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I ate here after arriving on a late bus from Boston to visit my friend at Yale. He took us to eat here because he said that it's one of the few places that are open late, and a lot of drunk people stumble in when it gets really late.
The place looks old school in a good way and the waiters are pretty nice. We were promptly seated and given menus and water. I ordered a meat lovers pizza to share between two of us. The pizza was a bit over-greased but ok i guess. It did its part in filling us up and for a reasonable price.
Looks like a lot of people come here because of its prime location is all.
I just love going to this place after late nights. Oftentimes, the state in which I go to this place (at 3 am) inhibits my senses from tasting the food, which is just as well - there isn't much to taste.
The Greek food here is pretty authentic, and the pizza decidedly mediocre. I've twice had wings here and found them adequate. The casseroles are very good and humongous in proportions. You will not finish it.
I like it mostly because it has such a friendly staff and good attitude. There always hordes of drunk students there, and the atmosphere is great - you know when you're near a college when you see Yorkside.
Three stars for mediocre food.
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When I first moved out here, I went to Yorkside a few times just out of convenience, and each time put in a different order, hoping against hope that whatever I decided to try would be miraculously superior to what I had tried before. I used to let myself get dragged, but I haven't been back in almost a year.
This is one of the few places I've eaten at in New Haven where the food just actively sucks. I understand that it's an established joint, but I wonder sometimes how they stay in business. A front for the thriving New Haven mob?
The burgers aren't offensive, but definitely not good, and I don't understand the rationale behind ordering a burger at Yorkside when Educated is around the corner. Pizza is also subpar, with rubbery cheese and thin flavor. The pasta is TERRIBLE - can't get much worse than overcooked in runny sauce. This was my order the last time I was here, and I ended up puking it out downstairs. To be fair, this was entirely alcohol-related, but I think the story has symbolic weight.
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Profs love coming here
Why? Close, easy on wallet
But the food? So-so
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There is really nothing special about this place. Its popularity derives mainly from the fact that it's located along a street where there is a constant traffic of bodies, including the flower lady's - and like the flower lady, it can't be avoided. Plain and simple, there aren't many other options in New Haven, and as a result, we have to eat at establishments with mediocre food, college-town restaurant service, and sport-themed interiors, artificial in its attempt to convey Yale spirit.
The level of nastiness that goes on there when the drunks arrive reached new heights when I discovered on YouTube an account of some girl committing the worse sin engraved on the stone tablet of dining: she went number 2 in one of the booths; that's right, she pooped! The disturbing part is that no one seems to know in which one. Yet another Yale mystery...
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One of my favorite guilty pleasures in New Haven. Open late, usually not crowded, huge varied selection. I'll usually get a gyro, or one of the other greek choices like the spinach pie, and haven't been dissapointed...though i hope you like dill. The large stuffed clams are amazingly huge and quite enjoyable and the garlic bread with mozzerella is great to shar with a large group.
Definately one of the best places to go after 11PM for some decent food at a great price.
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Avoid the pizza. It's a greek bis-quick based, oily crust that will just disappoint you.
Any of the greek offerings, hot subs and anything deep fried are yummy.
Milkshakes are HUGE and made with Hershey's ice cream. I always get one.
Their gyro is the most authentic I've had since living near Philadelphia. They have handmade pita, and gyro meat on actual spits - nothing frozen and fried on a griddle here! Fries and onion rings never disappoint. I can't speak to the dinner or late night crowd, I've stopped in here only for lunches during work. Salads are OK, but sometimes the lettuce is really watery. Chicken tender appetizer is a lunch in and of itself.
The regular and long time waitresses are great, but some of the newer ones (students perhaps?) are clueless and can/do mess up orders.
Prices are fair considering the portion sizes.
Once upon a time, we were regulars.
They set the bar for gyros and souvlaki in greater New Haven. Gyro is loaded with meat and you can taste the love in the way they chop the onion and cucumber so fine in the oh-so-yogurt-y tzatziki. Chicken Souvlaki is less food, but just as excellent. No one else is as good - not Acropolis, not Athenian, not the Duchess Dineraunt.
