Joey Tomato's—That Little Italian Joint You've Been Looking For

Joey Tomato's
1146 John Sims Pkwy. East
Niceville
(850) 729-3354
Hours: Lunch, Mon.-Fri. 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.,
Sat. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Mon.-Sat. at 5 p.m.
Reservations: Accepted
Children's menu: Yes
Dress: Casual

Food
Service
Atmosphere
Overall

By Bruce Collier
July 9, 2009 Issue

Joey Tomato's is a genuine family-owned, family-operated Italian restaurant, serving lunch and dinner six days a week. The lunch menu offers New York-style—including traditional Italian and Jewish—deli sandwiches and some American creations. For dinner, there's pizza, pasta, and an extensive list of more upscale Italian entrees featuring fish, shellfish, veal and chicken. Everything looks, smells and tastes house-made, and the staff—from the chef to the agile servers—gives it a personal, you're-among-friends touch. My dining companion said it made her nostalgic for restaurants in Manhattan. I saw her point.

First, there's the size. Joey Tomato's is not a large place. There's no lobby for herding and congregating, or an auditorium-sized bar for drinking while you wait. The house has made maximum use of the space, with about a dozen or so tables, many of them four-tops, but they seem willing to make room for larger parties. The night we ate there, a table in the middle accommodated about 10 regulars. When it's full—as it was that night—you are close to your fellow diners. Not uncomfortably so, but enough to mind your manners when backing out.

The walls are decorated with posters, prints, and assorted personal military insignia and keepsakes, adding to the family atmosphere. There's music, featuring Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and guys who sound like Sinatra and Tony Bennett. The menu is big, and takes some study, which you get time to do. Despite the turnaway business, no one rushed us.

We ordered bruschetta to start. It was the classic kind, crisp, thin-sliced toasted bread spread with olive oil, fresh tomatoes, red onion and basil, served on a brightly painted square platter. Everything we had that night came on colorful plates and serving bowls. Other appetizers were mussels, cannellini bean dip, caprese, and a special, clams oregonata. Appetizer-sized pizzas, salads and soup are also available to start.

Choosing a main course is challenging, because Joey Tomato's covers a lot of bases (lunch is a whole other ball game). There's the expected—lasagna, pasta with sausage or meatballs, ravioli, chicken parmesan—and also more refined dishes like gnocchi Genovese (with basil pesto), pasta putanesca ("prostitute's style"), linguine with fresh mussels and white wine sauce, and tortellaci stuffed with beef and veal. We ordered the latter two, and there were still items we would like to have tried. You might want to study the online menu first, as a preliminary briefing.

Tortellaci look a lot like really big tortelloni. Plump and full of mild and tender meat, they came in a savory but light brown butter sauce, flavored with leaves of fresh sage. "Excellent choice," said the server as he put down the steaming plate, and he sounded like he meant it. The linguine was piled in a large bowl, also steaming, laced with 25 mussels, still in their blue-black shells. I took a moment to inhale the scent, then never looked back. The broth (which collects in the bottom) was briny, garlicky and spicy with red pepper flakes. Between the two entrees, we used up all four sticks of our hot rolls.

Other main dishes include Brooklyn pasta (with meatball, sausage and shrimp), chicken or veal marsala, rigatoni with mini-meatballs, linguine with shrimp, scallops, clams and calamari, eggplant rollatini, pasta with "vodka martini" sauce, cannelloni, manicotti, spinach ravioli, and other Italian specialties.

Desserts were recited by our server. That night, as best I can recall, there were cannoli, red velvet cake, tiramisu, New York cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, creme brulee cheesecake with white chocolate and raspberry, and an Italian rum cake. We got the creme brulee cheesecake, to share. It was just the right temperature—not warm, not ice-block frozen—and I am beginning to think that if there is a place in the world for white chocolate, it may be in Italian desserts. I know I've written it elsewhere, but I believe the Italians really have got the market cornered on desserts. Nobody has their genius for combining lightness with satisfaction in all things sweet.

I made a mistake when I went to eat at Joey Tomato's in Niceville. I saw that they took reservations, but I figured that a restaurant located in a shopping center in Niceville, with any number of other dining options within walking distance nearby, wouldn't be a problem when it came to getting a table. So, I took a chance without one. I was wrong, but fortunately we got there early enough to avoid the crowd. If we had waited until a half-hour later as originally planned, we'd have had a wait. As it was, many people had to wait. I expect they did it gladly. I would have.

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