Tom C.
Yelp
We were in Connecticut for a few days, and one evening found ourselves at Joseph's. I had looked it up on Google, it sounded good, so we went. We parked down the street and walked to the restaurant. A slender man with long hair in a ponytail, a pencil mustache and a tiny, crooked soul patch met us at the door. He was busily buttoning up his shirt as he told us the place was not open yet. Google may have said 4:30, but it wasn't open til 5. This fellow was very friendly and welcoming, except he could not let us in until 5, even to sit at the bar and enjoy a drink. (He turned out to be the bartender.)
When we returned at 5 we were seated quickly (we were the only party at that time) and our waiter appeared to take a drink order. Mrs. P had a Cabernet--Joseph's has an extensive wine list, and the waiter recommended something good--and I had a Heineken Zero. I do not drink alcohol, so any restaurant gets a few points for stocking at least one N/A selection.
Joseph's has an old style steakhouse vibe, plenty of dark wood, red walls, and immaculate tablecloths and heavy tableware. We found, after a bit, that it even carries some of that feel of a gathering place for crime bosses. As we were perusing our menus, two men met in the middle of the dining room. Straight out of central casting, with contented guts in sharkskin suits, beefy jowls, carefully trimmed hair, they stood toe to toe and shook hands, as if they had not seen one another for years. Their conversation was loud and self-satisfied, and produced almost verbatim here:
'How was your day?'
'I had a good day.'
'Ha ha ha . . . a good day?'
'I had a very good day.'
'And our friend?'
'Our friend? We did some business, we had a meal, and he went back to Jersey.'
'Back to Jersey? He's lucky he got a meal.'
These two sat at a table near us and continued their conversation. It was like dinner and a show.
Our appetizer was a large piece of burrata atop a slice of tomato, with some strips of red pepper and a bit of pesto. There was little elegance in the preparation, these bits just kind of set upon the plate. Especially disappointing was the slice of tomato, clearly a hardball variety such as anyone can buy at the grocery store, here in the middle of summer when so much delicious fresh produce is available. But it was tasty enough with the selection of warm breads the waiter brought out.
We both had salads, and this was where I began to worry. Mrs. P is not a huge fan of salads, and ordered hers with blue cheese dressing, while I asked for a vinaigrette. The salad was mostly romaine and iceberg, completely inundated with bits of the same uninteresting chopped tomato and way, way too many blue cheese crumbles. Seriously, I ate all of the greens and left a whole pile of cheese bits and pieces of hardball tomato on the plate.
Mrs. P had the 20 oz. ribeye, while I ordered their standard steak, whatever that means. They present this steak already sliced off the bone and cut into pieces, which is a nice touch. But my medium rare was much closer to rare, and not nearly as tender as I expect in a top-quality steak. Furthermore, there was little of interest in the taste, neither a very deep char flavor nor anything in the seasoning to write home about. It was just an okay steak.
All in all, a good dinner with good service. But here's the thing . . . it cost well over $300. When Mrs. P and I travel, we like to splurge on good food. I do not begrudge a dinner in the range of hundreds of dollars. But the quality of Joseph's did not come nearly up to that mark, and thus my mediocre rating.
