Joe’s Place Pizza & Pasta

Just aweful… décor is dated and grungy. Food is bland and portions are small. Over priced for what you get.

Went tonight to try the $ 10.99 buffet (website says $ 10), which is only on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights from 5:30 to 9pm. It was just ok for me, the service is super slow, he only came when we had to look around several times and he finally saw that the drinks were empty. And there was more waiters than table, lets just say that. Located in a spot where you have to make a U-​Turn to get in, across from Tequila Grande off of Maple Ave. The entrance is to the side, which I was about to walk to the front but its an emergency exit. Weird set up.
The buffet consists of the «super salad bar», which isn’t super at all, didn’t even offer ham or bacon bits! Different types of pizza like pepperoni, margherita, sausage, cheese, and mushrooms. Meat sauce w/​pasta, garlic bread, veal parmesan, chicken wings, potatoes and mixed sausage & peppers. Chicken wings were actually the best, its «naked» wings with some great seasoning. The pasta was way too bland even with sauce. The cool thing about this place is you get a mini pitcher for a drink, never seen that before.
Overall, it was alright. What do you expect for $ 10 for a buffet, right? I wonder how their food is without buffet. If thats how the pizza taste otherwise, not sure if I’d be back. As for service its super slow. Even when I tried to get attention from a different waiter just for ketchup he just stared at me. He literally looked at me while I was waving my hands and he definitely knew I was looking for something because I kept looking back for the waiter and he would be staring right at me. I guess there’s no such thing as teamwork here?! They obviously don’t help each other out with refills or anything… even water! What the heck!
It is very run down and needs some updating. And it doesn’t look like the kind of run down as in like its historic or has a nice rustic feel to it or that feeling of a «hole in the wall» but in a good way where its fine to eat there. You know what I mean? Its just dirty and old and no one takes care of it. Its so dark and its kind of like a mystery when you walk in. It needs some love and to revamped… as well as the food.

Absolutely best food in town
Service great
Food wonderful
My favorite place
I will recommend it to all my friends and family

Great, thin pizza! That’s cooked just right. Average salad bar. Average pasta. But really solid! Better than Olive Garden.

This place is better than rated– it is great pizza. I’ve traveled a lot and yes, there may be another pizza spot that is better in this vast world, but if you are nearby and want an affordable meal… Then you can feel confident knowing that this joint is solid. It is clean. The pizza is delicious. The staff is attentive. Enjoy.

These folks are so nice. Today, just as we were arriving for lunch, we got out of the car and my 7 year old slammed his finger in the car door. we raced into Joe’s looking for help. In no time they had a bag of ice, a bandage, and had gotten him some ice water. Not everyone will do that for you these days! Their pizza and salad were good and reasonably priced too and I just felt like they cared about their customers. We are big fans!

This place seems to have been set up for perfectly for success, but has simply failed to reach its potential. From my experiences, I would likely blame management and inconsistency in the food.
I’ve come here a number of times over the years and the pizza is consistently quite good (out of 10, I’d normally give it a 7, maybe a 7.5 when they are putting forth their best and it is fresh). What makes critiquing the pizza hard is that it is served with their lunch buffet (as far as deals go, this is a steal in purely financial terms: $ 10 for all-​you-​can-​eat pizza and whatever other entrées they are serving, as well as open access to the salad bar); as a result, it sits out under big heat lamps and dries out, robbing it of both taste and texture. A fresh pizza comes out pretty well, but the rating for the all-​you-​can-​eat pizzas would be lower.
The other big issue with the food is its greasiness and after-​effects. The pasta comes drenched in oil (the pizzas unfortunately also arrive like this at times), and I have always wound up feeling sick and sluggish following a meal here. Getting the «itis» is a good thing, but getting the «illness» is not.
Another problem is the service. None of the servers seem to want to be here, and the behavior that I’ve seen from the managers on the floor likely only encourages their apathy. Each server I’ve encountered here seems either robotic or frustrated as though I’m making his job significantly more difficult just by being in the restaurant. As far as the term «manager» goes, I use it only to indicate who I’m talking about, but I don’t see much proactivity from them at all. While one gentleman in particular does come out and survey the dining room and spot check the quality of the food, he spends more of his time chatting with his favorite customers (when there are customers, that is — this place often seems completely empty). The other one that I’ve seen, a gentleman with slicked-​back hair, stands around either on his phone or looking aimlessly throughout the restaurant; when not walking around idly, he’s sitting idly in one of the empty booths — and sadly, he as many from which to choose. Furthermore, when addressed by customers, he seems dismissive and ready to usher them away as quickly as possible.
The flavor of the food here is often pretty solid, and the concept of a lunch buffet could really be a big attraction in Vienna. The pitcher-​style beverage service is also a concept that I enjoy — refills are rarely needed. However, The mediocre service, bad management, and inconsistency in cuisine make it hard to rate Joe’s any higher. On their worst days, I wouldn’t be able to assign any stars, but I do enjoy parts of the experience here and I’d like to provide as accurate a critique of a typical experience here since I have come more than once. Hopefully, things turn around; with new management, this place could become a much more appreciated feature of the town it serves.

