Eat At Joe's

The first time I ate at Joe’s Italian Ristorante n Slidell, they had just moved into the space vacated by Stone's. The place was very cute, with a panoramic view of the rear of nice homes that back up to a channel where the owner's boats are kept. The neighborhood is Eden Isles, and the restaurant space is really cute. Joe’s did very well there. But they recently moved, to a much more typical space in a strip mall off of Gause Blvd. I met friends there recently for dinner. I remembered Joe’s from the old place as being tasty enough.

The new place is beautiful, Nothing fancy, but nice enough, It's quite large, and Joe was there, though he's not the Joe. There seems to be a few of them,... all very Italian. He and the waitresses were conversing in Italian. Nice touch. The menu wasn't especially large but the important things were there. I was surprised to see a section for pizza. When I arrived at the table three little rolls were already there. These were very interesting little breads, They weren’t garlic bread but were dusted with Parmesan cheese. And they were as good as they were interesting.  

The section for appetizers was smallish. And of the two I considered I ordered spinach and artichoke dip with shrimp. One of us didn't eat shrimp so I was on my own to eat it. We did get a pizza after talking to the waitress about how close it was to a New York-style pizza. The waitress was impressed that they were rolling it in the back, so we felt safe ordering. We decided on a Supreme pizza because each of us had our wishes, and it added up to a Supreme  We never did get an explanation from the waitress about  Neapolitan vs. New York-style.

For entrrees I went with the cliche dish and got the lasagna. One of us got a dish with angel hair pasta in what seemed like a Rosa sauce, and the third of us got a Grouper dish that was described as a lemon butter sauce, but what I saw just registered as oily, with equally oily vegetables. 

The first thing to arrive at the table was the creamed artichoke and spinach dish, with a few shrimp. I thought this was very tasty, and I ate way too much of it. I arrived at this my usual way, eschewing calamari and stuffed mushrooms for the creamy sauce. It was too loose to be called a dip, but as a cream sauce it was very good. There were big chunks of artichoke hearts and little pieces of spinach, exactly as it should be. I mopped it up with some of those appealing rolls I mentioned. The shrimp were cooked to my liking, and I enjoyed those too.

When the pizza arrived I had serious doubts about all that dough rolling in the back. This looked like the most ordinary frozen pizza to me. I know it wasn’t frozen, but it we did a side-by-side just on looks, it would fool a lot of people. There was nothing to recommend this pizza, in my view. It was loaded with all the things in the house, on a crust so boring I don’t know why they are bothering to roll it out. Not Neapolitan, not New York-style, not anything. Pizza is still ipso facto good, with its  meat, cheese, and bread combo. So it was worth eating.

The chicken dish with the Rosa sauce was called Chicken Romano, and it was a pretty dish. A grilled chicken breast lay atop a pile of angel hair with a very generous blanket of this spicy Rosa sauce. It said spicy on the menu, but I was not prepared for just how spicy it was. I would have confused it with a Mexican dish had it not been served with angel hair pasta. The one who ordered it loved it.

His wife had a Grouper dish special with a large portion of vegetables, mostly broccoli. Though it looked oily and unappealing from where I sat, she loved this dish. The Grouper came as two thin pieces, and appeared to be nicely grilled before the sauce engulfed it.

My lasagna was just about as ordinary as it gets. There was plenty here: plenty cheese, plenty sauce, plenty noodles. It was baked lava in a large ramekin and came to the table bubbling hot. It checked all the boxes for the average Sicilian layered dish. And that was fine.

We skipped dessert and headed out after a lovely leisurely dinner. The place was very nice, the service good, and the food good enough. And the price was right. Sometimes that’s really all you need..