Reservoir Tavern

Food is always great. Nice selection of dishes, a true Italian family restaurant and tavern. A great place to grab a bite or just hang for a few cocktails

Really love this place! The pizza is fantastic and the stuffed artichoke is amazing. The staff are always great! Friendly, professional and courteous. Get here early because it gets packed quickly.

Yo Yo Yo… How you doin’ Jersey?
This place has been serving up the best pizza in the state long before my mullet was stylish. Yea that’s right, it is a true epic landmark which I have been haunting since I was a shorty rockin’ a double belted pair of Cavariccis. This place is perpetually busy. but locals know. if you call from the car as you head over, they will put you on the wait list before you get there.
Elbow up to the bar and get yourself a simple pie, well done. The crust is thin and the sauce to cheese ratio is redunkulous!!! Still hungry? Get yourself a order of the Baked Zitti the noodles on top get all crunchy… Grab a a pair of meatballs from the bar. you can’t go wrong.
Sure, the place is decorated like a 70 year-old’s Elks Club member’s man cave, but you are here for the food, and the people watching is outstanding… You know what else is outstanding? The Shrimp Calabrese!!! Jumbo Shrimp, real Jumbo Shrimp, not miniature Jumbo, but the full on Jumbo Jumbo Shrimp, in a spicy white wine scampi sauce with a big crusty hunk of bread to sop it all up like a fat kid…
There is even a fried chicken cutlet piled high with arugula and shaved parm, if you are dieting. Don’t get all filled up on the doughy dinner rolls that they throw down to appease your gluttonous self… hold out for the goods…
This place is a slice of Garden State Americana that you really need to experience.

The service here definitely leaves something to be desired. I had to walk halfway into the kitchen to find the hostess after waiting for her for quite a while. We were told a 30 – 40 minute wait. We were 2 people. Not 10 minutes later, 3 people walked in and sat at an open 2-​top without putting their name in with the hostess and without being seated by her. And when it was brought to the waitress’ attention, and those 3 people, the waitress let it slide and the 3 people stayed at the table. So incredibly rude. This scenario is common here. That rudeness seems to filter right down from the arrogant owner.

Delicious!
Our friends live nearby and raved about the pizza so we visited last week on a rainy night. The place has a great locals vibe and our server was excellent.
We ordered a shrimp appetizer that had 7 jumbo shrimp in a fantastic olive oil, herb, garlic broth that was great for dipping our bread into.
Ordered a California salad to share with my husband and all of the flavors worked well.
We shared a pizza with sausage, onions and mushrooms. A large is very big and hearty and would be enough for 4 people — even hungry people.
If you’re in the area, do yourself a favor and check it out!

They just changed their house white and are charging $ 9.00 for a really small glass. Seems excessive for this place.

This place is ALWAYS packed so we’ve never dined in. But the pizza we order out hits the spot every time. They offer all kinds of toppings that are really rich and flavorful. Something about how they cook that pizza is so perfect, you’ll keep coming back for more.

Happened to be in the area and my taste buds asked for pizza. Fell in on them and took a seat at the bar and ordered a Diet Coke. Too much ice and no offer of a refill. Loss of points. However I took a chance on the special appetizer of meatball sliders. At a buck a piece I figured it would be small and probably not great. I ordered two. Couldn’t have been more wrong. The portions were great practically a meal for 2 bucks and the flavor of the meatball covered in mozzarella and sauce was one of he best I have tasted anywhere. Just enough garlic, very little bread crumbs. Sublime. Then the bar pie arrived with pepperoni of course. Again, a big surprise. Was only able to eat ½ so I am bringing a surprise to the house. Anyway the waitress was nice even with forgetting to offer a refill and the ambiance was lively. Highly recommended

I went here for the first time this week and their food is amazing! I got the buffalo chicken pizza, which was much different than any other buffalo chicken pizza I had ever had. It had more sauce like a traditional pizza instead of hot sauce. Their salads were good. I also tried a bite of 2 of their pasta dishes, both were great! I can’t wait to go back.

