| rev:text
| - I love Anthony Bourdain, and one of his TV shows featured Joe Beef. Its a very popular restaurant and you gotta book this place months in advance, so I was really excited when I got a last minute same day reservation...but unfortunately I only liked this place, I didn't love it...its definitely overrated and a victim of its own success. 3.5 Stars.
The rustic space is hipster casual and packed with a few too many tables crammed in, and definitely not romantic. At all. That's okay, I'm cool with that, I know its more about the food here than ambiance, but the diners to the left and right of us were way too close. The waitress's and busboy's butts were both very nice, but their derriers nearly knocked over wine glasses since the tables are so crammed together. Their butts are literally resting on your table as they deliver and remove plates from your table or your neighbors' table. Following on that, its loud in here. Really loud. Between all the voices and the music it was hard to talk with my lovely wife(This might be a good thing if your relationship is on the fritz). Besides their nice butts, the waitress and busboy were both super friendly...but overworked. These two, and the bartender, were trying to cover 7 tables and 8 bar stools that were rarely empty. The poor couple next to us were ignored for at least 20 minutes(we tried to keep them some company). The food comes out relatively fast, but the wait staff just can't keep up with the kitchen staff. Expect a 2+ hour dining experience, and don't plan on catching a show or movie afterwards.
Joe Beef was gonna be the big splurge of my 8 night Canadian vacation. But the cheapest wine bottle was $45, which is a bit high for a hipstery casual venue. Whatever, the waitress hooked us with a nice bottle of white since they were out of the $45 and $50 options, but still only charged us $50. Only $50...
$3.50 Oysters...fresh and delicious! We only ordered 3, but they still gave us all the extras.
$14 Lobster meatball pastry...awesome! Or I thought at least, the wife was not impressed with the lobster meatball, but I liked it. We both loved the creamy lobster sauce, and ordered extra bread($2.5 btw) to soak up and chomp on that deliciousness.
$35 Lobster Spaghetti...my pick, and I found it very good, and a good value! The lobster cream sauce was rich and light at the same time, somehow, and worked well with the al dente spaghetti and generous lobster portions. At $26 in American dollars this was a great value in that sense.
$41 Seabass...not so impressive. It was generous piece of seabass, but lacked flavor and the tomato based sauce was bland...maybe they were counting on freshness to pull the dish through? Nope. Sad Wife = Sad Life. Don't order this.
$11 15 layer cake. Or is it 11 layers? 13? I don't know, but this was pretty good overall, though too thin and dry for my tastes. Its a mix of vanilla, chocolate, and I think hazelnut. It was around 10:15pm, so maybe it had been sitting out a bit too long. It probably tasted better at 8:00pm.
With taxes and tip, the final bill came out to just over $200+ Canadian dollars. My wife was relieved that this was more like $160ish in American dollars, thank gawd! Due to the overworked staff, it took us 20 some minutes just to get and pay the bill. Do I regret eating at Joe Beef? No, but I was disappointed and not sure if I will bother coming back...maybe...and maybe we should've ordered one beef entree in place called "Joe Beef". Maybe.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)