Toojays corned beef
 

Second time we took corned beef home from the deli counter. Second time it looks like they dumped an end on us and even sliced it with the grain, a serious corned beef gaff that makes it tougher. Strike out, bye bye

We went to Too Jays once a few years back. I ordered the corned beef & swiss on rye. I didn't like it all. We have never gone back.
Not to say that some of their food isn't good, I don't know. It just never seemed to be a place we wanted to frequent.
I know others like it, so that's a good thing. I never want anyone to close.

Are the TooJays different in service and quality here in the Villages? We have only been to the one in Sumter Landing but my Mom sometimes goes to the one in Spanish Springs after golfing up in the northern area of the Villages. And the one in Brownwood is quite a trip. The Villages | TooJays

I like their liverwurst sandwich.

It is my favorite place for a great meal. Never made it to the one in Lake Sumter yet. The liverwurst sandwich is fantastic and the bread reminds me of where we used to live. Service is great.

Talking to wrong people.
 

I love the food at TooJays. I prefer the one at Spanish Springs Town Square. Perhaps because they have an outdoor dining area where you can listen to entertainment from the Square.

My favorite meal is a beef/cabbage soup that they offer as a special on one day a week. (Some days there is some still left over the next day. Still just as good.)

The breakfast meals are really great. At lunch I enjoy a variety of their deli sandwiches, especially the hot pastrami.

They have a lot of great salads too.

If someone has an issue with a meal provided, that person should ask the management to correct the problem. Just jumping on a social media board and complaining doesn't get the job done. It simply appears petty and vengeful.

TooJays fan here too. Enough with the grandmother jabs Allegiance.:undecided::cus:

My favorite thing at TooJays is their half brisket sandwich served with horseradish sauce and the Cabbage Vegetable soup only served on Wednesday.

TODAY is Wednesday and I have a pedicure appointment just down the street at 5:30....I will tell the fam that dinner tonight is at TooJays.

QUOTE=Bonny;1433864]We went to Too Jays once a few years back. I ordered the corned beef & swiss on rye. I didn't like it all. We have never gone back.
Not to say that some of their food isn't good, I don't know. It just never seemed to be a place we wanted to frequent.
I know others like it, so that's a good thing. I never want anyone to close.[/QUOTE]

Carl, you are so right and what you said is what I've always said. If someone has a justifiable complaint about food in a restaurant, an item in a store, a repair that didn't work, etc. . . .
If you don't take your complaint to a manager or someone higher up the ladder of management, you are simply slandering that business and your complaint serves no purpose.

I am sure if the OP went back to Two Jays with the corned beef or even called and explained the situation, there is no doubt in my mind it would have been rectified.

Going a step further, going to a restaurant only once, is not a barometer for deciding if the place is good or not. Bonny -- what was wrong with your sandwich? You didn't say. And it sounds like that is the reason you've never been back.

Their chopped liver is excellent and so is their corned beef and pastrami. They have the best rye bread ever! Their soups are great and are all home made and their stuffed cabbage is what anyone's grandmother made years ago.

I could go on but you get the picture. I am not saying they have a few things I don't care for, but that's my taste and doesn't mean there is anything wrong with whatever it is.

Toojay's does a terrible imitation of a New York Deli

Toojay's is in Florida, not NY which makes a comparison meaningless..

Why

[/QUOTE]Carl, you are so right and what you said is what I've always said. If someone has a justifiable complaint about food in a restaurant, an item in a store, a repair that didn't work, etc. . . .
If you don't take your complaint to a manager or someone higher up the ladder of management, you are simply slandering that business and your complaint serves no purpose.

I am sure if the OP went back to Two Jays with the corned beef or even called and explained the situation, there is no doubt in my mind it would have been rectified.

Going a step further, going to a restaurant only once, is not a barometer for deciding if the place is good or not. Bonny -- what was wrong with your sandwich? You didn't say. And it sounds like that is the reason you've never been back.

