Thanks for the report @Dommy I need to get over there and try this place already. Do you know if the the hours still the same or have they expanded?
As far as I know they are still only doing evening hours. They are trying to staff up… they hand frequently posted help wanted calls on all our community groups. I know they could use at least one guy manning the griddle as to not burn the outside edge of the toast… LOL!
Growing up in the Jewish hood, noodles were not usually in matzo ball soup, but always in chicken soup.
My grandmother, super Jewish lol, off the boat from Poland in the early 1900s, made her noodles for soup. She kept kosher. She made egg noodles that were slightly wider than linguini, but not nearly as long. They closely resemble a “medium egg noodle” as you might see made by Manischewitz. Though grandmas were lighter almost slightly spongy rather than dense. Very Jewish.
She made a mean kreplach that also went in chicken soup.
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Thanks for sharing! My preferences for noodles in matzoh ball soup just comes from my love of noodles period. These are the egg noodles I use that are from sprouts.
They have a really nice bite to them. For more sproingy noodles, there are Reames frozen. I’ve picked up at Smart and Final .
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Riffing off the matzo ball soup tangent on this thread; I was hospitalized back in 2001. It was very serious. My beloved brother flew down from NorCal. He kept bringing me sushi from Katsu-ya. I wasn’t interested. All I wanted was matzo ball soup from Art’s Deli. They use thin noodles. I still crave it.
That said I love making matzo balls. I render my own schmaltz, imperative for good matzo balls. While I don’t put the noodles in it I do put in dill. It may be my favorite soup.
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Right on!! Whenever I make chicken soup or stock, I save the schmaltz in baggies and throw in the freezer for later… for matzo balls or maybe to fry onions for kasha.
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As expected I’m super into their knish with gravy and the pastrami sammi.
Bonus saying what’s up to Phil Rosenthal, Roy Choi and seeing David Choe
Ratio was right for me
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I kinda figured If you don’t try and compare it to more culturally Jewish American restaurants and think of it as its own thing. It would be pretty good.
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Glad you enjoyed it! I will say that your Knish filling and the toasting of your bread looks much better than what I got! They also recently opened for lunch hours, so hopefully that means the staffing is going well and rocking and rolling! Looking forward to my next visit. I still have yet to try the Latkes!
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Are they open during the day now?
They are! Starting at 12p. Closed on Mondays
I stopped by Johnny’s West Adams today to check it out.
Parking was a bit of a hassle, I circled the block twice and finally found one just past Johnny’s on Adams. It might have been because a number of factors including their dedicated parking lot has been transformed into an outdoor dining area, the place was doing steady business, and other restaurants in the area such as Master Burger and Phillip’s BBQ were steady as well.
Ordering is pretty simple and straight forward.
They have alcohol, beer, wine and some sodas that you can add liquor too. The place definitely has lovely social distancing and their outdoor eating areas are super nice to sit back, drink, eat and relax in a calm environment.
Green goddess salad - wow, even after reading the positive comments from @Dommy and others about this, I didn’t expect this to be that good. Loved all of the ingredients and how perfectly executed it was. They used either Japanese or Persian cucumbers which gave a nice refreshing crunch. Nice touch. The dressing is lovely with all of the ingredients and I loved the fresh dill. Excellent salad!
Half pastrami sandwich, mustard, rye - note, they reduced the amount of bread which was nice proportions to the amount of meat. It is a hefty amount of meat despite the looks but not so much where it will put you into a state of comatose. The pastrami is definitely BBQ smoke style, the smoke is very strong to the point where I think it takes away from the pastrami spices. Some bites were very salty and most of the bites were perfectly seasoned. The bread was toasted which I didn’t care for, it made it more like a crouton and dried out the bread a bit too much. Overall, it is a nice pastrami sandwich, however nowhere near as perfect as Langer’s. It comes with a sizable order of cole slaw which was decent. Perhaps I will grab a pastrami dip next time.
Sorry, I had a moment and didn’t snap a picture of the sandwich up close, but the bread was significantly thinner and toasted.
Shot of the meat inside, quite a hefty amount.
Johnny fries - a take on In n Out’s animal style fries, this is the dish that intrigued me the most, mainly because I love kennebec fries. These kennebec fries are really good, super crispy and tender on the inside, and I love that some of the fries are those ones that are potato chip esque, darker and litttle greasier but oh so delicious. It is topped with Swiss cheese, thousand island, carmelized onions and some cut up pastrami. I couldn’t stop eating this until it was completely gone. I added their hot sauce and it was even better. I would easily come back and order these again. It is a nice portion, one can eat this an entire meal, or great to share with a sandwich for two people. Sweet, salty, crunchy, gooey, smokey, rich yet perfectly balanced with that hot sauce.
Spicy dog - this was pretty solid, a nice menu item but nothing exciting nor unexpected. The house made merguez was nice, but it lacked the flavor burst from other excellent merguez I have had, such as the amazing one at Belcampo. Still, nothing wrong, just nice as flavorful nor juicy as I expected.
All in all, Johnny’s is a welcome addition to the neighborhood with a lovely space to relax with good food and drinks. The seats are very well spread apart for safe social distancing and I didn’t have any hesitancy with dining in. I’ll be back. Also saw Govind Armstrong eating here as I was leaving.
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Ha!!! Yeah, I posed it on our neighborhood group and folks were like… that looks like a normal salad… and then the local curmudgeon was like… NO. It is that good… 
Glad you had a good visit! Those fries had not been on my radar… but I also over over done fries… like the ones that you find in the basket at Tommys…
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Thanks again for the rec! The salad was the perfect refreshing foil for the rich food and summer heat.
Next time I’m gonna grab the pastrami dip, it seems to be the sandwich that people are gravitating towards because of the Johnny’s of old, curious to see how it fares as I doubt I would order the rye version again. I just can’t deal with their rye bread.
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Is it possible to order the pastrami sandwich w/out the bread toasted? Your bread looks much less burnt/toasted than earlier posters…but still.
I was told today that they were no longer offering the latkes–not sure if that was temporary or permanent. I had the knish instead, which was pretty good, nice crust and tasty filling (lightly spiced but the onions and pastrami added some character), better without the gravy. I was not really a fan of the regular pastrami sandwich, though; I much prefer the Langer’s and Brent style of pastrami–as well as their rye bread–and this is very different from those (and also different than the style of the unrelated Johnnie’s on Sepulveda or the various tips of the Hat), with less “pastrami” flavor but a strong hit of smoke. It also seemed to have a drier mouth feel than the other places I mentioned, even with the mustard and cole slaw but that might have been due to a leaner cut.
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I’m sure they would oblige unless for some odd reason they want to be all Sang Yoon about it. They did grill the bun for the spicy dog which was great. The thing is, the rye they use is just not that great nor flavorful either. There must be a reason why they toast the bread, or perhaps they are still tinkering with it.
I’m gonna return to try some of the other items, the pastrami dip being one of them.
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Yeah! It looks lightly toasted actually…
The bread just might be the type that needs a good toast since they don’t steam it like langers does. It’s from an artisan loaf vs. sandwich loaf like what langers and brents use. Their crumb looks a light tighter than what the loaf Johnny’s uses… see the first picture on their website…
Oh darn… That’s a shame… I can see why though… it can be challenging thing to keep an eye on when you are dealing with a lot of other prep heavy dishes in a fast food setting. I would happily give up the latke in place of a non burnt pastrami and rye… Plus, I doubt it could be as good as George’s take on the McDonalds Hashbrown. Crispy City…
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