Joey D’s sucks
Joey D’s Oak Room sucks. There seems to be a notable lack of literature on this topic, so it must be said: their food is no good and they’re highly overrated. The first strike against them is the lack of sweet tea. I am not quick to forgive this flaw in any sit-down restaurant south of Virginia, but it would have helped if the waitress was at least a little apologetic, aware of the shame in working at such an establishment, rather than seeming to think that not putting sugar into tea freaking before you chill it is the natural way of things.
Their food is bland. I got a corned beef sandwich—a meat not known for its exotic flavors, but there are certain simple things that can be done to create a wonderful experience. The elements of a corned beef sandwich are basically the bread, the meat and the mustard. Cheese can be included, but it’s optional. Make the cheese mandatory, replace the mustard with thousand-island and add some sauerkraut and you’ve made a Reuben. Easy as apple pie. The Joey D’s corned beef sandwich consisted of a rolled up pile of sliced corned-beef, some mediocre and possibly stale rye bread, and some mustard on the side. You may note two problems with this situation: I have to apply my own mustard, a mandatory ingredient, on an $8 sandwich, and the meat, being all rolled up in a ball, is not easily accessible. Other accounts I have heard from steak-eaters are that their steaks are just incredibly bland. The fries were ok.
While I’m attacking the restaurant, I might as well lambast the decor. I can’t remember what kind of kitsch they tried to make up as the story behind the restaurant, but it was something about an Italian immigrant from New Jersey sending his only brother to Louisiana to start a restaurant, or something like that. I think that there was a casino involved. I never did learn from my casual reading of the menu’s introduction what oak had to do with anything, but I did gather that Louisiana had something to do with something, which I then noted in the walls. Most of Joey D’s is decorated like a fancy restaurant with a lot of oak: an oak bar, oak chairs, oak tables covered in (paper?) tablecloths, and everything done in dark, neutral colors. The windows, on the other hand, are of the traditional quarter-pane variety, and they are covered in thick, slightly cracked pant of that beigish color that evokes images of old church houses and In the Heat of the Night. I suppose that it worked as long as attention wasn’t drawn to the windows, but once seen, it just didn’t look right with the rest of the restaurant. It looked like they were trying too hard, and people were falling for it.