A spiritual cousin to the pasta-and-red-sauce places of Joe Guzzardi's native New York, the restaurant offered Italian immigrant food with recipes derived from Joe's Sicilian grandmother. It’s become increasingly rare to find a “simple salad” at a restaurant. Instead, you’re likely to find composed salads, many ingredients arranged on a plate so that they look like a pretty picture. At Joe’s you can still get a side salad and it’s comprised of lettuce (not spinach or “mixed greens”), cherry tomatoes and the salad dressing of your choice.
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Rarely will you hear his name mentioned in discussions about the best chefs in the metropolitan area. Some of that is based on the misbegotten perception that red sauce dishes aren’t as sophisticated and challenging to prepare as the “high-brow” dishes served in “Northern Italian” restaurants. He’s not one to crow about his skills and is modest to a fault.
Family-friendly,
Joe served this dish on the first Sunday in which his magnificent restaurant opened for lunch. The name “fried breaded meatballs” in and of itself may not sound especially interesting or delicious, but at the hands of Joe’s kitchen staff, these meaty orbs are quite wonderful. Take four traditional breaded and fried meatballs, top them with a New Mexico green chile spinach cream sauce and melted mozzarella and you’ve got a rich, indulgent, absolutely decadent adventure in deliciousness.
Much less expected is the piquant bite, the genesis of which is actually the sausage. It’s not New Mexico chile piquant, but it’s got a bite to it. When he’s not in the kitchen preparing your meal (yes, he can really cook) Joe Guzzardi is a peripatetic presence with a buoyant personality and charm to spare.
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Danny Dines: Joe's Pasta House Features rrobserver.com - Rio Rancho Observer
Danny Dines: Joe's Pasta House Features rrobserver.com.
Posted: Thu, 01 Jun 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Perhaps the only thing at the Pasta House as warm as the Guzzardi’s hospitality is the bread which arrives at your table shortly after you’re comfortably seated. There may be nothing as comforting as a basket of sliced bread and yeasty rolls baked in-house–unless, of course, it’s a dish of seasoned olive oil and various herbs and spices in which to dip that bread. Joe’s Pasta House goes even further with a complementary plate of bruschetta crowned with a mixture of rich, red tomatoes, chopped onions, garlic and other savory ingredients. At most restaurants you would pay handsomely for such a treat. While Joe’s Pasta House has earned popular acclaim from a faithful customer base, Joe’s culinary skills aren’t always as critically acclaimed.
Timeless Italian cuisine inspired by pure, regional Italian dishes and even recipes handed down from Joe’s grandmother. The menu for Joe's Pasta House may have changed since the last user update. Sirved does not guarantee prices or the availability of menu items.
The pork ribs are fall-off-the-bone tender and meaty (porky?) enough for Fred Flintstone. It’s easy to extricate the pork off the bone, but your inclination will probably be to pick them up and gnaw off that pork with your hands. It’s a messy proposition considering the tomato sauce, but then that’s what napkins are for. The rigatoni pasta is prepared at just slightly past al dente, but certainly not nearly to the level of the squishy, mushy overdone pasta served at the restaurant at which I’m forced to eat once a year.
Menu for Joe's Pasta House in Rio Rancho, NM
While dining out has always been an essential part of Rio Rancho’s cosmology, in its nascent days residents had to drive down the hill or across the river to enjoy restaurants that weren’t national chains. Then in 1999, Joe and Kassie Guzzardi assumed ownership of the eponymous Joe’s Pasta House and began the process of winning over denizens of the City of Vision. For 23 years, the Guzzardis and Rio Rancho have shared a reciprocal love affair.
We’ll make you happy.” before proceeding to recommend entrees with a different flavor profile than the dish the guest didn’t like. Joe’s energy, enthusiasm and customer orientation are mirrored by an attentive, well-mannered and highly professional wait staff that is easily among the very best in the metropolitan area. On a list of things I’d rather do, my annual visit to the Olive Garden for a meal of cheese glop or tomato torture ranks somewhere below visiting a proctologist or watching The View. Kim likes the salad and bread sticks and I suspect derives a bit of sadistic satisfaction in hearing me mutter polysyllabic epithets about the “Evil Garden’s” food.
When we lavished praise on his phenomenal rigatoni pasta and pork ribs dish, he dismissed it as “just another dish we ate at home growing up in New York.” If only every chef was as modest…and talented. For devotees of a particular restaurant, those three words are enough to stir apprehension, carrying with them the specter of undesired changes to the menus and a decline in service. Over the course of 23 years, the Guzzardis had built Joe's into Rio Rancho's most beloved restaurant.
Joe’s housemade sandwich bread (some of the best in the metro) is lightly toasted . All subs are served with French fries though a small salad may be a better pairing. Our menu consists of traditional red sauce dishes like our famous Parmigiana and even some of your favorite classics with a New Mexico flare. You’ll feel like you’re right in Nonna’s kitchen, right here in Rio Rancho.
That tactic lasted one day, a day he remembers for having made about 75 trips to the kitchen to prepare the beloved eggplant dish for his guests. The meatball parmigiana is much like those I’ve longed for–with one exception. Instead of baseball-sized meatballs that don’t fit between bread, Joe’s uses smaller (about ping pong ball sized) meatballs. There are enough meatballs that you can pluck some from the cozy confines of their bready home and enjoy them separately. A blanket of molten parmigiana and Joe’s wonderful red sauce cover those meatballs.
Joe’s is a restaurant we’re proud to call our own and much as we’d like to think it’s our secret and exclusively ours, it’s much too good not to be discovered by the Duke City citizenry. While Joe manages the restaurant’s day-to-day operations, his pulchritudinous partner Kassie oversees the restaurants social media channels, search engine optimization, blog and Web site presence. She’s understandably very proud that Joe’s won’t feed guests anything the Guzzardi family wouldn’t eat themselves.
A restaurant has to prove itself every single time with every single guest. It must offer a combination of memorable food, a homey look and feel and mostly personable, attentive service. Fast forward some twenty centuries and innovative restaurants such as Joe’s Pasta House are preparing the most indulgent and delicious fried lasagna you can imagine. As expected, your fork will penetrate past a blanket of molten cheese and sink down into layers of delicious strips of lasagna noodles and ground sausage resplendent in one of Joe’s famous red sauces.
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