Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse

Great option for dining in Altoona. One of the best patios in Central Iowa that can go 10 months out of the year. Prices are in line for quality of food and the atmosphere.

We dined on the patio, which was a great experience that was only slightly dampened by a sprinkle of rain, however the umbrella coverings kept us mostly dry. We had great service for our party of 12. Everyone was thoroughly impressed with their food. My meal was no exception. It was actually the best ravioli I’ve ever had! A must try!

The owners spent their cash on the building rather than staff. I felt bad for the staff, who were attentive but clearly overwhelmed. Kitchen botched multiple orders in our group.
Better food at Applebee’s. That’s not a compliment, but at least Applebee’s has competent microwave skills.

Tried this upscale restaurant because they keep showing their good looking food being made in KCCI Iowa local TV channel… I was not impressed! I tried their lobster bisque soup it was watery as well as their «soon to be famous» lobster mac and cheese in their menu… Not worth it! I had better!

Visited here Saturday night at 6:20 pm. I give this place 4 stars, but there are a few things they really need to work on. Should really be a 3.5 star. First I will cover the positives: The atmosphere and décor is very top notch and gives you the feel of a high-​end big city restaurant. The bar has great drink selections (albeit a tad pricey). The food was excellent. Ordered a bone-​in ribeye with a side of pasta with red sauce. This came with a salad and bread. The ribeye was ordered medium rare and came out exactly to my specifications. The bread was excellent as well. Our waitress was attentive and knew her menu. The bar staff was excellent as well. Now the bad: We arrived at 6:20 and was quoted a 80 – 85 minute wait time for a party of 2. What annoyed me was there were 3 people at the front desk all talking among themselves and to other customers after the conversation with me had already begun. The girl who helped us obviously couldn’t focus on the customer at hand. We opted to sit back at the bar and wait out the long wait time. The bar area was crowded due to so many people waiting. Micro-​brew beers are nearly $ 10 for a 20 ounce glass. Too pricey for me, but I divulged anyway. Fortunately, one of the bartenders felt bad for us and another couple who had been waiting a long time, and gave us free «lemon drop» drinks. We were finally retrieved from the bar area by the hostess at almost exactly two hours later from when we had put our name in. 120 minutes far exceeds the 80 – 85 wait time we were quoted. There aren’t many restaurants on this planet I am willing to invest a two hour wait time to get a table– and this is not one of them. I know they do take reservations, but most times I don’t think to go somewhere until the last minute and now I will have to take this place off my short list of places I can just drop in and get a table. There were also many empty tables as we walked back to the bar after putting our name in. Food and service here is excellent. Atmosphere is awesome. They just need to find a way to move people through a little more efficiently and quicker. This is a great place, but a little too pricey in some areas of the menu for my taste, especially drinks. Would maybe go here again, but definitely not without a reservation.

Loved our night at Johnny’s! The lobster mac and cheese appetizer was delicious and creamy. My petite filet mignon was tender and cooked to perfection. We ended our meal with their new chocolate cheesecake which was absolutely incredible. Our waiter Brandon was probably the best I’ve ever come across. We will definitely eat here again!

Terrible experience!!! Made reservations, showed up and they said we didn’t have reservations. Showed them the screen shot with the confirmation They said it wasn’t in there system so we would have to wait an hour and a half. Told them to F off. Won’t go back and if I were you don’t waste your time making reservations cause they don’t care. I hope they go out of business. They were rude and disrespectful.

A nice step up from the normal fare. Very cleanresturant and an outstanding staff.

I’ll admit I mostly go for the patio and drinks.
Food is good. BUT, worst lasagna I have ever had. Had the take it back and just remove it from the check. Family got steaks which were great so i nibbled off thier plates.
Had a Rumchata martini for dessert :)

Worth every bite from start to finish. Caution: go there, hungry! The whole meal is a pleasurable experience. The staff is so friendly and obviously works together well, as a team. We started the evening with a seasonal pumpkin martini. Wow, it was amazing! The salad bowl for two is more than enough, and the warm fresh Italian bread is scrumptious, dipped in olive oil and Parmesan cheese. The entrées are gourmet! Even the fresh vegetables are sauteed to perfection. Though full, we had dessert. The sample dessert tray to select from makes you want a bite of each! For a special evening, this is the place to go!

Well I went back again. Much improved over my first visit. The food was good and the waitress we had was excellent. I will go back.

