Joe and John's Italian Restaurant

Established in 1978, I had somewhat high hopes for this old school-looking joint that’s been serving pizza & subs on the outskirts of Atlantic City for over 45 years. Usually when a pizzeria or restaurant is named after two guys, 9 times out of 10 it’s a top quality joint. Unfortunately, this is that one time it misses the mark. There are white pies and then there’s “ghost pies.” When you order a white pie, you’re not expecting any red sauce; however, I didn’t order a white pie. This is their regular plain pizza; the sauce has literally ghosted the dough & the bright white cheese. Did they run out of sauce for the day? How do you explain this paltry volume? Flimsy & char-less, the dough is ultra soft with significant flop, neither crispy, nor tasty, along with minimal crunch in the below-basic crust. A generic & subpar shredded mozzarella blend, the cheese is overpoweringly salty, gushing with grease, loaded with pockets of oil impeding & intruding upon every aspect of the pizza. Without much sauce, the excess oil provides the only lubrication on an otherwise desert dry pie. Watered down & ineffectual, there’s just the slightest droplets of sauce, mostly near the crust, the bare minimum amount that’s visible without a magnifying glass. With a dearth of sauce, saltiness is all I can taste, mostly from the greasy cheap cheese. When I think of South Jersey pizza, I don’t even picture it this bad. The lack of quality is glaring; from the bland & tasteless dough, to the salty & oily cheese, to the virtually invisible sauce, this is putrid pizza. With over 45 years in the business, I expected much better from Joe & John; needless to say, avoid this massively disappointing pizzeria like the plague.