Jo's Grill — Restaurant in Melbourne

Tastes and expectations vary greatly from one diner to the next. Never a truer statement. After reading some rave reviews, I went to this place expecting great or reasonably good food. After our meal experience, I'm afraid I won't be back. I can appreciate that family and friends want to help businesses by writing and raving about their food. That is why I usually don't put much stock in such reviews, especially when I see the same names/people raving about it in different social media platforms. I always reserve my opinion until I have the chance to taste the food myself, and I usually won't contribute any reviews unless the I find that all those "5 star" reviews contradict greatly to what is real.

We had the ribs, chicken, paella, and sides. Ribs were falling off the bone, but the softness of the meat was on the verge of being mushy, and tasted as a result of being braised/stewed rather than grilled, and simply brushed with a sauce that was way too sweet, and somehow also had a slight medicinal taste on my palate. Grilled chicken was ok, small pieces, nothing to rave about, brushed with a soury spicy sauce. The Paella, well, my friend who is widely traveled, said it was just some yellow rice with some sour stirfried chicken/capsicum on top, it was certainly not a paella - so perhaps calling it paella is doing themselves an injustice in setting customers' expectations. I have to agree, apart from the rice tasting a little cold, the sweet/sour stirfried topping was more sour than sweet, and not very pleasant to eat. Actually most of the dishes were on the heavy side of vinegary sour tasting - I didn't know that Indonesian cuisine has such a heavy handed vinegar usage. We had coleslaw, sweet potato fries and onion rings for sides. Again, coleslaw was very vinegar sour. Sweet potato fries were excellent as were the onion rings, but the bowl of onion rings had only about 10 pieces - for $8 that was not value for money for what amounted to less than half an onion.

I was quite surprised that the meat dishes arrived within about 5 minutes of us sitting down, even faster than the paella. Perhaps taking a bit more time to properly give them a better grilling and caramelisation may improve their taste? It took us longer to figure out their menu and order than it took for them to prepare the food! The way their menu is set up is so very confusing, and it didn't help that the waitress who took our order was not very good in explaining how things worked. I would have thought anyone that order chips would at the very least be provided with a basic dipping sauce, but nope, according to what we were told, they charge for any dipping sauce.

The night we were there, boy oh boy, was it noisy. It is a small space no doubt, but there was a large table just inside the door virtually shouting (not talking) to each other. I think they are either family or friends of the owner as we saw the owner sitting at the table as well. We were seated at the other far corner and we had difficulty hearing ourselves think, let alone talk, it was so noisy. We also noticed that the restaurant doors were locked on the inside, they had to open the door for us to go in when we arrived. Am thinking it may be due to a security issue as they are in a lonely (especially at night) location, hence may be easy target for scumbags.

Overall, I don't believe I can honestly rate them any higher than 2 stars from my personal experience. If I hadn't enjoyed the sweet potato fries and onion rings, it would have been a 1...

Edited: Tried their new dessert, es campur. Whilst I dont expect it to be like Indo ones, I have to say they need to improve the ingredients. It has big serving but mainly was crushed ice which took a long time to melt and hard to spoon. Not sure if jackfruit was fresh, but mine one was slightly sour, like it was overripe. Palm seed was too soft, lacking of chews. Other than that it was ok, probably need more milk, whether condensed milk or coconut milk. Came here because I was craving for ribs. When got there, I saw they have new menu of spicy beef ribs instead of pork, so I thought that sounds perfect. When it came, it wasn’t like rib rack, it was more chopped up ribs, with lots of sauce and rice and some cabbage salad. While the sauce was beautiful, it was waaay too spicy. I love spicy food but this is beyond what most Australians can take. They really need to to e down the spiciness, otherwise the sauce has beautiful taste. My husband ordered their crispy chicken burger and he said it was not good, very dry and chicken was hard like rock. Sweet potato chips were really nice. Hot chocolate was okay.

Came here again as previously few years ago during lockdown had tried their grilled whole chicken which was really nice. This time tried their fried chicken with kremes. The menu pictures show many rice dishes came with tempe but they actually came with tofu with I am glad because I don’t like tempe. While chicken was nice and tender, unfortunately I don’t feel they have much flavour, even the kremes didn’t do much. Sambal was nice though. Most staff are nice. But probably wouldn’t order their ayam kremes again as I have had better...

We finally got a chance to visit Jo's Grill @jo_grill in Knoxfield and we were blown away! The food here was sensational, this was one of the tastiest food we tried this year and that's probably an understatement. • Must-try: 🍗 Buffalo Chicken Wings 🧅 Onion Rings 🐖 Baby Back Pork Ribs 🐓Ayam Bakar 🐓 Ayam Kalasan 🍚 Chicken Fried Rice • To start with, we tried the highly rated Buffalo Chicken Wings, this dish has received so much praise from the Indonesian community. The sauce coated the wings perfectly and we just cannot stop eating those wings. The meat was super tender, yum! The onion rings surprisingly were also very good and very addictive, we believe the seasonings were influenced heavily by Indonesian spices. We smashed both the wings and the onion rings...too good! • The Pork ribs fell off the bone, literally! And it was very very delicious, the meat was very succulent. This signature dish is a must-order here, perfection on a plate. • Ayam Kalasan was superb! The flavor of the marination penetrated deeply into the meat, banging! The chicken meat was also super tender and fell off the bone. And we heard that this Ayam Kalasan is cooked using an authentic way by using coconut water not coconut milk as many restaurants do. • We also ordered the grilled chicken with the spicy-sweet soy sauce and that was hitting the spot very nicely but you can also customize the sauce to your liking especially if you like spicy food, you can go crazy here. • A truly hidden gem in Melbourne. Cannot wait to go back and try more of their menu, the only drawback is the location which is not close to where we live and far...