Their chopped liver is excellent and so is their corned beef and pastrami. They have the best rye bread ever! Their soups are great and are all home made and their stuffed cabbage is what anyone's grandmother made years ago.

I could go on but you get the picture. I am not saying they have a few things I don't care for, but that's my taste and doesn't mean there is anything wrong with whatever it is.[/QUOTE]

I just didn't like the flavor or the texture of their corned beef. There was nothing to complain about to a manager. I ate it. It was probably my taste. I certainly wasn't bashing the restaurant. I have friends that love it there. That's great. I want everyone to stay in business. We never went back mostly because we just aren't deli people.

""New York Delis" are a unique creation that have been copied all over the country. They are far and few between since the demographics of our cities have changed. Too Jays is not a NY style deli, rather a concept developed in Florida. Their success is obvious, their number of stores continue to grow based on their success. Having spent my entire business career in Midtown Manhattan I saw many NY delis close, usually due to increased overhead and demographic changes I find TooJays an acceptable substitute for a "real NY style" deli.

To be slander, it has to be untrue. So, the OP did not slander the business. And the complaint does serve a purpose, just like any review of a business, it informs people of someone's customer experience. Just as the glowing recommendations do the same.

I'm always humored by the posts berating others for not bringing the problem up with management. I almost never do that. It's management's job to see that I don't have a problem. If I don't get good quality for my expense, I make note of it. If it's bad enough, I don't go back. Not my job to tell management how to run their business.

There may be. I've never been to the one in SS, Both LSL and Brownwood has reasonable food. The service at LSL on the 3 occasions I've been there is among the worst in TV, the service in Brownwood is fairly good.

Toojays is Toojays. Sometime okay, sometimes not. It seems the management is somewhat indifferent to their customers at times and that just tracts with the management of the majority of restaurants in The Villages area. We were in our favorite Italian restaurant yesterday and were treated to ten minutes of the staff arguing loudly with each other over some issue in the kitchen without regard to customers in earshot. For those that say if you do not address your concerns with the manager they can not be rectified, Phooey ! The manager was in earshot as well and did nothing to quiet the staff. If you live here, sometimes you will be fed well with good service as part of the deal. Generally though, you probably should expect that mediocrity will constitute your restaurant experience.

I love Toojays but not for corned beef. Every meal I've had there has been delicious except the corned beef and cabbage. Thee beef was tough and tasteless and the cabbage was tasteless and cold

Re: Ny corned beef
 

1. Is your grandmother REALLY still alive?
2. I am now an orphan with the death of my mother at 86.
3. Around here, many would need to look up what Schmalz is.
4. I remember a guy who used to sell pickles out of a wooden barrel on Canal Street. You cannot make a good pickle without a wooden barrel. Oh and if you were to try to make them in a wooden barrel the food inspectors would probably close you down. I'm not sure if the place is even still there. I quit buying pickesa from him when I saw him sneeze into the barrel. TRUTH-he saw me look and declared. "It adds to the flavor.
5. NY Corned beef is KOSHER corned beef and Hebrew National controls it. You must have a Kosher deli to get it and there are only less than 20 Kosher Delis left in the United States.
6. Corned beef is yet another used to be cheap. Brisket, used to be cheap as it is flavorful but TOUGH. Cook time is like THREE HOURS and it shrinks by about 1/3. Here, the packaged corned beef is at best OK if you know how to pick a good one and how to cook it. As you loose at least 1/3 even more when you trim off the fat, you can buy the already cooked stuff from Two Jays for the same or lower cost.
7. It is GONE-just like inexpensive good quality caviar. Perhaps, it gets better in memory than it really was.

The good Ole days. Reminds me of when Little Italy was not so little.
Traditions are great.

Gracie I'm not sure what Toojays is but I know it is not a fish restaurant. Nor is it a. Jewish delicatessen

TooJays
 

It is very far removed from a Jewish deli and their corned beef is awful.