I got a special once. It had been a special throughout the summer of 2007 - avocado with chicken salad. PERFECT AVOCADO. I'm not kidding. And way more food than I could eat in one sitting. Used to get the spinach salad with a side of anchovies. Not anymore.*
The house dressing has a nice homemade quality. And the clam chowder is amazing (for a diner) - red skin potatoes, hot and milky and not gooey, tasty clams. Seafood bisque isn't bad either.
They don't do sandwiches, really - eggplant parm, meatball, turkey sandwich and pastrami were all bizarre and disappointing.
And the pizza tastes like Pizza Hut pizza - doughy, bland, slightly sweet - burned to a crisp. So no good.
*I had to stop ordering the spinach salad after I realized that each time I went there a larger and larger fraction of the spinach was spoiled. For awhile I was like, it's a cheap diner and I'm getting a salad, I'll deal. But finally, I called it to their attention; it was like every bite actually tasted rotten and I couldn't pick through it carefully enough. Anyway, they got me a souvlaki sandwich as a replacement but they were REALLY rude about it. So now we go there half as often 'cause how regularly can you eat a gyro?
Open 'til 2 AM and the waitresses rock. No breakfast, no counter.
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Yorkside is where you go
-at 1am when you need a slice to go with your inebriation.
-when you're tired of dining hall food and just want some of their wings.
-it's the end of the semester and it's your last meal with your friends--whoever's still there, that is.
-because you forgot to eat while the dining hall was open.
-for some homestyle cooking.
-when you don't know know what you want, because yorkside has everything!
What to eat...
First off, you MUST try the wings. No, they're not the skinny excuses of bone and skin that most places coat in red sauce and call "wings". Yorkside wings are like NO OTHER. They're great!
To balance the meal off, you have to have the wings with the greek salad. I first discovered the salad my freshman year when I went with a bunch of Model UN folks after hosting a bunch of bratty high school students. I quit the Model UN after that, but the meal was great.
I also recommend the cheese fries, the garlic bread with cheese, and the calzone with spinach (but you can have any filler, really). I usually share all of the above with friends.
Many also get pizzas, although if you want pizza you should go to BAR (also reviewed).
Oh, and when you're sick, you can get soup here.
You can get basically anything at Yorkside--from carrot cake and milkshakes to hot mashed potato turkey sandwhiches to gyros. It's really strange to have such a mix of Greek and Italian. It's a great place to go with a group for the late night munchies.
I give it five stars for being awesome at what it is. You're not coming here for fine French cuisine, you're not coming here for Asian fusion. You're coming here for reliable greasy food to soothe the soul. And it does--for the four years that you're there.
No No No No No. Not good Pizza. But I love the people there. I have that problem, it seems, I always love the people... They even let me have a food fight when a date started paying more attention to a baseball game than me. That was fun :-)
Anyway, the pizza sucks. I used to work at a very Greek pizza place and the crust is nothing like theirs. And every time I leave Yorkside I have serious indigestion. And the red wine stains your teeth immediately upon contact.
Some of their other food is good, like the Spinach salad. It's nothing special, but isn't disappointing either. Stop here for cheap eats when you're drunk.
I probably go here once per week, even though I don't particularly like it. The high prices and "Greek"-style pizza (=greasy,thick dough) do not do it for me. The service is always friendly and the hours are the saving grace. The owner, Tony (I think), seems like he knows everyone and is generally and all-around great guy.
Admittedly I was drunk, but I thought the pizza here was pretty good. The crust was crap, but they had the tomato sauce-cheese combo down. Open late and right next to Toad's Place, so it's the perfect post-concert snack.
