R & O Pizza Place

This used to be a great restaurant. We ordered, after fifteen minutes we were informed they were out of veal. I ordered the soft shell crabs instead. Thirty minutes later we received our food. The soft shells were over cooked and burned tasting and shriveled. It took over twenty minutes to pay the bill and we had three different people come to the table.

To start I will say that I’m not sure why there’s pizza in the name here. There’s pizza on the menu but it’s not the main attraction. Moving on from there, I will say that the majority of what we ordered was pretty delicious. The shrimp on the Poboy were good, fresh, and deveined. The fish on the kid’s catfish plate was good to. The kid’s fried chicken plate was as well. The pepperoni pizza on the other hand was overly greasy and nothing to write home about. The service here is where we go down hill. We were at our table for an hour and was only spoken to 4 times. Now, I’m all for not having our waiter suffocate us but I’m more for attentiveness. The restaurant was busy, yes, but it truly didn’t seem like anyone else’s table lacked attention. We were never offered refills. The trash was never taken from our table as it continued to build. We also were not offered dessert. It’s just a shame that somewhere that offers such a wide variety of options in the food department would completely lack on customer service. If the food choices we chose weren’t so tasty, I would have given this restaurant 1 star.

Seafood gumbo was thick and full of seafood. Absolutely delicious. I tried a half roast beef poboy. I had never had the shredded beef like that. It’s more of a chunk shredded beef. Different, but very tasty. Could’ve have stopped after the cup of gumbo. It was very filling, but of course I ate all of my half poboy. Went with my grandmother and she enjoyed as well.

Everything on the menu is great. I have been going here since I was a kid. Get the Roast Beef De bris french fries to with your Po boy, Pizza yummmm or yummy veal parm!!!

Tip o’ the cap to Elite Unilocaler John L H for me finding this place… happened to catch his review update and knowing I was going to be in the area on 1÷9÷16 immediately bookmarked for a visit… The other thing that intrigued me was the Roast Beef poboy description… I have a deep and abiding love for a Roast Beef poboy!
I stopped in around 1 PM and had not eaten since around 6 PM the night before and starving is a mild understatement to describe my condition plus I had the 17 yoa son with me and that kid is always hungry!
Place was wall to wall packed on a Saturday afternoon but we found the last available table when we walked in… so damn hungry we ordered an 8″ pepperoni and Italian sausage pizza (the son wanted to try the pizza cause it’s in the name), 2 5″ Roast Beef poboys and a plate of gravy fries to split between me and the son…
Pizza came out so very quick, wasn’t expecting it that fast… OH SWEET BABY JESUS that pizza was so DELICIOUS! But I had to keep my eye on the prize, Roast Beef poboy, and man, it was worth the wait… so packed with that roast beef, dressed just right, smothered in just the right amount of gravy… Thank the Lort they had a big roll of Bounty paper towels on the table because SON! That was one deliciously delectable & messy roast beef poboy… I wasn’t ashamed of my table manners as I shoved it into my pie hole, gravy dripping down my goatee, my hands, my arms… DID NOT GIVE A DAMN!
When it was all over with but the crying I basically had to grab a handful of them paper towels dunk ‘em in my water glass and take a whore’s bath right there at my table… DID NOT GIVE A DAMN! But honestly nobody was paying me any mind cause everybody in there was tucked in to whatever they had ordered… This was one outstanding meal!
The only caveat I have for you dear reader is if you’re looking to hit this place up on a first date stay away from the Roast Beef poboy lest you scare your date… go with the pizza or something else great from the menu…
And finally I must give John L H a big shout out for turning me on to this gem of a joint!

This place is one of my all time favorites! Small loud busy joint in lakeview. Reasonable prices, casual, and just down right delicious! One of my favorites is the Italian combo sandwich and the tamale balls are a definite must!

