RJ'S RESTAURANT SEAFOOD/CHOPS/PASTA — Restaurant in Pittsfield

Was recommended by a local store owner who we frequent every fall so thought it would be great as he knows our taste. Don’t waste you time or money here. Read their story about being from Long Island and owning restaurants there blah blah blah. It’s all hype, I work in NY and this place wouldn’t survive. We arrived right on time for our reservation, 5 people standing in the entrance no host. After 5-6 min someone showed and sat 3 and turned away the other couple as they were walk ins, place wasn’t full so definitely a staffing issue. We were told it would be a few minutes. After 10 mins more another person showed up that looked like management, by this time two more couples were waiting. He sat us, ny layout, tables close together then we waited for a waitstaff for about 6 minutes. The waitress had the enthusiasm and personality of a brick. In fact everyone working there came across miserable. We were already on alert and almost left but since it was Sunday after 6pm we stuck it out. No bread was brought out though it was on other tables, we got after asking and it was underwhelming with butter in plastic cafeteria packs. Ordered drinks and got a half full martini glass with salad olives, sure sign of a place charging high prices and cutting corners. I ordered the NY strip and my wife ordered the chicken Marsala. No apps as we didn’t want to waste additional time and money being disappointed. I asked for medium (pink) steak was mostly grey, weird cut thin on one end and double thick on the other, came with one small ice cream scoop of “mashed potato’s” they were bland and the vegetable medley I didn’t bother to try. My wife’s Marsala was a fail. We brought the meats home for the dog, got the bill (didn’t even have a check holder available) and got out of there. Did tip the waitress 20%, not her fault no one trained her and the kitchen doesn’t have their act together. $90+ For a maybe $40 dinner, they’re charging 4-5 star dinner prices in Pittsfield and cutting corners, being cheap on the back end to fatten their margins. Worked in the biz for years and this is the worse business model. Save your money and go to the District or Trattoria Rustico even Christainsen’s at jimmy peak is a better meal for the price. Edit: looked at the wine menu, bunch of 8-12 dollar retail wines. Anyone giving a 5 star is a friend, relative or is used to eating at mcDonalds In response to the owner - you only get one chance to wow your customers. Upgrade your kitchen staff, waitstaff and stop being cheap and you could have a winning restaurant. Unfortunately you’re just burning...

RJ's in an excellent restaurant on multiple fronts. The regular pasta dishes are solid options for us -- we particularly like the chicken marsala, but honestly they are all good. The service is so professional at RJ's that it will be a shock to anyone used to the standard Berkshire "I'm going to get a 20% tip anyway" indifference when dining out -- but a reliable comfort to those visiting from other places. We have our favorite servers, of course, but just like the pasta dishes the servers are ALL good. We like to eat in the bar -- it has an open, bright, airy feel. The back room can be a bit stifling when crowded, and the main dining are can you subject you to traffic on all sides of your table. But you'll get even better service than usual (which means over the moon, IMO) when you sit in the back, close to the kitchen. Another plus -- and it's a biggy in our book -- is the bar, where there are very confident and competent bartenders. My wife and I have both asked for variations on mixed drinks, and they not only never blink at our requests, the drinks always come out perfectly.

Are there any downsides to RJ's? Only three that we've experienced. One is the very small parking lot with what seem like very narrow parking spaces. There is additional street parking but not a lot of it. The other is that our experience has been that all of the staff tend to hard sell the specials -- special entrees, starters, drinks, etc. -- and we've learned over time that those are not always the best choices for two reasons: 1) they are usually quite a bit more expensive than the regular options on the menu with the same basic ingredients, and 2) they are actually not that great (certainly not worth the extra cost). This has been such a consistent experience for us that we never order the specials anymore...even when they sound very enticing! The third issue is that the desserts are a few notches below ho-hum, so we usually skip those as well.

Like any restaurant, it takes time to navigate the menu and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the chef and staff. We would heartily recommend RJ's to anyone, and have taken friends and out-of-town guests there when they visit. And we often say that RJ's is one of the top three establishments in the Pittsfield area -- and those minor criticisms I've listed don't discourage us from confirming RJ's excellence to...

Don't dare bypass this nondescript restaurant. Ignore the exterior, the good stuff is all inside. And, my oh my, very good it is....

Quick, courteous, knowledgeable service was only the beginning of an astonishing meal. The huge number of dining choices begins with the detailed menu and continued on (on the day I was there) to 23 different, surprisingly complex, endlessly enticing "specials", most seafood based.

I would happily eat almost everything here, but settled on seafood with homemade pappardelle in a (very) light cream sauce. My lovely bride had a seafood paella (with rice prepared almost as a risotto).

Opulent is way too small a word for the food we were served. If gigantanormous were a real word, it might do it. With leftovers, we each had two oversized and enormously satisfying meals, both overloaded with high-end seafood - jumbo shrimp, sweet clams, large mussels, huge ocean scallops - that tasted as if it had been caught that morning.

We eat out a lot; we don't know when we've had a better meal.

RJ's isn't cheap. Dinner with an appetizer and a drink will easily set you back a hundred bucks. (If you were to order more carefully, it's very possible to eat very well for as little as $30.) But counting value for dollar, whatever the bill, this may be the best bargain in town.

In a town lined with great restaurants up and down almost every street, RJs is a giant. And definitely worth a...