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for the most part - not great food, but the staples to keep drunk Toads patrons/starving students' blood sugar and cholesterol high late into the evening.
with the exception - their buffalo wings are the most perfect i've ever tasted....perfectly crispy, large and meaty, and with just the right amount of hot sauce...
there's a certain warmth in my heart when i think of yorkside. i love pizza in all its varied shapes and textures and tastes. nary a pizza i've had that i didn't at least like. blah blah blah, now i'm being verbose...
basically, i like yorkside pizza. i might even love it. in and of itself, the pizza is decent. it has a thicker crust than the new haven staples. in fact, it's kind of lacking in any real character. but it is what it needs to be - dough, sauce, and cheese. and that's all i'm askin for when i roll in to yorkside at some ridiculous post-midnight hour.
and there you have it, that's partly why i like yorkside so much. it's on the way home from most boozin locales. so most of the time (back in my glory days of binge drinking, followed by binge eating oh so long ago...), i just pop in after a (fill-in-adjective here) night on the town. and yorkside, ever so dependably, always has slices ready to be reheated, plopped on that lovely green, red, and white paper plate, doused in crushed red pepper, and savagely devoured by me.
i have yet to try their non-pizza food, unless ice cream counts (cappuccino crunch is my faaaaaaaaaaavourite). but the pizza is enough for me. and if you go during normal people hours or order a whole... they've got some good flavours.
for your accessibility, convenience, late-hours, and enabling my late-night eating... i give you 4 cheesy, carb-ful stars!
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The crust doesn't necessarily suck it's just "different" I'd never had this "Greek" style crust until I came to New Haven..I find it Crispy and Buttery kinda like the old school Pan Style from Pizza Hut before it went so horribly commercial that it became plastic. Anyway, Broadway, Alpha Delta, and Yorkside are much better for items other than their Pizza...They all have, hands-down, the best Cheeseburger Subs known to man! Is there any other city in this Nation that makes Cheeseburger Subs?...hmmm, maybe the sub trucks in Philly?
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There's no reason to like this place, but everyone does. This is especially puzzling given that they have some of the worst pizza in New Haven, and there are plenty of other options. But they really shine when it comes to pitchers of Sam Adams, the chicken souvlaki sandwich, and chocolate milkshakes. The best deal is the unlisted "lunch special", a big helping of caesar salad + bad pizza, for peanuts. The waitresses are also very motherly, which is comforting when you are far away from your own mother, as many of us are.
Not the best pizza, given that it's in New Haven and it's competing with all the deliciousness that's Wooster Street. But not terrible. For terrible pizza, come to San Francisco. Really. Then you appreciate places like Yorkside. It's not terrible, just not the best. Good salads though, and sandwiches. Another one of my favorite lunch places when I worked at Yale.
Hardly the best thing in town. Service is okay, pizza is okay to poor (considering this town's reputation for pizza) and the antipasto was pretty freakin' good. I don't think I'd have any reason to come back, though.
I guess I'm used to the "Greek style" crust because it's what seems to be in favor where I live. I enjoyed my chicken cacciatore pizza and I was very pleased to discover that, apparently, I started at the bottom of the New Haven pizza ladder with Yorkside's. I'm looking forward to four years of working my way up.
CA Yorkside's, Thursday night at midnight, was a staple of CA social life and culture. The fried pita bread is excellent and affordable. The wings are tasty. And the slice of the day is often awesome.
Yuck. Yorkside pizza's pizza is nauseating. Every time I eat it,* I end up feeling sick afterwards. The greek salad is not horrible, so that's good, but it is a PIZZA restaurant and so gets extra marked down for failing at one of its main foods.
*: So why do I eat it? People order it because it's cheap (and I eat it because _I'm_ cheap) and they don't realize that Est Est Est also delivers and is much much much better.
This is decent, greasy Greek pizza. OK, the cheese layer comes off and flaps down on your chin with the second bite, and the tomato sauce beneath is virtually guaranteed to blister the roof of your mouth. But it tastes absolutely awesome after a night drinking at Toad's. You can get big hearty salads and hot sandwiches, too, and it's fun when it really gets hopping on weekend nights.
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Decent food, huge portions. I like their gyro, greek salad, and "special" casserole of eggplant and meatballs. Each of the above could feed a small army, and quite cheap.
Boy is it a mistake to think that any pizza you get in New Haven will be good. This stuff reminds me of what you get at the counter at Price Chopper. I will never go back. Not quite horrible, but can't be described as anything better than mediocre.
New Haven, CT
Category: Pizza
New Haven, CT
Category: Pizza
New Haven, CT
Category: Middle Eastern
New Haven, CT
Category: Pizza
New Haven, CT
Category: Pizza
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