When you first walk into the place you a greeted with a very open floor plan — by open I mean no walls except for the four holding the roof up and roughly 50 tables crammed inside the building. This makes for a major spacing issue, that’s not to say you’re touching elbows with the dude at the table next to you cramming a shrimp poboy in his mouth, but you definitely won’t have room for any «personal space» because all space is being shared in this place. Also be prepared to hear the conversations of the people around you.
Everything I ate here is something I would strongly recommend — forgive me for not having pictures — I had the thin crusted pizza with pepperoni and sausage and let me say that it is nearly perfect, honestly if R & O was solely a pizza place it would still be a thriving part of the New Orleans restaurant district, but the fact this restaurant serves po boys, and good Po boys at that, gives food critics everywhere a reason to smile. I had the roast beef Po boy because I read reviews saying it was absolutely the greatest thing ever. I won’t go into all the dirty details of how beautiful tasting this sandwich actually is because other reviews do it better, but I will say that if you ever find yourself stumbling inside the R & O you need to try the roast beef Po boy.
I highly recommend as a Unilocaler to try this place even though there is a noise and spacing issue the food will put you in your own personal heaven that every person needs to experience for themselves, so give it a try sometime.

Best roast beef po boy (r&o special) in town. Pizza pretty good. Awesome onion rings. A old bucktown original. A visit to a real nola neighborhood eatery. Love it.

While shrimp poboy was better than last time but I will argue you still get a 8″ sandwich on a 9″ poboy. Shrimp layed out up to but not past ½″ of each side of the sandwich. Dissappointing for a 14.00 sandwich. I remember when you could share shrimp off your R & O sandwich with others and you couldn’t tell one was missing from the sandwich. Service has certainly taken a dive here. Nor sure if they overworked or the morale is just bad or if there is no management.
R & O’s certainly seen better days.

The roast beef poboy is so good that you’ll forget your name, your address and where you parked your car. It’s really that good.
If you happened to stumble upon my review of R&O from 2011 you were subjected to a heaping pile of crap. Reading back through those old reviews is embarrassing and it’s time this one gets an update.
R&O is located in Bucktown right across the Orleans line, but it’s about as New Orleans a place as places can be. The building has a covered and enclosed patio for waiting (it gets crowded) and the inside dining area is one very large room. Tables are old, chairs are high school cafeteria style and it’s very loud. All of those things combine to add authentic neighborhood joint character and I absolutely love it. Service isn’t always prompt, but it is friendly just like you’d expect in this type of place. Still haven’t convinced you? Let me explain the food.
The food at R&O can be good if you stick to gumbo, fried seafood and non roast beef Poboys. But if you want to have an out of body experience, get an Oder of fries with cheese and gravy for the table and a roast beef poboy for yourself.
The roast beef is unlike any I’ve experienced before. It’s beefy, garlicky and once you take a bite, you forget everything that came before that bite. It’s as if the world stops spinning and all there is left is you and that sandwich. Is it messy? Hell yeah it is. I used about 35 napkins on my last trip. Should I eat it with a fork? Hell no you shouldn’t. This sandwich becomes part of you. The gravy draining down your arm will allow you to learn how flexible you are when you bend oddly to lick it all up. Trust me on this.
If you are a fan of sliced roast beef and bland gravy, this is not the sandwich for you. This beef is chunked roast and the gravy is thick, rich and obviously made from drippings. My god I am drooling as I finish this review.
It has been years since I had been to R&O, but I expect I will be a regular visitor now. if you’ve never been, or if you haven’t been in a while, get there now.

From the minute I walked in the door the service was excellent! Was greeted immediately and sat promptly (I suggest you get there at 11 for lunch as they fill up fast) and my server (Gretchen) was an absolute pleasure — sweet and very attentive. I ordered a cup of the seafood gumbo, it was quite possibly the best I have ever had in a restaurant! That was surprising, most times I order gumbo I am disappointed, not this time! Then I ordered the half of a roast beef poboy with a side of debris gravy and cheese fries. The roast beef and debris gravy was a religious experience! The best on the planet, and I have had more than my share trust me. The cheese fries were good, but turned great when dipped in the debris gravy. This isn’t a fancy joint, and I love it the way it is, divey, but homey feeling and the staff is amazing! Do yourself a solid and check out R&O soon!

