Thursday, May 7, 2015

John's Pizzeria of Time Square

Great food but horrible service.


Jenn and I were looking a quick place to grab lunch near our hotel in New York.  After walking the streets of Times Square and looking at a variety of menu's posted outside the restaurants, we opted for John's pizzeria.  The menu was wallet friendly and had a great range of paninni's, pizza and Italian specialty food.


The restaurant is pretty cool, it used to be an old Church.

image via John's pizzeria

We arrived after 1 PM and there was no wait.  The exterior of the restaurant was deceiving as it looked much smaller from the outside.  Once we went inside, there was a bar area, a main dining room with two levels along with an open pizza kitchen.

Our server was slow to great us and asked us for our drink orders.  We ordered calamari for an appetizer and our entrees. I kept seeing orders of Pete's A rolls go by and wanted to give it a try.   When she brought us our drink, I asked if I could change my entree (NOT APPETIZER) order and she declined.  She said that the staff was already prepping it (even though it was only less than 2 minutes and I also highly doubt it since we ordered an appetizer, wouldn't they stagger our meal and make the calamari first?)

The whole time our server did not check on us.  She would be near the drink station checking her phone consistently.  Jenn and I just sat there quietly, exhausted and starving.

We waited a good amount of time and saw other diners who came after us get their meals before us. We were starving and asked our server for bread.  She didn't seem happy to oblige but did it anyway.  Shortly after, our meals arrived at our table.  Where was our fried calamari, the appetizer before our meal? We inquired with the server and she said "Oh, that should have already come."

Well, no, it obviously didn't.  She went to check on it and blamed it on a ticketing error. I think she just forgot to put it in.

The meal was great and the eggplant rollatini was delicious probably the best I've ever had.  The sauteed spinach was also amazing. I wouldn't mind eating it everyday if I was on the Atkin's Diet.

Side of meatballs
Eggplant Rollatini with sauteed spinach $15.75
My coworker scarfed down her sandwich. I couldn't tell if she loved it or was just super ravenous because she was hungry.


Looks like we missed out on the pizza. All the tables surrounding us had stacks of pizza. We'll have to try it next time.