As any observer of the Nashville dining scene can tell you, it’s been a rough go of late at some of the finer establishments. Restaurants are closing because they can’t get enough staff. Unspoken is that they can’t get enough staff because they won’t pay enough to recruit and hold such staff. Why not? Presumably, it’s because they can’t afford to, given all the costs of producing a restaurant meal, namely labor, rent or a mortgage, and the wholesale cost of the food itself. Throw in utilities, taxes, whatever …
If that’s the case, how do restaurants survive at all? They might be able to cut corners here and there to preserve staffing levels. Maybe they downsize portion sizes (or quality) while holding prices steady to restore profit margins. Maybe they cut back on marketing expenses or use cheaper takeout containers. The owners — gasp — may even be willing to earn less profit, as long as it’s still enough to get by at what is often a labor of love.
There’s one other way, and I suspect few restaurant owners do it, either because they can’t afford the initial financial investment, or it’s too much of a psychological commitment to a risky endeavor, or they just can’t find the right property … and that’s to own, in whole or in part, the building housing their restaurant. Take rent or a substantial mortgage out of the equation, and there’s a ton more financial flexibility. Owning their building allows a restaurant to keep meal prices low enough to bring in higher volume while maintaining high quality.
Now, I’d wager Gen Z chef/owners will generally have a hard time coming up with the money to make that scenario happen without serious help from an absentee investor (Mom & Dad at a minimum, for example). But older restaurateurs may be able to do it or have already done it (which is why they are older restaurateurs, right?). So, if you, the customer, are looking for an excellent meal at an excellent value, think maybe of patronizing the older establishments in your neighborhood, the ones that have been there seemingly forever, instead of the new young things.
Joe’s Restaurant falls into the former category. It’s a classic red-sauce, checkered tablecloth (the tablecloths are not checkered, I’m just setting the scene here), candlelit (nope) Italian restaurant located in Ridgewood, Queens, historically a working-class area of New York City that’s ever so slowly going hipster.
Once upon a time, Ridgewood was a Sicilian area and a German one, but now it mostly comprises vibrant communities from lands that were once behind the Iron Curtain, mixed with a healthy dose of Ecuadorians. The restaurants in Ridgewood mainly reflect the demographics. What there isn’t much of is sit-down Italian. But Joe’s, opened in 1982 and for a long time located down the street, survives, feeding the locals, whether they still live in Ridgewood or are returning from the suburbs for old times’ sake. If tomato sauce is your thing, Joe’s is for you. Especially when it’s slathered all over and around about 12 ounces of shallow-fried chicken, as well as under, over and oozing through an 8 ½ x 11-sized meld of blistered mozzarella.
Joe’s is currently pricing its chicken parm dinner at a reasonable $23. Before inflation ran amok a few years ago, it was priced in the mid-teens. The price rise is forgiven, because this is the chicken parm that all chicken parms should seek to emulate, and so few, outside of hard-core, old-school New York Italian places, actually do. The chicken — we’re talking two meals’ worth here — is on the thick side, as if it had been pounded by a mallet, once, twice, three times only. The tangy tomato sauce is the bomb, an endless pool, a moat, really, the color a vibrant, glistening one that couldn’t be found at a paint store.
Just looking at it, virginally, upon serving, the chicken component could well be veal or eggplant; you literally can’t see what’s underneath the sauce and the cheese. This is how it should be. In Ridgewood, it’s how it’s always been. And in Nashville, by comparison, how it seldom is.