Joey & Eddie's - Maggianos or Buca di Beppo for the Yuppies??

Joey & Eddie's - Maggianos or Buca di Beppo for the Yuppies??

On February 5th, DASF returned to San Francisco after Pampas didn’t live up to expectation of a Brazilian Churrascaria. DASF dined at Joey and Eddie', which took over the space that Moose’s occupied for the previous 16 years. Moose’s served very good food and was a fun place to go for brunches and dinners. The space/location has great energy and is in a great location overlooking Washington Square in North Beach. I was very excited to hear that Joey Manzare (Exec chef of Zuppa and Globe) is going to serve Italian classic dishes family-style in an upscale setting. Moving here from Philly (and nearby Jersey and NYC) with many great Italian restaurants, I felt that SF is missing this type of Italian restaurant. In attendance were the Phans’, the Currys’, Lehman and Jason.

Food = 85
The menu has many Italian classics like Spaghetti and Meatballs, Caesar Salad, Fried Calamari, Linguini and Clams. In addition, J&E has a nightly special and on Friday, it was Market Fish. To start, we had the J&E salad - your basic Italian-style mix of iceberg and romaine lettuce with salami, Parmesan shavings and tomato bits awash in oil and vinegar, decent but nothing special. We also had the Baked Clams Oreganatta that was nicely season and delicious. Jason specially requested the Sweet Italian Sausage in Iron Skillet. The sausage has excellent flavors and would have been a big hit but it was over salted.

For the main courses, we ordered two pastas, a meat and a fish to share. The Spaghetti and Meatballs arrived with 3 large tennis ball size meatballs, the pasta was perfectly cooked and the sauce was very good. Perfect with the Garlic Bread we ordered. The second pasta, Spaghetti with Chubby Crab, has very little crab and didn’t taste very good. It was a disappointing dish! For the fish, we ordered the evening special – Oven roasted Arctic Char. It was a large piece of Char – perfectly cooked with crispy skin and moist and tender flesh. The accompany gnocchi was light and pillowy with a thin crust on the outside – very tasty. Finally, we had the Pork Braciole, Pork Ribs, Meatballs and Sausage in a Tomato Gravy. It was a huge platter of meat. The sauce was excellent and the meat tender.

For dessert, we ordered the Cannoli per the waitress’s recommendation and of course, we must have the Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta (since Joey Manzare’s Zuppa had one of the best Panna Cottas). Both desserts were quite good but the Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta was not quite as good as the Meyer Lemon Panna Cotta we had at Zuppa.

Overall, with the exception of the flavor-less Spaghetti with Chubby Crab and the over-salt Sweat Sausage, the food at J&E were pretty good and the portions were huge! The menu is a little too limited. With a brick over, they could have featured it more and have more dishes come from it.

Atmosphere = 83
J&E didn’t altered the space much. We had a booth table by the open kitchen. The table was comfortable and the conversation flows but something was missing – it lacked the energy that Moose’s had. Our reservation was at 8pm on a rainy Friday night and the place was two third empty. Even with the rain, this place should be pack with a great location like that.

Service = 70
Lackadaisical service. Our waitress was friendly and nice but only checked on us maybe twice. We waited for a long time before our orders we taken and there was a long wait between courses. When we had leftovers from our main courses, the busboy dropped two bags right in the middle of our table before we even had desserts and coffee/tea.

Joey & Eddies has potential to be something like Moose’s. The service needs to be improved and the menu expanded to highlight their wood burning oven more.

Lastly – the “Jon” at J&E is not worth a haiku.

Pampas in Palo Alto - a far cry from Brazil

On January 16, DASF ventured beyond the SF city limits to Palo Alto for what was expected to be a Brazilian culinary explosion. Unfortunately, our high hopes were drowned in mounds of non distinct meat. However, beyond the disappointing food, we once again had a great group in high spirits. 9 total diners gathered, including the Phans, Currys, Carters, Lehmann and Jason, and Avis.

It's been more than 2 weeks since we dined, so I apologize if some of the scores are different than what you all remember :) Feel free to add your own comments to my somewhat hazy recollections.

Food: 70
While the salad bar was top notch and offered probably 50 different fresh and intersting salads, the main attraction left us yearning for the real Brazilian churrasco in Rio. We tasted over 10 different types of meats, but while the beef should have been the most impressive, it fell flat with only the roasted chicken really impressing. Perhaps we've become too demanding in our tastes. . . but, our resident Brazilian, Dani, said it best when she rated the food a 7! (a record low!)

Atmoshpere: 92
Pampas is lively and modern and allowed for a good flow of conversation.

Service: 85
The pacing was off - men offering sticks of meat showed up at the table too often. We had hardly taken a bite of one dish when the next waiter came hovering. And, waiters seemed hesitent to move around the table and diners were forced to reach across each other to grab onto the meat on a stick.

All in all, we enjoyed each other's company and a new experience, but we will be glad to return to San Francisco next month!