Critic's Review
I'm not sure if this place changed ownership again, or it just hadn't changed yet the last time I was here. Because is sure has changed.
The statue at the front greets you with a hard to read white board; old ideas at work in modern times.
No customers inside at 2:30pm; for some reason they've covered the tables with really ugly green checkered tablecoths. Add in the over the top Valentine's Day decoration and you have a really ugly restaurant.
Who takes their wife or girlfriend to an old outdated diner for Valentine's Day?
"Can I get you a beverage" a lady yells from across the room". "Coffee please".
Music is Johnny Cash. Not country, just Johnny Cash. One song after another.
I looked at some of their "special" dishes. Eggs with london broil. Yum, what is this, 1975? No way I was ordering a benedict here. Just the usual, please.
The food came out in 5 minutes.
The parsley is a nice touch. Matches the tablecloth. Lose the weeds, a bit of salt and pepper and some butter on the completely unseasoned potatoes.
I'd visited the previous owner's new place, Toast, a couple of weeks ago. This place offers larger portions of the same recipes. Monster slices of bread here.
The sausages were 1/2 a day old, nothing I could do could make the potatoes any more than discs of calories; a pretty uninspiring breakfast.
You still get a handwritten check and pay at the cash register.
They have maintained the ridiculous policy of Free Coffee until 9am. Why provide free coffee when you're going to be busy anyway, and make it more expensive when nobody is here?
Conclusion
The website is parked, no active Facebook page.
This is a business that needed some basic improvements; a POS system, a better recipe for home fries, some more innovated menu items. The new owners have done none of the things needed, and have made the place even less appealing than before.
Nicely Done.
9/1/16
Joe's is under new ownership, so I thought I'd see what was different. I had to go to Publix anyway. Their website is better, and the menu has been expanded with some more overpriced items. They've added some $12 "benedicts", because an egg yolk and butter is worth an extra $5, and a $13 bacon cheeseburger. They also claim USDA choice ground beef, which isn't a selling point if the USDA actually graded ground beef; which they don't.
Upon entry, the place looks and feels exactly the same; same decor, same waitstaff. There's just a dude at the cash register instead of the server woman. The signature car and retro decor remain.
The place smelled heavily of bleach. You get used to it after a few minutes, but it's not very pleasant. Haven't they come up with less offensive cleansers in the last 40 years?
Dead empty at 2pm. The all day breakfast isn't all it's cut out to be. Very low 70s/80s music playing: Pat Benatar, KC and the Sunshine Band, Olivia Newton John.
This is a diner, so coffee comes right away. I knew what I was having, but I played coy and asked for a menu, to make sure it matched the web site. The coffee was actually quite good, as diner coffee goes.
Two over easy, sausage links, potatoes and rye toast. Food came out in 5 minutes.
A good PORTION of potatoes, but they looked like a big piece of crust. Argh, this is exactly the opposite of what I said on my last visit; the potatoes were always relatively fresh here, even at 2:30pm. These should have been thrown out a couple of hours ago.
I picked and found a few edible morsels, but the potatoes were a fail. The bread was very lightly buttered. I could have asked for butter but I didn't.
Slow on the coffee refill; I had to ask (you KNOW who you are). On my way out the guy at the register asked how everything was and I said "fine". I could have told him his potatoes sucked, but he'll read this eventually.
Conclusion
At best, this place is the same as it was before. They probably have the same cook so I probably just got unlucky with the end-of-day potatoes. That being said, there's no way I'm coming here for $12 eggs Benedict (Typically 8.95 in a diner). This is a low end diner which is fine for $7 burgers and eggs. But I wouldn't pay restaurant prices to eat here.
Review 11/2/15
After a crappy $23 brunch at Louie Bossi's over the weekend, I thought I'd go cheap. I've been eating a lot of $20 brunches and lunches lately, and I'm getting tired of it.
At 2pm Joe's is pretty empty. They don't do too much business in the late afternoon. It's nice outside; but the shopping center ambiance didn't interest me.
I walked inside and there is no hostess here; 2 women and a short-order cook run the place. I start to go to one of the available booths; the women actually stopped me so she could seat me. Why can't I just sit where I want to sit? didn't matter. Diners are about nice comfortable booths.
The place hasn't changed much since 2008; basically the same menu. There's nothing innovative here. Basic diner food. Nothing more.
Interestingly, they have separate lunch and breakfast menus but only give me a lunch menu. I ordered coffee, because I knew I was having breakfast. They're getting a little sloppy here; the cup wasn't clean.
Water and a bendy straw are included. The coffee was kind of weak. They used to have strong coffee here. Little tricks of the "business", but they don't go unnoticed.
Cindi Lauper plays on the sound system. There's a TV but nothing really on. Not much going on here expect people eating; at the table for 4 nearby a woman talks for 1/2 hour and the others just listen.
The eggs come out in a few minutes.
Competently made. They don't burn the eggs and the potatoes don't look like they've been on the grill since 6:30am. The sausage, however, do look like they've been lying around for quite a while. Nice big pieces of rye bread with butter.
A decent breakfast, which is exactly what I expected. There's no point to dried out sausages though.
