Restaurant Review: Joe’s American Grill (Paramus, NJ, Short Hills, NJ, and locations in CT, FL, MA, NH, and RI)

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Restaurant Review: Joe’s American Grill (Paramus, NJ, Short Hills, NJ, and locations in CT, FL, MA, NH, and RI)

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with gluten intolerance. We decided to get together for dinner so I sent him a list of restaurants I still wanted to try and he chose Joe’s American Grill.

Hamburger on Gluten Free / Dairy Free Bun
with Gluten Free Fries at Joe's American Grill

A couple of months ago when I tried Papa Razzi’s gluten free menu (read Review of Papa Razzi here ), I had started out at Joe’s American Grill. They had believed their new gluten free hamburger buns contained dairy so I decided to go with Papa Razzi instead. [Note: Joe’s and Papa Razzi share the same parent company and at least here in New Jersey are built next door to each other.]

Having eaten at Papa Razzi, I wasn’t surprised by the level of knowledge and care the staff at Joe’s showed us. Our waitress double checked the hamburger bun ingredients and found that while they contain a bit of egg they do not contain any dairy ingredients (she was concerned that they are manufactured in a factory that produces products containing dairy – yes, Joe’s is that careful!).

In addition to gf/df buns for their sandwiches, Joe’s also offers GF pizza crusts (for those who can have dairy), gluten free pasta, and best of all, they offered to pan fry some potatoes for us so we could have gluten free French fries!

As is Joe’s policy, the manager stopped by to discuss our allergies/intolerances with us but it was completely unneeded: our waitress was extremely thorough and knowledgeable and we had full confidence in her.

So how was the burger? The burger was great and the bun was good. It was toasted but did start to come apart towards the end of the burger. The pan fried gluten free fries were out-of-this world.

Joe’s is definitely somewhere I’ll return to and consider when traveling.