Jeanne. I was kidding around. TooJays is to me anyway, a shiksa, a Jewish Deli. Corned beef and cabbage I associate with St. Patrick's day. I was kidding around. Anyone who knows me knows who the huge painting in my front hall was painted for. In memory of.

Kosher and Halal
 

I am prepared to be corrected by an expert, but this goy is under the impression that obtaining Kosher food is no assurance that the food is of higher quality than other similar food, but rather that the food is prepared in conformance with Jewish laws found in the Torah and expanded in the Talmud. (Well, I will make a concession to Hebrew National that their hot dogs possibly don't contain animal eyelids and lips, which is arguably a quality issue. All they actually say is that their hot dogs are "all beef.")

With the ceremonial aspects, and the required separation of cooking vessels used for preparing various foods, it must be extremely difficult for a commercial food preparation establishment to maintain a Kosher kitchen. I certainly would be surprised to discover that a chain restaurant, like TooJay's, would serve Kosher food.

As an interesting sidelight, the Muslim practice of producing Halal (acceptable) meat and the Jewish practice of producing Kosher meat are extremely similar. (They kill the animals by slitting their throats.) Of course, both religions forbid the consumption of pork.

On the matter of corned beef quality. Actually, I have gotten food from various Deli's in New York and in Washington, DC. I simply don't like corned beef. Give me hot pastrami sandwich every time.

\My daughter married a guy from Ireland. He explained that in Ireland they have ham cabbage and potatoes not corn beef that's an American invention

Ahhhhhhhhhh... Katz's.

come back? so the the standard of quality etc are different for restaurants in Florida vis a vis New York? that dog won't hunt

We don't care........
 

Surely you knew a joke when you saw it.

The fact is that there are dozens of "Jewish style deli's" in Florida that are more than adequate. The purist declaration that they don't measure up to those in New York can only evoke a response of "So what? We aren't in New York."

And that gets very close to the bumper sticker that says, "We don't care how you did it up north."

At least here you can go in to TooJay's and order potato pancakes, cheese blintzes, chopped chicken liver, and matzo ball soup. Try going to New York and ordering grits, ropa vieja, a deviled crab or a Cuban sandwich.

Guaranteed to be as lousy as Toojays corned beef- whatever you do==do it right--go to Katz's and eat a real sandwich then you will really know what a real corned beef is

But they do a decent imitation of a NY diner.

But
 

1. You can get grits in NY. You of course will immediately be accused of being a tourist. Cuban sandwich every 711 has them. Ropa Vieja-I must admit I do not even know what that is but on a dare if you will pay my airfare and hotel bills I could find it. .
2. As to NY or Florida for that matter, every place is different when you are on vacation or retired. Imagine those PEOPLE doing roofs, repairing air conditioning etc on our 98 degree days with 80% humidity

TRUTH-before 9/11 I went into a luncheonette just off Bway and 34th st. All over the walls was Arabic writing.
The guy talking orders and making the food was a big black guy. I ordered a chefs salad. Sorry but a chef salad is not at all the same here either. I've always had a big mouth. I said to him only in NY can you go to a place obviously owned by muslims-if you missed it there is ham in a chef salad-made by a black guy and it is the best chef salad I've ever had. We both had a good laugh

An amusing movie to see is titled,"Deli Man," and it is on Amazon.

YOU CAN BE HAPPY OR MISERABLE ANYWHERE.

Exactly!

It seems some people get really angry at any negative responses reported...and they make personal attacks against that poster.

I thought the whole idea for this site was for people to be able to share their experiences, good and bad, and attacking someone relaying a bad experience...doesn't engender a willingness for further participation.

Or maybe that's the goal of those who direct personal attacks toward others...who don't have glowing things to say about everything here? :shrug:

Exactly! The Antisemitic remarks were totally uncalled for. Can't we all just get along?

I mean this in a most serious way. WHAT anti-semetic remarks are you referencing??? I read this thread over and over and saw none.

Amen. Pastrami so much better than corned beef.