I work here at Joe’s pizza and they treat me poorly. They keep me locked away upstairs in the dungeon with no phone charger and no gnocchi. It gets hard to breathe up here but I am scared to call for help because of fortunado and franco. It is so hot up here I feel like I am going to faint any minute. The food is excellent and carefully prepared to any customers satisfaction.

This place has all you can eat pizza pasta salad and amazing veggie soup one of my favorites since I was a little kid ! I’m 20 and several family members who have come and gone have visited and absolutely loved their soup it is the best I’ve ever had its veggies potato and a pasta soup ! Their pizza is pretty good as well and their pasta and breadsticks are so gooooood. I would come here more often If I wasn’t so busy like any normal dc person!

For less than $ 10 you get great pizza and mini pitcher soft drink! For me it’s a great deal with great food. The atmosphere is clean and the service was friendly. I went alone and probably walked a mile with my ten trips back and forth to the buffet and I didn’t feel like anyone judged me. I was curious why it only had 3 stars, apparently they had some trouble with the delivery back in 2013, I only go for the buffet which is great. It includes a variety of pizzas; most thin crusts with a few Sicilian style. They also have a few pastas, meatballs, chicken wings and cheese bread, all are very good.

This is great little establishment if you’re looking for a good traditional pizza, but they truly shine through in their hot subs, specifically the veal, chicken and eggplant parmigianas. Don’t bother with the buffet unless you want their decent average selections and endless salad/​soup. explore and try the menus less typical items, and their wine/​on-​tap selection is great. The restaurant is a little run down and in some need of updating, but it has it’s charm and is great for families and couples alike.

We made the trek here because we had a Groupon. We ordered an extra large pizza half mushroom and pepperoni and half ham and pineapple.
We thought the pizza was outstanding. Excellent crust, very good sauce, plenty of cheese and the toppings were top notch. I’d go back again just for the pizza.

Food: 4-​stars for simple and tasty. In particular, their buffet selection may seem small, but I love that they have baked chicken, pasta and vegetable options in addition to the typical pizza and a salad bar. I also love the mugs they put their drinks in.
Environment: small and local (cozy).
Service: good and polite.
Price: fair, dinner buffet is between $ 7−10/person

Stopped for takeout spaghetti and meatballs. Ex$pensive. Extra sauce is extra $. Argh! Meatballs were below average. And the non-​extra sauce was skimpy. Even with the extra was barely coverage. Argh! Scratch this.

I’ve only ever had their pizza– and that’s all I’ll ever need! Their sausage topping is crazy good.

My husband use to frequent the Fairfax location years ago and until recently we had not ventured to this location because he wasn’t sure if it was owned by the same people and yep, it is.
I personally love how retro it is in here, sure it could probably use some sprucing up but this place reminds me of my childhood with the arcade games and stuff.
I really enjoyed their meatballs and meatsauce. The waitresses were friendly and attentive. We definitely plan on coming back.

