Joya
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Phone: (718) 222-3484
- Price:
- $
- Cross Street:
- Between Warren Street and Wyckoff Street
- Directions:
- F, G at Bergen St
- Hours:
- Mon 5pm-11pm, Tue-Thu 12pm-11pm, Fri-Sat 1pm-12am, Sun 1pm-11pm
Editorial Review for Joya – by Paul Adams
The Scene
Concrete floors, dark steel accents, and dim lighting give this large room a hip, industrial flavor. The hard surfaces, reflecting the cries of the boisterous, young local dinner crowd, can make it quite noisy, but everyone's having too much fun to mind. A garden out back offers a very nice retreat during the warmer months. Service is highly competent.
The Food
The menu is pretty standard, offering the usual beef/pork/chicken/shrimp version of a handful of traditional Thai entrees. Pad khing, with a fresh ginger sauce, is excellent; likewise the panang curry. Pad see yue, a dish of ribbon-like rice noodles in a savory brown gravy, is very satisfying as well. Some dishes are not all they could be: mussels in a hot and sour broth are on the bland side, and green papaya salad lacks spice. An array of fried and grilled appetizers double as cocktail snacks.
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Insider Tips
When to GoOn weekends, local DJs liven up the scene by spinning dance music in the dining room.
User Reviews for Joya
06/20/2008 Posted by thd2
Part Two I was unfortunately not expecting a "waiter" with the emotional sturdiness of a thirteen-year-old who just lost her favorite Hannah Montana DVD. The word "waiter" is appropriately placed in quotations, as this fellow, dressed to impress in his cut-off sleeveless shirt, now made a pointed effort to wow us with the assertion that he was in fact the owner of Joya- and thus, we'd better be on our guards. I honestly couldn't tell whether he was going to cry, or make us stand in the corner for time-out. Foolish it was that we would expect a degree of professionalism from a supposed owner rather than the "my dad can beat up your dad" shenanigans put on. Granted, this threatening display landed somewhere between Dustin Diamond and a baby Maltese on the intimidation scale, but I digress. After a dedicated attempt to convince him that we were being nothing but polite and that his reactions were unsettling, he marched away once again only for a new waiter to kindly give us our check approximately fifteen minutes later. Interacting with this man had been like watching an episode of the Twilight Zone, only in color. And without the creepy music. Just so as to not overly discredit Joya, I'll say that the food there is quite good, and very well priced. This place could easily attain at least four stars- just stick with the polite Asian waitresses and you should have nothing to fret about.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
06/20/2008 Posted by Iseewhatyoudidthere
Because a claim of "poor service" generally leaves the reader yearning for more, I'll try to go into quality detail for this review. Here goes. My girlfriend and I met two of our friends at Joya, who were already placed at a two-person table outdoors. Seeing an empty, larger table next to us, we kindly asked the server if it was possible for the four of us to move. He responded that there was a 45 minute wait for the table, and approximately a 20 minute wait for an indoor one. However, we were given the generous option of pulling two spare chairs up to the current table until something else opened up. Fair enough. Reiterating the request just to be sure that there were no other tables available, given that many seemed to be empty, our friendly server had a sudden change of heart and decided that we can no longer pull up seats at the current table. Discouraged, my already-seated friends asked for the check so we can move to a more accommodating location. Unfortunately, the server proceeded to disappear, without anyone else taking his place. Upon his eventual return we asked once again for the check, after which the evening's entertainment officially kicked off. Apparently something in our repeat request dented our server's fragile emotional armor, as he went from substantially inattentive to definitively sophomoric. First, he claimed someone would have come sooner had we not been standing at the table. Apparently, directly asking for the check is too vague a request. Following this, our new companion informs us that he is old enough to be our father, and as such, we cannot laugh at him. This would have been only moderately amusing had any of us actually been laughing, but we weren't. Horribly confused, I admit to putting on a potentially cynical face at this point. Huge mistake. Continue to Part Two!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
