked for the check it took another 15 minutes to pay.

Food: I ordered the linguine in white wine clam sauce, it was pretty mediocre, I wasn't that impressed. My co-workers got the fettuccine, shrimp pasta in red sauce and filet of sole. The fettuccine was also mediocre and "not worth the hour wait" according to my coworker, shrimp pasta was good and filet was good.

Bottom-line: Our server sucked BUT we still tipped him 15% because all of us had worked in the service industry before. HOWEVER we will no longer be dining here, there are plenty of other places in the area we can go that at least pretend to appreciate...

We were shocked. We made reservations a week in advance, asked if we'd be able to get a table in the back, they said no problem. When we arrived, about ten mins before our time, we checked in and said we'd wait, it was empty except for a small party of people clearly celebrating, but saying goodbye, they were putting on their coats.

The girl sat us next to the servers' booth. I asked her to be seated in the back, where there were plenty of tables, where we were told we'd be able to sit, and where they sat everyone else who came in after us and left us at that uncomfortable table.

Nearly 50 years my family has visited this restaurant, during the pandemic, and this is how they now treat valued customers. We left half of what we would normally tip. What was the point of taking our reservation, say yes they would gladly accommodate us, and then sit us next the bathrooms? While they sat everyone else behind us? Very shocking and not very good service.

We celebrated many family events, my communion celebration was here, we have photos of that day. My uncle passed away two years ago, we shared the news and celebrated his life there. This was very disappointing and completely unnecessary. I guess they don't care about...