I have been to Johnny’s a couple different times. The service is great but the food missed the mark for me. I ordered the cedar plank salmon. It was cooked well but it was pretty plain, lacking seasoning! My husband ordered the steak deburgo-​the steak its self was tender and the garlic sauce was good, but the steak again was lacking seasoning. They have a great patio area where we enjoyed a drink after dinner by the fire. I would definitely go back to Johnny’s but just for a few cocktails

Johnny ’ s is a unique dining experience. Whether you are going out on a date, entertaining clients or celebrating a special occasion; you should experience a great meal.
The menu is simple, but has something for everyone. Their food quality is top notch, and there are plenty of private seating options available. I highly recommend the bone — in ribeye for something unique.
If you are planning a group meal, definitely call ahead. There are some cool side areas that have curtains which can be pulled across for added privacy.
The outdoor dining options are great. For parties, showers or receptions there is an extra bar plus a great fireplace sitting area. It’s a very cool atmosphere and quite reasonable to rent for a private party.
The service here is not as good here as it is at 801 or even Greenbriar. Its better than AJs, though many waitstaff seem new here. We honestly don’t come for the service (which is average overall), it’s the atmosphere and the food all the way. Bottom line… Service is adequate, but don’t come here in a hurry.
This is one of my favorite places to eat a steak here in town. There are some fun drinks and a great dessert menu, too.

First time to this Johnny’s, and I wasn’t impressed. A party of 8 at 6:15p on a Friday night and the service was dismal. The food took a long time and the bill took FOREVER. It was 2 hours from start to finish. The food was decent, but my wife’s Salmon dish was way over cooked, she thought it tasted/​looked like it sat under a heat lamp for a while. If you like Johnny’s, stick to the one on the south side.

Pricey but excellent food. I had the salmon, spinach and artichoke pasta and we split turtle cheesecake for dessert. The service is great and the décor is beautiful. Will definitely go back.

While our server was personable and the food was ok, the evening was a comedy of errors and inexcusable delays, especially for the price point. (Full disclosure: I have been to Johnny’s near the airport several, several times, and have had service that varies between excellent to tolerable. This experience was shockingly bad enough to make public comment.)
First up: after a long wait for drinks after placing our order (after our server already apologized for an initial wait), the server said they were out of cups and she was trying to locate some. Out. Of. Cups. ??? At a steakhouse? But still the salads and bread came, sans anything to wash them down.
Then, after asking about our appetizer after an even longer delay, our server came back with it, again apologizing that the appetizer and dinner were rung up at the same time, and that she would hold off on the dinner until we finished the appetizer (I’m assuming this meant the use of a heat lamp.)
And then, after dinner, and after strongly suggesting a particular dessert, she came back (again after a long wait) and said that they had just sold the last slice. But as the pièce de résistance to the evening: after a fairly long delay after asking for the check, she came back with it and said that she had taken the aforementioned out-​of-​stock dessert off the check … Surely, I misheard that, right? She surely wouldn’t have suggested taking credit for not charging us for a dessert that was never served, right?
And finally, after an intolerable wait to cash out, I went in seek of her to pay on the spot vs any further delay.
Most know me as being a highly tolerant diner and understand occasional issues throughout any restaurant experience, especially on a busy evening, but this experience had so many more negatives than positives that I can only hope this review can enlighten management to issues that need to be addressed.

Great experience!!! We came and sat on the patio and enjoyed the beautiful weather!
We shared the little Italy combination. That was a delicious appetizer. The sausage bread was phenomenal, ravioli was some of the best I have had, and the calamari was so tender and not at all rubbery as it can be! I also enjoyed the bread with the oil and Parmesan.
We also had the amazing house salad which has a wonderful refreshing dressing! So light and flavorful!!!
Deserts were super decadent, tiramisu was super rich and creamy and the mounds bar ice cream cake was AMAZING!!! So wonderful!!!
Server was super sweet and friendly! Always filling our drinks and attentive and super knowable about the menu!
An amazing experience out on the patio and I can’t wait to go back with the warm summer weather. Yeah it may be a bit pricy but you pay for quality!!!