I’ve been to R & O’s many times but have not reviewed yet. Tonight we went with a family crew of eleven. This is a great place with kids as its loud and full of families. It’s a big divvy place that has solid seafood, poboy and Italian offerings as well as good pizza. With such broad offerings, it’s a great place to go with people of varied tastes so everyone is happy, especially children. Tonight we ordered 3 pizzas, 3 shrimp platters, 1 oyster platter, 1 fish/​oyster combo platter (a special request happily obliged), 1 soft shell crab platter, 1 veal Parmesan sandwich and an order of onion rings. The food was ample and good across the board. Our out of town family enjoyed their food, even all 7 kids. Service was varied, quick to order but takes a bit as the restaurant is often very busy. We didn’t have them tonight but the appetizer crab claws are always a favorite.

I’m stuck between a 3 and a 4 when it comes to reviewing this place. I’m sticking with the 3 for now because although the food is good, it’s not a place that I am going to want to go back to anytime soon. I did not grow up going to this restaurant, so I do not get that nostalgic feeling that many do when going here. I feel like if I did then I would really enjoy the atmosphere. Since I don’t, I feel like it’s just overcrowded with tables jammed together and a little too noisy. Today I went with my grandma and we ordered a bowl of the oyster soup which was good and we split a shrimp poboy. I really enjoyed the poboy and thought it had a good amount of shrimp on it. Today and the other time that I came here for lunch I found the service to be slow, but it’s so crowded that I understand why.

Meatball sandwich with cheese, Roast Beef gravy fries and Italian Salad –Awesome!!!
This place has been around a very long time. That in itself underscores that they are doing things right. It’s been around for over 20 years. Not much in the atmosphere department, but what it lacks therein is made up in the excellent food fare – very extensive menu. This place won best roast beef po boy one year and I can see why. This, however, I ordered the French fries with the roast beef gravy-​which has plenty beef in it– was awesome. I also order the Italian salad with olives and the meatball po boy with cheese –this is very hard to beat. This is one place I never get bored with, let alone leave disappointed and not full.

Deeeeeeeelicious! Im not usually a fan of roast beef but the roast beef po boy was AMAZING. So juicy and flavorful. The seafood platter and crawfish pie were also great. The crust on the crawfish pie was so delicious. The place is hectic and dated and a bit messy, but the food and service are fantastic.

New Orleans, Portland Or. and San Francisco have a lot in common. All free spirited and all is where a good restaurant is a curse, because so many great restaurants.
I think I could move here just to eat at R&O’s. A great neighborhood feely divey place that knocks out killer food. Although I only ate here once, I saw so much food coming out, to the ooo’s and ahhhh’s of the customers. I just wanted to go from table to table picking at dishes.
Service was friendly not fancy. So happy with that.
I ordered the Roast Beef Po Boy w/​Debris and dressed. Firstly the bread was fantastic. The roast beef was plentiful and rich, rich, rich debris sauce. The whole sandwich filled me up, that dinner that evening was out of the question. So my Roast Beef Po’ Boy was at least dietetic to me.

I haven’t been here in several years and coming back was almost like discovering a new place. My friends chose this as our meeting pace since they were back in town visiting and remember going here for po-​boys back in the day. When they asked if they were still as good as they used to be, I didn’t have an answer, but I do now, and the answer is YES.
It’s still a bit of a dive and hasn’t been updated as far as furnishings or design. It still gets crowded, and loud, but that’s kind of part of the charm. The food is still excellent and really affordable– perfect for the whole family. I said I wasn’t too hungry and ordered the fried eggplant appetizer and have 2 things to say about it– 1. It was a huge order that must be shared, and 2. It was perfectly cooked with the homemade (really, really delicious homemade) Mariana on the side for dipping. It was divine and my friends said the Roast Beef po boy and the R&O PoBoy specials were even better than they remembered.

