Josef's Vienna Bakery & Cafe — Restaurant in Reno

My lady and I stopped in because it was a place we hadn't been to before. It looks quaint and homey. My lady loves to get stuff at bakeries so we went in and the bakery food looks pretty good. I'm not much of a pastry person. I was hungry though. I took a quick glance at the menu and saw they have chicken pot pies. My girl decided on the bacon quiche. We also ordered 2 strawberry smoothies. The bill was $36 and change. It seemed like it was a bit pricey but it didn't bother me much. Then we got the food. The quiche was a joke, it was not only, obviously heated up in the microwave, it was dry and looked gross. The pot pie was $15 and it was half the size of one of those nasty Swanson pot pies and it tasted like tuna salad with frozen peas and carrots with some other vegetables that I couldn't identify. It was also dry and consisted of mostly pie crust. The salad it came with was pretty good though. The cookie that was supposed to compliment the meal was almost flavorless until I got a chocolate chip. The smoothies were tasty but not so tasty that I would ever have paid almost $8 for each one. There are way better and bigger smoothies for half the cost all over reno and you can get good food to go with the smoothies at other places. The 1st picture shows the cookie next to the quiche. The cookie isn't very big but it's bigger than the quiche. The 2nd picture shows the size of the pot pie and you can see how much crust there was on the pie. KFC has pot pies that put this place to shame. So does Safeway actually. Very disappointing. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone I like. Anyone that says the food is excellent and the pastries are even edible, is either a sheep or has no idea what good food tastes like. I would hate to have to be around when they ordered food that they didn't like.

Last thing about this place. If you go down the list of reviews you will see that all the positive reviews have thank you's from the staff. There will be 5 or 6 in a row and then a one star review and no response at all. It happens over and over. That right there should tell people something.

The owner should be embarrassed about his legacy at this point. Because his legacy doesn't exist anymore. It's the way of the world. As long as people are still paying for garbage someone...

I grew up in Sparks/Reno and going to Josef's was such a treat as a kid. It was an experience I cherished with my mother and I'd frequently enjoy a fruit tart, butter cookies or the bienenstich. I have since left Reno and live in a big city on the East Coast. On a recent visit home to Nevada, I was excited to visit Josef's. My excitement turned to total disappointment and frustration after experiencing the food. The quality was absolutely terrible. First it's annoying that the charming Josef's is now so commercialized and all the desserts and cookies have American girl's names instead of authentic Austrian pastry names. I tried a fruit tart-formerly my favorite--and was disappointed that it was not fresh at all. In fact, two of the four fruits in the tart came from a can, including the peaches and mandarins! So amateurish. The filling under the fruit was a stale Chantilly cream; I took two bites of the tart and couldn't stomach the rest. Then I ordered another favorite, the linzer cookies with lemon and raspberry filling. How can you screw these up? Well...I took one bite of the lemon linzer cookie, but instead of melting in my mouth, the cookie was stale and brittle , and the lemon filling was super rubbery and lacking in flavor and got stuck between my teeth. Either the cookies had been frozen and thawed multiple times or they were just old. Finally, ordered chocolate dipped butter cookies with chocolate filling. Thought my 11 year old would love them. She took a couple of bites and said "hmmm, interesting" and didn't want the rest. When I tried it, they cookie was still half frozen (it was super cold and hard to bite into) and had clearly not been properly thawed. A friend turned me on to Franz's Backstube instead, and ordered the same items there. The pastries and cookies were delightful, authentic and fresh (and how I remembered Josef's being back in the day). Please, Josef's. Your lazy approach isn't fooling anyone, certainly not this Nevada native who has traveled the world and knows what Austrian pastries and food should taste like. Please do better for your customers--i.e., don't freeze and thaw your food and don't sell stale pastries/cakes. You charge way too much to...

I have been a client at Joseph’s for years. Here are my last experiences: Last fall, I ordered a full sheet cake two days prior to an event. The event started at 10am so I asked the bakery representative to have the cake ready at 9am or earlier. They said it’s impossible, they were very busy that day but promised me that at 10am sharp the cake will be ready. On that day I arrived a few minutes before 10 hoping to grab the cake and make it in a timely manner. After a long wait and checking with several people, they realized that they haven’t even started decorating yet, so they found a baker and started working on it … of course in a rush, they did it wrong, had to wipe out the whole decoration and start over again… The cake was ready with a mediocre decoration (and with smudges…) at approximately 10:25 and I was late for the event with a cake that looked worse than a grocery store purchased cake. I promised myself not to rely on these guys anymore…

However, this morning since I was in the neighborhood at 9:30am, I thought I will buy some fresh bread- either a baguette or a few dinner rolls. So I stopped by. Long wait again- only one lady serves at the bakery counter and she is also taking phone orders, responding to other phone calls and has stuff to do in the back. But I waited patiently. When my turn finally came, she told me they have no dinner rolls or baguette - just bagged bread (that did not appear fresh). They said they will have a batch in 30 minutes. A bakery that serves breakfast has no fresh bread to sell on a weekday at 9:30 am?? They did have fresh rolls for the customers dining in. But they seemed to have zero intention to make any effort- or to care. I heard a faint “sorry” as I was leaving the store- but they were already serving the next customer in line.

Bottom line is- I’m done with Joseph’s Bakery. The food is not bad, but not fantastic either-hence the two stars. The servers are polite but they seem to not care at all about customers. Question for the owner: do you care if the customers leave your store...