My one and only time at Johnny’s was for their Easter Sunday brunch buffet. It may not be fair to judge a steakhouse based on a brunch buffet but I will. If I had to summarize my experience in one sentence it would be this: I could have done better at the Hy-​Vee deli. In fact some of the dishes offered on the buffet seemed like maybe they did come from a deli. I half expect to see this place on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares. Is that still a show?
Let’s back up and start with walking in the door. My parents had made reservations and arrived ahead of us so they were already seated when we arrived. This isn’t the type of place where you can see the dining area when you walk in so I approached the desk to ask for directions to the table. Two staff members were behind the desk engrossed in a conversation from which they could not be interrupted for several minutes. A third staff member walked up, said something to the other two, then promptly ignored me while she waited for them to respond to her. No hello, or we’ll be right with you, not even a smile. She just turned away from me. Not a great first impression.
I knew nothing about this place going into it. It was a restaurant a family member wanted to go to for lunch. That was it.
Finally we were shown to the table where I learned that they were only serving the buffet, no menu service. Okay. We go to the buffet where I realized there were 8 kinds of meat, one vegetable covered in cream of something, two pasta dishes — one red one white, mashed potatoes, cheesy hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, biscuits & gravy, house salad, Cesar salad, coleslaw, a very small selection of fruit, and a dessert table that looked liked someone had been to a grocery store bakery and bought all of the baked goods I would never buy. Oh and something they tried to pass off as eggs Benedict but I couldn’t confirm it was anything other than a poached egg on an over-​toasted English Muffin with a rather yellow sauce on it. Oh, and I think I saw tater tots… yes, tater tots. I was in shock as I walked past dish after dish that looked like it had been made by a cheap caterer.
I tried the supposedly cheese tortellini, scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, Cesar salad and some fruit. The salmon had a light flavor but was a bit on the slimy side. The eggs were bland. The salad was sad with soggy croutons. The pasta was tortellini in some kind of overly peppery gravy (no not a cheese sauce this was thick floury peppery gravy). I forced myself to try the dessert table. It was one of those things with semi-​recognizable baked goods cut into triangles to make them look fancy. I chose four triangles. I didn’t finish one of them. They were very lemony and sugary and that was about it.
Based on the cheap quality of the food and the experience at the front desk I will not be back by choice.

No Thank You.
So me and my wife finally got to scratch Johnny ’ s Italian Steak House off our list of Des Moines area Italian.
To our amazement or lack there of Johnny ’ s turned out to be a very faux Italian experience.
The décor looked nice but had a kind of forced classiness to it. I heard nothing but Sinatra playing the whole time.
Our server was polite but very stiff and lifeless. I felt he was speaking memorized lines.
After skimming through the menu I went strait for the appetizer of calamari. We ordered our steaks sides and salads.
Munching on the bread was enjoyable I like a good olive oil black pepper.
My calamari arrived and my heart dropped, there was oil all over it. With no fear I dived right it. The marinara and house sauces were good but something about the calamari was wrong. The breading was soggy and falling off. There was too much oil and no crunch, what a shame.
My wife’s salad arrived in a serving bowl. The server had to think for a second before he remembered I ordered a ceasar salad and he wasn’t going to find it in the family style serving bowl. Be right back he promised. My salad arrived a heartbeat later and I forgave him.
My salad was kind of bland so I ground some of the fresh black pepper we used for the bread and that brought it up a bit. My wife however said there was way too much dressing on her salad and she couldn’t eat it.
The steaks were brought out and we got to the meat of the meal. My steak however cooked right, was only mediocre. It tasted decent but not comparable to the price. In fact I felt somewhat cheated as I continued eating. My wife looked worse. She was trying to cut pieces of her steak that was sitting in a pool of oil and topped with what appeared to be a greasy paste. Parmesan crust I’m told…
Never before had we wanted to leave halfway through our meals like we did then. We felt awkward and unwelcome. Our food was not worth the money we spent and we were feeling it was time for the check.
Paid and left.
I tried Johnny ‘s, I really did. I thought you would be so much better than that. I feel we could have gone to Outback Steakhouse and got the same quality of food for half the price. What a shame.

I’ll keep this review short. Myself and five others went to dinner last evening at Johnny’s Altoona location. The service was mediocre to poor, and staff seemed overwhelmed on a busy Friday. Had reservations for 7 pm, and wasn’t seated for 10 – 15 minutes even with. I can only imagine what a disaster it would be without one.
Was going to order an appetizer, but it took so long for our server to place our order that we decided not to. Everything is highly overpriced, and while the food wasn’t too bad (the only reason I’m giving this review 2 stars instead of 1), I can’t foresee myself ever wanting to eat there again.
It’s pretty bad when you ask someone in your party how their meal is and their response is «Not good»! You can find a better experience for your $$$$ elsewhere. In fact, Johnny’s has somewhat of an identity complex. It tries to be a fancy restaurant yet is situated next to Bass Pro Shops. While it’s nice to have an option like this close by (there’s a reason better options are available out West), ultimately you’re paying for style over substance. I got more of an Outback Steakhouse vibe from the place than I did an elegant 5 star restaurant.