This is hands down the best pizza I’ve ever had. It’s not even close. I’ve been coming here since I was a kid and still come with my fiancé. It still has the same hole in the wall feel. The leftover pizza is just as good the next day. Also, try anything here with bacon, i.e. salads, bacon pizza etc. Oh, and the toasties are great to.

THE BEST PIZZA in the whole WORLD!.. My father went there as a kid, I went there as a kid and now I take my kids for the best pizza EVER!

This place was terrible all around:
–Very poor service, rude & not friendly at all. Borderline racist
–Food was luke warm and no great flavors
The pizza was nothing special at all.
Overall, NOT a pleasant place to go.

I have ordered take out pizza twice from Reservoir Tavern since the black, burned pizza incident and both pies have been fine. So far. Thus, I’m upgrading Reservoir from 2 to 3 stars. Yet, I remain wary. Every time I open a take out pizza of theirs at home, will it be burned black and inedible? There was no excuse whatsoever to send an unsuspecting customer home with a tied box containing inedible pizza. I’m talking burned black– crust and cheese. A total rip-​off, and the person responsible for that pie knew exactly what he or she was boxing up and sending out. Still, two subsequent pies have been good. Hopefully the employee responsible for that terribly burned pie is no longer with this establishment. I’m keeping my eye on this place.

We had really high hopes for this place. The parking lot was full. The waiting room packed with people. The scene was set for what we thought was going to be great Italian food. We opted for bar seating as the main dining room had a long wait. Got a nice seat by the window. Our waitress was friendly. Good so far.
We ordered salad, and I got a chicken dish that the waitress recommended… my lady friend got the eggplant parm. Then came the wait…20 minutes for our salad which was heavily doused in vinegar. And then an even longer wait for our food. 30 more minutes. Our waitress nervously came over to apologize 3 times and kept assuring us it would be right out. Also during this time a group of smokers were seated right next to our table who filled the entire dining room with their after-​smoke-​stank. Mostly lost my appetite… I asked the waitress if we could open the window to air out the smell. She said she could smell it too but no we could not open the windows. And no there were no other seats to move to. And they went out to go smoke again. Lovely.
We were about to leave when our entrées finally came out.
The eggplant parm was tasteless. The sauce, for an Italian restaurant, should be top notch. It wasn’t even middle notch. Bottom barrel shop-​rite brand junk. Some of the worst sauce I’ve had. My chicken dish was mediocre. Better than the parm but so heavily coated in butter that I could barely eat it. Practically felt my arteries clogging as I ingested each bite.
Needless to say we didn’t stick around for dessert. I half expected the waitress to comp us a cannoli or something after our 2^nd hand smoke-​induced hour long wait, but it’s probably better she didn’t. Won’t be coming back here. The waitress did pack up our leftovers and we brought them home. The next day my grandmother, who we were staying with, said she tried the leftovers and couldn’t even eat them. They were tossed in the trash where this food belongs.

Seeing family on vacation and I needed a drink.
I sat at the bar and ordered the stuffed mushrooms to snack on while I drank a few.
The bar area is very nice and the staff is very friendly and very attentive. It seemed like a hot spot for locals which was cool.
The mushrooms were amazing I wish I went back for supper.
Next time I’m in the area I am most definitely stopping here for a drink.

Visited my uncle and his family during Memorial Day weekend. My parents said «you must try this place,» so we went there on my first night in New Jersey. Ordered the Italian Wedding soup for an appeitizer and we got a supreme pizza. Soup was tasty, but the brick oven pizza hit the spot! Exactly my favorite– thin, carmelized, great crust, and excellent mix of meat and veggies. Very enjoyable, I would recommend and will repeat whenever I’m back in this area!

The pizza is really fab! Nothing to look at, but the pizza is to die for! The crowds say it all!