After one of my runs with the bf on the W&OD, lunch was next on the agenda. Driving around the area, I notice the all you can eat pizza and pasta and thought, hey! I love pizza. And we were both really hungry and thought this place couldn’t be bad for $ 10 each. Wrong!
I could have easily saved myself the trip and ordered any pizza, or heck, made it myself by sticking a Digiornos in the oven! It definitely would have tasted better. The pasta was absolutely nothing special, and once again, I could have easily made way better pasta. The salad bar was so-​so, but none of this I would come back for.
This place is in a killer location, they should get themselves together!

At one point I would have given this place four stars but sadly over the years it has gone way downhill. I have a large family and we used to eat here on Christmas Eve. This past year on Christmas Eve we decided to go to Joe’s for dinner. Since my family is so large I convinced most of the kids to get the buffet, in order to save some money.
This was an immediate regret of mine, because even though the way they word their advertisement for the buffet sounds deliciously wonderful with abundant amounts of food, the truth is there is very little food at any given time at the buffet and what is available appears to have been sitting out for quite some time. I had to constantly go to the back and ask them if they could make more of certain items that should have been replenished.
Several times I had to ask more than once for the same thing because nobody was doing anything about the lack of available food. Honestly it pissed me off that they would happily accept our money for the buffet but not feel obligated to make sure all of the food advertised in their buffet was readily available!
It’s not as though they were busy either, the restaurant was practically empty and the staff was basically just sitting around in the back when I would go and request for them to put out more food when they could clearly see for themselves that it needed to be done.
I did not order the buffet, I ordered the chicken fettuccine Alfredo and their garlic cheese bread. I remember years ago both of these items were absolutely delicious at Joe’s. My chicken fettuccine Alfredo was absolutely disgusting. The Alfredo sauce did not taste like it used to and the chicken was really gross and of poor quality!
For some reason the waiter chose to serve the garlic cheese bread way before the chicken Alfredo, even though they provide bread for us to eat while we’re waiting for our food. I told the waiter that I wanted to eat the garlic cheese bread with my meal so he offered to take it back. I was under the assumption that he would bring it to me hot and delicious, but when he brought it back to the table it was cold and absolutely disgusting.
Since we had a party of more than 10 they automatically added gratuity to our check (even though the majority of our party had their «buffet» and served themselves). I wound up boxing most of my meal to take home and later threw away the chicken so that I could at least eat the Alfredo. The kids barely ate anything because of our difficulties in having food readily available at the buffet, and were hungry as soon as we got home.
What a waste!
The one thing that I can say is still absolutely delicious at Joe’s is their cannoli. I haven’t found any other place that I feel has a better tasting cannoli. I like their cannolis because they are not too sweet and because the cannoli shell is partially coated in chocolate. With that being said for their size they are very overpriced and they often times leave a big gap in the middle of the cannoli empty instead of filling it completely.
Other than that their pizzas are pretty good too. So if I were to go there and order pizza and a cannoli I would probably leave a fairly happy camper.

Oh, lord, this place is sad.
About once a year, we end up at a restaurant for which the Mister is inexplicably nostalgic, usually due to some rose-​tinted alcohol-​fogged college memory. Well, he used to go to the Joe’s in Gaithersburg when he was in college in DC so when he saw this one in VA, he HAD to stop. He promised me amazing pizza.
Ehhhh, not so much, sweetie.
The place was dark, dank, rundown and, if this was Hollywood, you’d wonder if it was some sort of Soviet mob front operation. Why are all these Russians serving me doughy pizza and comically oversized glasses of Pepsi product? Why do they play arcade games between orders? Why are we the only people in here? Why are we here? Why does my stomach hurt?
Joe’s will leave you with a lot of questions, but not much satisfaction. There is a lot better in the neighborhood. Keep moving.

The buffet and proximity to my work lured me in… buffet under $ 10.00 and carbs– hook line and sinker!
Unfortunately, the food wasn’t stellar. The pasta and pizza left nothing to be desired. The spaghetti tasted bland, the taste you get when you pour pasta straight from the can and the pizza was not terrible but not good either.
I’d probably save myself the trip next time.