I would go to R & O’s as a young Moe begging for dollars to turn into quarters and play the arcade games in the waiting area. Today I find that nothing has really changed, and they’re still chock-​full of young’ns and older generations hodge-​podging tables with no less than 4 people and as many as 20 with waitresses seamlessly navigating this terrain of this longtime Bucktown establishment.
While there seemed to be a ton of people waiting this last time, we were seated within minutes of our arrival. The table is already cluttered with your very own roll of paper towels (1,000% necessary at a joint like this) condiments, butter, saltines and really large waters. If you’re starving, my Bucktown trick is to put a little hot sauce in the butter, mix it up, and put it on a saltine. There are never any saltines left by the time the food arrives ’cause of this delicious little trick…
We ordered the Italian Toss Salad with olives, 5 pounds of crawfish, and each a po’boy of our own (mine being the Italian Roast Beef, I’m sorry I can’t tell you what makes it Italian…). I also ordered their Homemade Bloody Mary at $ 6.25 that was really just meh, and at a place like this, you should stick to a good ice cold beer.
The Italian Toss Salad with Olives ($ 8.90) is my favorite of everything. It’s soggy as hell but delicious. The olives are more of a muffuletta olive salad, not black olives. A large can feed 4… with me enjoying two good servings.
The crawfish we find out is around $ 8.50 a pound, and we almost ordered 10 lbs… Lawd. It’s Market Price so just be aware. The size was there, and the flavor was a decent spice, but I don’t feel like we got 5 lbs of crawfish served to us and there wasn’t much in the way of extra fixins besides a mushroom or two.
The crawfish and the po’boys came out nearly on top of each other, and our table is beyond full at this point, like the quarter game where you’re just waiting for something to fall off, whether that be the discarded crawfish skeletons or the toss salad plates, or saltine cracker wrappers.
I don’t think I will be ordering this po’boy again since I’m not a fan of soggy bread, and when the dish arrive, the bottom bread was already in mush mode. I get that it’s a debris po’boy so this may be my fault, but it was a hot mess of bread and roast beef debris. The flavor of the meat was also not there for me. I need to switch it up next time.
I say next time, because there will undoubtedly be a next time. Regardless of the fact that there was an overwhelming number of babies, our table wasn’t cleared of any plates till we left, and I may not order some of the things I got this time; I still like the atmosphere of R & O’s. It’s got a family vibe that I feel like is so genuine to this place. You know these other patrons probably come once or twice a week with their babies and grandparents, and you all know I love some good people watching. So sue me if I want to make faces at a baby every now and then, or watch some waitress drama when an OG waitress gets caught behind a newb trying to figure out who ordered what from her humongous tray.
So some tips for next time: go with a cold beer, maybe wait till the price of crawfish goes down and ask if they could add more fixins if their in the pot, the shrimp remoulade has always been tasty, and maybe get a po’boy that’s got a lil’ less goin’ on juice-​wise.

I wasn’t all that hungry but was in the area, so I thought I would give it a shot seeing that thrillist named the roast beef po’boy their favorite for New Orleans.
Ordered a cup of seafood gumbo and the half portion roast beef, dressed with swiss cheese. Seafood gumbo was excellent and I wished I ordered a bowl instead of the cup. Unfortunately the roast beef was much tougher than I was expecting, so the po’boy experience bordered on awful. This is my first roast beef po’boy this trip, but I can’t imagine this is the way it is supposed to be.

I was starving and in the area so I decided to finally give it a go. I’ve always seen this place’s parking lot super packed with a line out the door on weekends so I knew it had to be pretty decent. After all, it is sort of a well-​known staple restaurant in the Lakeview/​Bucktown area.
We got a cup of gumbo, crawfish pie, and a seafood platter with stuffed crab. The gumbo isn’t as thick as I personally like it. I like my gumbo with a darker, thicker roux. But as far as taste and flavor was concerned, it was right on target. I like to add a dash of hot sauce to just about anything and everything, but this gumbo certainly didn’t need any additives.
The crawfish pie was a small little nibble we just had to try out after looking at the previous pictures on Unilocal.It was very good! Like a flaky little pastry with a crawfish filling. So worth the extra stomach room!
The seafood platter was HUGE… and although we got the stuffed crab option instead of the soft shell crab, it was pretty reasonably priced at $ 18. In fact, it was probably one of the more generously plated seafood platters I have ever had (and I’ve had a lot). Now, I will say I personally like my seafood sort of more lightly fried and this place does a pretty heavy fry on their seafood. Nevertheless it was very good, well cooked, and you could tell the seafood was super fresh. I definitely want to come back and try out their po-​boy sandwiches in the near future.
It’s definitely a divey sort of family place. The service was good but a little slow. Just remember people «ain’t got no where to be» when they come here and feast on giant portions of comfort food… so don’t expect any snappy quick food service.