I went to the reservoir tavern based on a recommendation of a friend as the best pizza in Boonton. Boonton is what I would describe as a culinary wasteland — so a good place is hard to find.
The place has an «old» vibe and was most likely decorated in the 70s. there is an abundance of «older» crowd during lunch time and the place gets pretty busy.
We order a Pizza of course with a couple of toppings. The pizza was OK, a nice thin crust — but not one of the better ones taste wise.
Service was spotty and inconsistent.
Overall an old establishment with decent fare and average service. Good in a pinch — but I wouldn’t be back unless it really fit my plans.

For nearly EIGHTY years, the Reservoir Tavern has been serving up pizza and Italian fare to locals and those coming from far and wide.
According to Ed Levine and his Slice of Heaven: A History of Pizza in America the Bevaqua family has been a fixture and purveyor of fine pizza pies since 1936.
In 1905, Gennaro Lombardi applied to the New York City government for the first license to make and sell pizza in this country, at his grocery store on Spring Street in what was then a thriving Italian-​American neighborhood. In 1912, Joe’s Tomato Pies opened in Trenton, New Jersey. Twelve years later, Anthony (Totonno) Pero left Lombardi’s to open Totonno’s in Coney Island. A year later, in 1925, Frank Pepe opened his eponymous pizzeria in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1929, John Sasso left Lombardi’s to open John’s Pizza in Greenwich Village. The thirties saw pizza spread to Boston (Santarpio’s in 1933) and San Francisco with the opening of Tommaso’s (1934), followed shortly thereafter with additional openings in New Jersey (Sciortino’s in Perth Amboy in 1934 and the Reservoir Tavern in Boonton in 1936).
I had heard of this place for a number of years and being born and raised in north Jersey I proudly can claim that I know pizza. And I know that the pizza made here is some of the best there is. I won’t say it is the best because for me, there is no one pizza that is the very best. Instead I happily live in a world knowing there are many pizza places that all share the to spots.
But let’s get to the Reservoir.
erv
In to few dozen times I have eaten here I can’t recall but one time where I ordered anything other than the pizza and in all of those times, plain pie is all I cared to eat because it is that good and I always use plain pie as the base line.
Yes, this place seems to always be busy and no, they don’t take reservations but, they do have call ahead and yes, i sometimes actually works.
The place is not fancy by any means and could use some updating if that is how you judge places but in the end, the food and service are what really matter and here both are top shelf.
Now I have been with others here who order various appetizers and at times my wife and I love sharing the Shrimp Calabrese which is jumbo shrimp in a white fra diavlo sauce which is really an excuse to combine sweet garlic and butter served over thick sliced italian bread. We will have this and a small pie. If I’m in a particularly hungry state, a large pie.
But again it’s about that pie. While waiting for a table or for your food, notice the folks coming for their take out pies and see how each pizza box is tied like a bakery does with thin string… and how these people clutch their boxes to them as if they have just been handed something precious. And they have.
Yes, now and then a pie might come out that is a big limp in the center due to over topping but even then, the overall and individual tastes more than make up for this minor blemish.
If i had to use but one word to describe the pizza here it would be sublime. Never have I had so many flavors combined and tasted individually like I do when eating this pizza. The crust and top are both nicely charred which to those who only know franchise or their basic pizza joints can be off putting but those folks just don’t know pizza.
The crust takes on flavors unlike any found in any other pizzas I have tasted over the years with hints of coffee like flavors entwined with the yeasty flour and that char.
The sauce takes on hints of sweetness which counters the slightly saltiness of the cheese.
And when I vary from the plain pie, it is sausage that I will ask for and as others have said, the sausage is thick sliced and packed with savory goodness.
I could go on and on about the pizza here and in fact I have so I will leave it to you to judge for yourself.
But folks, it really is THAT good.
Keep in mind that the Tavern is closed on Sundays and they close for vacation for I believe the first two weeks of July.
Enjoy!

Until today, the best sausage pizza I have had was in a small café-​name is lost to memory-​in Chartres, France. Today’s sausage pizza at the Reservoir is now número uno. Amazing. Great sausage, none of this crumbled stuff or transparent slices seemingly cut on a mandolin. Great tasting, thick rounds on a tasty crust. Good sauce.
Sure the place looks dated and the service is harried. But who cares? We will be back and back…