Junior's Restaurant & Bakery — Restaurant in New York

Junior’s cheesecake is a world-class institution and speaks for itself. As for their other food, there’s a rite of passage about Junior’s for Brooklyn transplants like me.

You’re new to the city, your friends take you to Junior’s, you order the cheesecake and something safe like the Something Different or the bacon and eggs, and you go wow, this is fantastic, this must be the best diner in the city. And your friends laugh at you.

You’ve been living in Brooklyn five years, you say, Juniors is good but I like my mediocre local spot more, it is open all night and their burgers and their bacon and eggs have saved my life after many a long miserable night.

You’ve been living in Brooklyn ten years, the snobbery starts setting in, you say Sarge’s and Katz’s have better reubens, Red Hook Tavern has better burgers, Mile End has better gravy, Veselka has better pickled veg.

You’ve been living in Brooklyn fifteen years, you go back to Junior’s. And you try their burgers, and their eggs, and their incredible pastrami on rye. You try even the Old New York dishes no one under seventy ever orders, the beef goulash over egg noodles and the liver and onions, and they come with little plates of potato salad and coleslaw and whole pickles and entire baskets of warm rolls.

And all of them are so good they bring you to tears. And you realize that no, you were right to begin with.

Junior’s could have skated by on its cheesecake and still have been legendary, but no. It’s an open question whether anything (aside from the cheesecake, which is the near-undisputed champion) is #1 best in class, but you’d be hard pressed to find another diner, even a more upscale one, for which almost every menu item is a citywide top contender in its category. Even the pickled beets are fire, and I normally don’t even like pickled beets. That’s how this place has survived a hundred years in a neighborhood where restaurants are...

I'm a Junior's loyalist, but I hadn't been in IN A WHILE, and I was having a craving. A couple of days ago, I went in for Dinner-to-Go. The Chicken Fingers and honey-mustard sauce, Onion Rings, and Steak Fries were as good as ever!!

HOWEVER, the Steak burger I ordered was bland. It has a different name, but the same taste as the Bacon Cheeseburger minus the bacon...WHAT'S THE POINT!?

FOR THE PRICE, it should be PREPARED ON A GRILL and have GRILL LINES for GREAT PRESENTATION and a FLAME-BROILED taste like right from your backyard and served with A-1 Steak Sauce on the side!!

BUT PERHAPS THE GREATEST THING BROOKLYN JUNIOR'S NEEDS TO IMPROVE IS...THEIR FOOD REFRIGERATION...WHICH HAS YOUR FAMOUS CHEESECAKE...TASTING...INFAMOUSLY...STALE‼️

AT $9.95/slice, TO SMELL AND TASTE...ANYTHING BUT...FRESH STRAWBERRIES 🍓...IS A CRYING SHAME.

So, even IF you enjoy your food, YOU'VE PAID TO BE DISAPPOINTED 😞 BY DESSERT 🍰, WHICH WAS WHAT SPARKED THIS REVIEW. A coworker saw me eating leftover Chicken Fingers and began to remark about her disappointment with her last food experience at this Industry Icon.🤦‍♀️

JUNIOR'S HAS TOO MANY YEARS IN THIS BUSINESS TO BE FAILING IN THIS AREA. My rating of 3 in each area is to acknowledge that I DID enjoy 1/2 my food order, but communicate that their notoriously SLOW service USED TO yield delicious food, BUT NOT ANY MORE!!

THIS IS BROOKLYN!! THE FLAGSHIP LOCATION!! MARY J. BLIGE HAS BEEN FEATURED IN FRONT OF IT, but they CAN'T FILL THE SEATING AREA because they're TOO GREEDY to offer a thoughtful weekly specials menu based on the evolving landscape of the amenities of the surrounding community.

•Saturday and Sunday set price BRUNCH BUFFET. •MEATLESS Monday ALL DAY...VEGETARIAN CUISINE. •10% OFF ALL DAY Tuesday and Wednesday for FIRST RESPONDERS and HOSPITAL PERSONNEL with ID. •Thursday, Friday, and Saturday DATE NIGHT...

I cannot even express how disappointed I am 🥺 So I was super stoked to take my boyfriend here on our NY date to get THEE famous Juniors Cheesecake! We get there, and there was hardly a line plus they have good social distancing practices in play (love it). We spend a pretty penny here, we got a raspberry cheesecake, a brownie explosion cheesecake, a plain original cheesecake and a few slices of different flavors such as the strawberry cheese pie and the carrot cake cheesecake slice... It was over $100.00 and we were happy to spend it because they are so reputable as "the best". Unfortunately EVERY cheesecake that we purchased - slices included (Plain whole cheesecake EXCLUDED) were absolutely TERRIBLE.... The worst was the carrot cake cheesecake (I was most excited about this one since carrot cake is my FAVE!) It was in a container marked "Red Velvet"... no problem... But it tasted STALE and OLD and just, Bad overall, it had a distinct "refrigerator" taste... like it's been sitting out for a LONG time... the same was the case with the brownie explosion - the chocolate tasted so off and "bloomed"... the raspberry cheesecake was also, subpar... nothing tasted fresh... it was an immediate "first" taste test disappointment. The only reason I am giving 3 stars and not ONE is because the plain cheesecake was Delicious... but when you buy SO many items at the inflated prices they sell them at and only ONE of the 6 are "good" it's simply not enough. I would recommend that They TRASH all of the old cheesecakes and start with a fresh batch... I simply can't understand how such a popular spot could afford to tarnish their amazing name with old/stale/gross cheesecake and slices. I expected better, now I just feel robbed. Had to trash everything but the Plain one and it was so sad....