Joppa Fine Foods — Restaurant in Newburyport

We've lived in the area for 19 years. We've been to Joppa on and off over the years. Their food has been generally good while way overpriced. Their service has always been arrogant and dismissive. I suppose that's why it's usually a few years between each visit. We ordered a few charcuterie platters for our daughters prom this week. We picked them up yesterday. We prepaid for the platters. We bought a few sweets when we picked up the platters. After we were paying for the sweets a woman came up to us and said that we had to pay a $40 gratuity fee for orders over $200 which was for the platters. There was no "thank you" no "hope you have a good event" nothing but please pay another $40 on top of the already over priced platters. We paid for convenience but when we were asked to pay an extra $40 for a service fee (especially when the staff was not at all friendly), we were very insulted. They certainly could have told us about this fee when we ordered, but they did not. Instead they waited until we were nearly out the door and a different woman than our cashier came over and said that they forgot to charge us the fee. We paid the fee and we will never go back. In a small community like Newburyport service is paramount. I honestly have no idea why people still patronize this place. We will...

The staff is friendly and the space is very nice. We’ve been in a few times but this was our first time ordering food. It was very disappointing. The prices are very high (almost $60 for two sandwiches, seltzers, and small bags of chips, plus tip). We waited 25 minutes for the sandwiches and they were pathetic. Spending $4.50 for chicken and having it on only 1/3 of the sandwich is misleading at best. We expected high quality ingredients but to our sandwiches both had what looked like romaine lettuce, sliced white bread, and cheap pickles (green like they’ve been chemically pickled)). And I’m not sure where the tomato went but it wasn’t on my sandwich. We won’t be giving the food another shot and neither should you.

To the owner who is disappointed that we didn’t address the sandwich concerns directly, you can imagine that after waiting so long for food on a not so busy day, we were disinterested in waiting even longer to have it corrected. Facts have been spoken, compliments given where due, and we made no exaggerations. Better reviews come with a...

They have good things for sale here, but it's not cheap. Rather pretty expensive actually, and something that really soured my mood was that they swung around the checkout-machine for me to enter tip - for buying a cheese slicer! That is just not ok.

[Response to the owners' comment]: It's a bad habit to have. Rather swing it around for prepared food orders only, and let the customer ask to tip of they feel inclined to do so. I don't really buy the receipt 'transparency' argument. You can tell the total, like any shop in the past, and ask if the customer wants a receipt. Should they, you'd be perfectly fine swinging over the screen... You don't want to make a customer feel pressured to tip in an already quite luxurious setting like your store (and it feels more like a store than a restaurant in any case). It's that bad feeling of being a little ripped off that makes customers avoid a return...