Joe's American Bar & Grill Opens at the Mall

Ron Bukley 20.NOV.09
Joe’s American Bar & Grill opened Tuesday in the Mall at Wellington Green at a completely renovated site once occupied by the Bamboo Club restaurant. The new restaurant is open to the food court as well as outside to offer patio dining.

Manager Charlie Sarkis said Joe’s American Grill, as suggested by the name, features food that is rooted in the American tradition. “It’s an extensive menu, priced very, very fair,” Sarkis told the Town-Crier. “The company stresses value and hospitality, obviously in a good environment, but those are the keys. That’s really what it’s about. There’s great value in this menu and there’s a wide variety.”

Joe’s American Bar & Grill is part of Boston-based Back Bay Restaurant Group, which owns 35 restaurants among seven different dining concepts, including Papa-Razzi, Abe & Louie’s, Bouchée, Charley’s, Coach Grill and Atlantic Fish. The restaurants are located in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Before the Wellington restaurant opened this week, Back Bay had only one other location in Florida, Abe & Louie’s in Boca Raton. The Wellington location is the 15th Joe’s American Bar & Grill.

One of the unique things about the restaurant is that everything is made from scratch, said Director of Marketing Amy Daniels. “Everything is made fresh, from salad dressings to hand cutting our French fries every day,” she said. “The freezer is for very limited things like ice cream. The majority of all things are all made here in our kitchen every day or a couple of times a day.”

Although the restaurant is the 15th Joe’s location, don’t consider it a chain, Sarkis stressed. “Even though we have a lot of restaurants, we’re not a chain restaurant,” he said. “We’re a neighborhood restaurant. We have no microwave ovens. In 35 restaurants, there’s not one microwave oven. One of our mottos is, ‘If there’s a hard way to do it, we do it the hard way.’”

Although great effort goes into food preparation, there is not a long wait to be served because of the discipline of the staff, Sarkis said. “It’s a well-oiled machine. It’s a very disciplined restaurant,” he said.

One of the few things they do not actually make in-house is bread, but that is made to their specifications at a bakery in Lake Worth, which also supplies bakery products for Abe & Louie’s in Boca.

Some of the signature items on the menu include burgers made with meat cut to the restaurant’s specifications and served with hand-cut fries, Daniels said. Varieties include Joe’s original burger with a half-pound of fresh ground beef and the black-and-bleu burger with black pepper, bleu cheese and caramelized onions. “Whatever market we go into, we become the number-one burger,” Sarkis said.

Something unique to the Wellington location will be wood-oven pizza. “We have a great oak-fired pizza oven,” Sarkis noted.

Pizza varieties include margherita with tomato sauce, mozzarella, oregano and fresh basil sprinkled with Parmesan cheese; and steak and spinach with bleu cheese, caramelized onions and Parmesan.

The menu also has a wide selection of steak and ribs, USDA hand-selected and aged a minimum of four weeks for maximum flavor and tenderness.

The signature salads are another of Joe’s specialties, Daniels said, including a spicy beef-and-noodle salad made with filet mignon, avocado, mango, tomatoes, coconut, fresh herbs, almonds and Thai dressing. The grilled honey chicken salad is served with angel hair pasta atop a salad with wontons, sesame seeds and honey mustard dressing.

Sarkis said the restaurant’s most popular salad is the Caesar, classically prepared with croutons and Joe’s own dressing. “It’s a great recipe that we’ve had for years, and it’s very popular,” he said of the dish, which can be served with optional blackened or grilled chicken, crab cake, shrimp, steak or salmon.

The restaurant also offers a wide variety of fresh fish and specialties that include sizzling fajitas, fried chicken and chicken piccata.

The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner every day and offers a brunch menu on Saturday and Sunday. “One of the things unique about our brunch is it includes a complimentary beverage — bloody Mary, champagne, mimosa, a screwdriver or a beer,” Daniels said.

The restaurant also offers gluten-free pasta and pizza.

Sarkis said the Back Bay Restaurant Group chose to locate Joe’s in Wellington because of the area’s demographics.

“We came down and looked at it. We liked the area and liked the demographics,” Sarkis said. “There’s a lot of young people, young families. I liked the growth and, truthfully, I liked what I saw. I didn’t see a lot of good restaurants. I saw a lot of chain restaurants, so we thought we’d bring a different dimension to the marketplace.”

The restaurant has two full liquor bars as well as a list of quality but reasonably priced wines, Sarkis said, adding that a happy hour will be developed around food themes.

“We have been very creative over the years, because this is what we do every day,” he said. “We eat, drink and sleep restaurants.”

The company has a 10-week training program for staff, Sarkis said. Of more than 700 people who applied, about 150 were hired for full- and part-time positions.

“They have to know the menu, they have to know the ingredients, just for a waitperson alone,” Sarkis said. “That’s what we do different than most restaurants; we train people, and I think people will see that when they start coming in here. There’s a lot of depth to it; there’s a lot of hospitality.”

That level of hospitality sets Back Bay’s restaurants apart from most other eateries, he said.

“We do everything with the guests in mind,” Sarkis said. “We don’t have customers, we only have guests. We consider someone coming in here as if they were coming into our own home.”