Conclusion
When you raise the price from 5.95 to 6.95 to 7.95, you've raised the price 35% over a number of years, so this place isn't a $10 breakfast anymore. $2.45 for coffee is also a lot in a diner. Still a bargain compared to the rip-off "Brunch" breakfasts sprouting throughout the city. It's the only place to get a late breakfast on SE 17th, other than Denny's.
Review 9/2/13
On Labor Day, only real diners are open, and Joe's is a real diner. I'm not a huge fan of Lester's and I didn't want to go far, as it was already 10am when I decided to go out. Joe's was my 3rd choice, but as I just said....
Eat At Joe's is their Motto, not to be confused by the other Joe's on the other side of Sunrise.
Joe's is more spread out than most diners, although I wouldn't want to sit at one of those little tables in the middle.
I've never had breakfast at Joe's at breakfast time, so there were other people as well as 3 servers working; in the afternoon it's just the lead lady so service is always spot on. I contemplated their signature Chili-Cheddar omelet, but fell back to my regular breakfast.
My server brought me coffee and then scampered off without noticing that there were no creamers on the table, so I had to wait. She failed to notice my calls ("Hey you!") so I asked a busser to get me some. Music here isn't bad, Adele and "One More Night", which I've been whistling ever since.
The food came out quickly, as always.
Good Rye Bread, good sausage. The potatoes could use some onions or seasoning, but they're good home fries. Eggs competently over easy. Lousy coffee, but now that I drink designer coffee at home, all coffee in restaurants tastes lousy to me.
One hiccup: This is probably my 1500th review in over 900 different places, and I can say with confidence that this is the first time that my table was bussed while I was still sitting in the booth. Wait till the customer leaves, please.
Review 9/12/12
Joe's cafe is a diner in a storefront, conveniently located next to Publix. Sometimes, when I don't feel like spending $20 on lunch, I like to have a late breakfast. I hadn't been to Joe's in over a year.
If you go after the lunch run, the woman who works here is a one-man band: hostess, waitress, cashier and I even thought I saw her run back and flip a burger. She does a pretty good job. Joe's is just one big room with a small counter and a big Chevy on the wall, so she just kind of runs back and forth to manage all of her tasks.
She sat me with a lunch menu, which wasn't what I wanted. When she came to take my order I asked if they still served breakfast; they have separate menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so she brought me over a breakfast menu. There's a sign out front that touts the lunch specials, but I didn't see a sheet with any specials. I was having breakfast so I didn't ask.
I decided on the corned beef hash, 2 over easy, rye toast and potatoes. Coffee was served with a pile of creamers, along with water with a bendy straw.
The coffee is stronger than your typical diner brew; maybe it's just been sitting longer? I like it strong. There's also non-typical diner music playing; Come On Eileen segues into Groove is in the Heart. The eggs come out quickly.
Everything was cooked nicely; they don't burn stuff at Joe's. The corned beef has was more the kind from a can than what you get at a good deli. The hash is pedestrian; Mary's Kitchen is better than this, but it's not bad. The potatoes are good. And they have good Rye bread also.
The bill is on the table without my noticing that she dropped it off. This all comes to just over $10 before tip. The coffee is free before 9am. I don't get that one; Why is breakfast cheaper at 8:45am than 9:15am?
Joe's Cafe is consistently OK.
Review 7/21/11
Today I decided to try Lunch at Joe's Cafe; I usually do breakfast in a diner. With all of this "best burger" nonsense, I though I'd try a good diner burger; diners were always the best place to get a burger before restaurants figured out that people would pay $10-$12 for it. Joe's serves a "black angus" burger, which doesn't really mean much. What's nice is that you can get it without the fries, so it's only $5.95 for a burger, cole slaw and a pickle. I would have preferred to get a whole pickle rather than a half, but less than a pickle seems to be the trend.
The burger has a nice char on it and it came out perfectly medium rare. I liked the toasted kaiser roll rather than the usual big fluffy sesame seed bun. The cole slaw was good too, although I added some pepper to it. Ketchup was on the table and they brought out both yellow and brown mustard. This time I passed on the mustard. Again, service was perfect.
The burger was as good as any of the others I'd had; cooking it properly seems more important that the '"brand" of meat. In this shopping center alone, you can get a burger at 5 guys, Duffys, Gilberts, Lauderdale Grill or Joes. For $5.95, you can't do better than Joe's.
Review 6/12/2010
Joes Cafe is a diner in a shopping center that doesnt look much like a diner from the outside. But inside, its clean and modern and quite a handsome place.
After having been turned away at 11:04 at Lil Reds, I was happy to find that Joes serves breakfast all day. I needed to pick up a few things at Publix so it wasnt out of the way. My server was all business as she took my order, refilled my coffee and dropped off the check without my even noticing. Its probably the best diner service Ive received in recent memory.
I ordered my usual favorite breakfast: 2 over easy, sausage links, potatoes, rye toast and coffee. I had barely fired up my phone to read the morning paper when the food arrived. It all looked good; you can just tell from the look of the food that the kitchen is clean here. While some of the charm of diner food is the lopsided fare; its nice to get breakfast that you can tell was prepared with clean utensils.
The rye bread is sturdier than most and the sausages were good; the potatoes are browned but unseasoned so youll need to salt and pepper to taste. A pretty good breakfast, all for under $10.
When youre done just take the bill and pay at the door. In and out in short order.
The only question I have is why pay $20 for breakfast at the beach when you can Eat at Joes?