JOIA

Visited Joia this Saturday early evening when the sun was beaming and it was a beautiful day. The staff were very attentive and charming when serving and recommendations and really friendly and helpful. We got a few sharing tapas dishes, a main and two gorgeous desserts to share. Cocktails were too good to turn down. I was tempted to try some of the pairing wines with the dishes, but opted for the cocktails instead. Lovely atmosphere and table with a view and the sound of the live band from below. We visited the rooftop bar after, (which closes at 10pm) but it got a bit chilly. Thank you for a pleasant evening.

My friend and visited For lunch. To be fair, the view of the restaurant was really nice and the service was really good as well. The staff were really helpful and caring. However, food wise, I must say This restaurant Had the worst tasting food I’ve ever tried in a restaurant in London. We ordered Iberico ham cheese, and croquettes for our appetizer. Nothing wrong with these items, but they were really basic and the presentation was not thought through. The cheese choice was somehow awful because the texture was really mushy and the flavor was not it. But that was not the worst part. We ordered their aubergine dish and it was bitter. The only flavor we could taste was bitter and it had so many seeds in it. I believe that’s the reason why it was so bitter. We also got the octopus salad. Not necessarily awful or flavorless it just did not taste nice neither my friend nor I liked it. For our main dish, we got the Bamba rice with shrimp and clams. That was the only good dish of the night and I must say it was very nice and we were so satisfied with it. For dessert, we got the basque cheesecake and crema catalana. The Basque cheesecake was salty to the point that I don’t even consider that a dessert. It was more like a savory appetizer to me. And the crema catalana Was so bitter. The burnt sugar on top combined with the orange flavor was just bitter and was not a pleasant taste. I’m not a picky eater and Besides this experience, I don’t even remember the last time I did not like a food I could literally eat anything and this was one of the only times that I genuinely did not enjoy eating the food and I would prefer not to. I also believe the chef is a Michelin star chef or at least I have heard that so that gets the hopes high as well. We told the staff we did not like the desserts and the octopus salad. We forgot to tell them we did not like the eggplant either but they kindly removed those items from the bill so I appreciate that. But genuinely from all the many items we ordered only one dish was good and the other ones were so bad we could not eat them so I would not consider this place a good restaurant and I will definitely not recommend. We left this place feeling drained because we had a bit of hope in the dessert, but that disappointed us as well so we were genuinely so disappointed and sad after we left the restaurant and we believe it was a waste of money and time.

Great view from the restaurant, did not make booking for group of 7 on weekend lunchtime. Love the decor and aesthetics, sat right next to the half open kitchen can see chefs talking and preparing food. Great food for sharing in big group.