JOI Asian Bistro — Restaurant in Austin

For the price of the food plus a gratuity for a large party (10), we expected way better service. I called ahead to make a reservation, and the person I spoke with was very nice and asked if it was for a special occasion - yes, my birthday. I didn’t expect anything extra but maybe a little more attention from our server.

The stars are for the food because we did actually enjoy the meal. The fried chicken, chicken karaage, sushi, ramen, salmon, pretty much everything we had was really good. My palate is far from refined so do what you will with that information.

Our server was in the weeds so we tried to be patient and give her some grace bc it was clear they were pretty busy. Because of it, she wasn’t as attentive as we’d hoped. We ordered several drinks: iced tea, margaritas, boba, etc. all of which were never put in by her and therefore never brought to the table. Water refills were few and far between. We had our food order prepared for her return to the table because every time she came by, she never stayed long enough for us to order. We waited a while before being able to place a bigger order, which was frustrating because our kiddos were hungry.

At one point during the dinner, my partners chair broke. Like, it literally folded in and, had he not been near the wall, he would have fallen. He was standing at the table waiting for someone, anyone, to notice so we could get a new chair. I had to stop a gentleman who (I think) was the host to have a new chair brought to our table. He was very apologetic and nice but nobody else acknowledged the incident.

Finally, we were ready for our ticket and fully expected a slight delay due to being a large party. We did not expect or appreciate waiting for nearly twenty minutes at an empty table for our tickets. It seemed as though she was avoiding the table entirely, taking care of two smaller tables instead. When we did get the ticket, we had to have a few things taken off because they weren’t ever brought out to us. We also noticed what we believe was a gratuity on the tab totaling nearly $100 (so good for her).

I have had a bad luck streak with birthday dinners the last few years, so I was hoping to avoid that by choosing somewhere we hadn’t been before. I’m pretty disappointed in the experience and therefore won’t be returning. With several of my party having worked in the food service industry, we try to give a lot more patience and understanding to our servers, especially when it’s clear that there is a lot happening. This...

This was a very bizarre experience and from what I’m seeing on the reviews I’m not alone. We ordered 2 appetizers that were fine. The karaage was good but the sauce with it honestly made it worse and it was better dipped in soy sauce. The crab wontons were good but the sauce was clearly the Thai Kitchen Sweet Red Chili Sauce you can get at the grocery store straight from the bottle with zero additions and, again, made the dish worse. The really bad part was that we ordered the mussels with French fries and it was truly awful. The sauce was sandy because the mussels were sandy. The mussels also tasted extremely fishy, were super small, there were far too many unopened shells, and some of them looked like they had been exploded? Like absolutely obliterated within the shells and I had never seen that happen before. We decided to send it back because it honestly seemed like it would give us food poisoning and then we got the veggie stir fry noodles instead which were… fine? They were super salty and reminded me of freezer food but at least seemed safe to eat so we ate them.

The service was WEIRD. The whole time there was a man in a suit (assuming a manager?) prowling the dining room and looking at every table but not speaking to any customers. He only sat at the bar talking to servers and then this other man in a blue button up (another manager????). When we had to send back the mussels I was expecting one of these two dining room panthers to show up immediately but we didn’t hear from either the entire time. When we sent the mussels back for bad quality and questionable health standards the server said “it’s okay they’re not for everyone” which was honestly baffling. She didn’t charge us for them but that comment was weird. The person who was running the food out was weird too. They got all huffy and mad when there wasn’t room on our table for the mussels instead of just picking up the empty plates and moving them, both tables next to us were empty so there were pivots that could’ve been made.

The atmosphere in the dining room seems way too fancy for this kind of food and service. But if you start to look at the details it all makes sense. They have these fake flowers in the vases in the middle of the table that take up so much room and are very impractical and not super nice to look at. The bathrooms are AWFUL, dirty, falling apart, out of soap and paper towels, general weird design choices (urinal height for one).

This was a crazy wackadoodle time and we will not...

After seeing all of the great reviews, I'm sad to report that my experience was disappointing. My biggest complaint is that it seemed that much of the staff don't want to help customers unless someone else asks them to.

I made a reservation and actually arrived 15 min before. While waiting at the podium, three employees walked by without aknowledgement to my friend or I. At least two others made sure contact but have no effort. Finally, someone jumped in but didn't know house to seat someone with a reservation and had to find someone to help.

Once we were seated, it took 15 minutes to get anyone to come by, take our order, and also fill our glasses with water. It was also very noisy making it difficult to hear our server when ordering. While ordering, we discovered that there were items marked gluten-free but were told by our server that they were not actually gluten-free. This made me question the ones marked vegan as well.

The good news that the food came out quickly and was really good, however, we couldn't get anyone to take our plates. They would bringing things out but not take the empty dishes away. Our 2 seater table was so small that we had to move our dishes to the clean table next us to make room. Why didn't the staff who brought our food out not take the empty ones away? It just didn't make sense.

After a while, we felt like we were being ignored and avoided and the table of people on the other side of us (where we weren't stacking our dishes) were also having issues getting the attention of any other staff.

We ordered dessert and they brought it out without spoons. We had to flag down 3 people to get them because, once again, eye contact means nothing here. When they brought the spoons, we promptly asked for the check because, given our experience so far, we weren't sure how long it would take. Even still, the waiter did not come by to collect. We ended up leaving cash because we still couldn't get his attention to pay.

Our overall visit was almost 2 hours and we did not come at a busy time. I understand that some places are understaffed right now but the number of staff standing around and not helping their fellow employees had no sense of urgency. I don't like to leave bad reviews and I hope others have a much better experience...