Joe's Inn Bon Air — Restaurant in Virginia

My family &a few close friends came to this restaurant for my brothers birthday dinner. Unfortunately, our experience here was ultimately disappointing for those of us who had never been before. We had reservations on a Wednesday night at 6:30 &there was a total of 10 of us all together. The restuarant was decently filled with a weekly dinner crowd but nothing to crazy. We were immediately sat at our table & Our waitress was nice & brought waters for the whole table before the rest our guest arrived. I had my daughter with me as well& I had settled on just ordering her a pizza. I noticed the menu said customers should give about 20 minutes for pizzas to be prepared & cooked. I ordered my daughters pizza a few minutes after we sat down & before the rest of our party arrived so that she would be occupied with eating and not get to restless. once everyone else arrived they all quickly ordered their drinks & food. This is where the rest of the night went downhill. At this point we had all been sitting &chit chatting for about 40 minutes. We asked if my daughters pizza would be coming soon &the waitress once again stated it usually takes about 20-30 minutes. But it had already been well past that time frame which is why I had asked to begin with. (Remember I ordered this before everyone else came) &even after asking her it still took another 15 minutes before it finally came. It took about an hour for my kid to get her food which wasn't even that hot when it did. My brother & sister had order one of the specials from that night.I believe it was some sort of garlic shrimp pasta .It took about 15 minutes after everyone orginally placed our orders for the waitress to come back and state that they were out of shrimp for the special. My sister picked something else but my brother really just wanted the pasta so the waitress did double check if they could make it without the shrimp and the staff was nice enough to do so. After that we all agreed our waitress was pretty scarce. She wouldn't come check on us for long periods all through out the night. Many of us mentioned we never saw her. Typically most people pay extra attention to big party tables because that's where many often get their big tips for the night. Even refills for some of our drinks we had been waiting on took longer than it should have. Now we completely understand the industry &how chaotic things may be behind closed doors and are fully aware everyone and every place has their off days . so that being said an apology or even stating she wasn't as quick as she may typically be or even that she may have been having a bad night would have made all the difference in terms of the service. Literally EVERYTHING we got came out to our table ridiculously late. All of our soups & salads that we got before our main meals came out so late that I honestly forgot I had even ordered a salad by the time I got it. To put into perspective how much time we actually spent here,our reservations were at 6:30 we didn't walk out of the restaurant until 5 minutes till 9 because we waited so long for everything. Our food come out after 8, again over an hour after we ordered. EVERY single main course dish came out either completely cold or Luke warm. Not a single thing was hot or even fresh. It literally was like our food was just sitting out on a counter. All the pasta dishes were barely warm &every single person who got a meat like pork chops , chicken etc & their sides were all cold to the touch it wasnt enjoyable for anyone. Only one person opted to have their food remade cause we just got tired of waiting. This was incredibly disappointing because it probably would have been delicious had everything been fresh and hot. After waiting so long to get everything we atleast expected our food to be hot . The manager did discount our check. But over all it was a very...

I was taken there for brunch. I don’t know if it was the server or if that’s normally how people get treated. I have a severe pork allergy. I asked to have my food made in the kitchen because I avoid buffets (cross contamination). I was told by the server the only thing they could get me out the kitchen would be the rye toast I asked for I wanted scrambled eggs with cheese, potatoes and corned beef, hash, I can’t get it off the buffet because it’s right next to the bacon and the sausage. However he relented and said he would put the order in for the eggs and the toast. I was not going to be able to get potatoes or the corn beef. I asked for sugar for my coffee and he gives me artificial sweeteners. I had to ask him more than once to bring regular sugar. There were children at the table who ordered chicken tenders and french fries I’m still waiting for my eggs and toast. The children finished eating the other adults at the table finished eating when he was refilling drinks he goes. Oh, I’ll have your eggs and toast out in a minute by then, everybody was ready to leave you already requested the check. All I had was a cup of coffee. I am sixty seven years old I don’t know if he was having a bad day I was offered to be taken back for either lunch or dinner. I don’t know if I want to.

Update

After nine months, I went back today and had lunch. The server she was excellent. She told me what food she did and didn’t taste. I was interested in the cowboy sandwich and she went and checked to find out what meats were used unfortunately, I cannot eat that sandwich as it’s a pork and beef blend. She was attentive. I very much enjoyed my experience with her today that I would come back hopefully it’ll be when you have that fried. Flounder special I was torn between that and one of the pastrami sandwiches.

I did not mention anything to her about my previous...

If you want a quiet, romantic dining experience, this ain't the place. This is a family place. Big, loud, chaotic and full of families, for a very good reason. This place is as much a staple of the city as Monument Avenue, and it's been around nearly as long. Ridiculously large portions - seriously, the Lasagna alone seats about 20. Tasty food. Friendly staff. Decent prices and almost always a short wait to jump into delicious dining chaos. And right next door at Joe's Out you can get their whole menu (and very very tasty pizzas) to go. One final tip: try the Sunday Buffet - it's worth the wait.

(Originally posted to Yelp 04-27-2014) :

You will notice a pattern emerging on my choices of places to eat. I will choose a local independent place over a TGIChain any day of the week. Joe's Inn is another of those old Richmond places that started with a small place in the Fan and eventually opened a large place in the South Side, which is what I am reviewing here today. It's loud, chaotic and large, like much of its clientele. I suspect that some of these people actually pack away the HUGE portions delivered via hand truck. If you order a pasta dish (the chicken parm is molto bene!) consider splitting it unless you are dining with a linebacker. As to the varying reviews on the personalities and attentiveness of various wait-people, my experience has been that never once has the gorging experience been distracted by the people who delivered it. With the exception of some truly terrible wait-people in New Orleans (where they built-in an 18% tip to the check BEFORE handing it over) I have found that the wait people are a reflection of the client. The nicer you are, the nicer they tend to be. How good would your attitude be if you slung hash to unappreciative, demanding louts who left you a 5% tip on a...