Joyce — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Is this establishment Black owned?! I'd love to know the answer to that. Multi-racially owned and Black owned are two different things. I don't appreciate businesses that purport themselves to be Black owned if there are various owners and some are not Black. It's like claiming #Blacklove when one of the people in the relationship is not Black. That's not how any of this works. I'm not saying that's what's being done here but it is very ambiguous and feels deceiving.

That said, I debated on writing this review. I've been here three times, and for the most part have had good experiences. The last visit is solely what's prompting this review. I think the owners could've definitely turned this experience around w/more than empty words.

Ultimately, the food is really good. I haven't had anything I didn't like. The mac & cheese is just ok. But everything else I've had is good. I think the service is hit or miss, but mostly miss. The servers are nice, but often forgetful, slow, and just overall not up to the standard of service that one expects at these prices. The reason I'm giving three stars (and that's being nice because based on how I felt after this experience, I would normally give one star) is because of the time limit and how it was conveyed to us by the GM. I'd never heard or read of this restaurant having a time limit. It wasn't initiated or spoken of my first two visits. An hour into my third and final visit, the GM lets us know we needed to pay out because of the 1H15M time limit. Huh?! If you read my review of Ka'Teen, you'll see I don't love time limits. But at least Ka'Teen told us the minute we checked in for our resy. That didn't happen here. And the GM was quite abrasive in her delivery. My friend and I hadn't seen each other in months, and I would've chosen a different brunch spot if I'd known about the limit. I also think, if you have to enforce a time limit, there's a way to go about doing it. People are missing a finesse, a je ne sais quoi these days. My God, we must bring it back!

I want to see this restaurant succeed. I hope they take the constructive criticism from a lot of the lower reviews. Additional training is needed for the wait staff and the GM. I don't complain about people's prices, and I think businesses of color have the right to charge what they please. I do see a lot of reviews mention that the "price doesn't match the portion." I don't agree. The portion sizes are great. You will likely have leftovers. However, at this price point, there's a certain level of service, decorum, and professionalism that is expected. You want to be adjacent to the fine dining experience, you have to have fine dining service. A few tweaks and this would be a five...

Southern cooking with an upscale Los Angeles vibe.

Overall a solid place to check it out.

But for me personally, it’s missing that extra ingredient or two, to really call it a comfort food restaurant to come back for. I was disappointed that they didn’t have traditional fried chicken but instead they provided hen.

Booths are comfortable…watch your knees and legs when entering. Even for a short lady, my wife banged her knee pretty well. Good start for the night.

Interior lighting is soft and comforting. Decor is charming and feel good.

Good playlist. Not too loud. Suitable for talking to your table.

If you desire happy hour: it’s outside on the patio. The bar is limited with seating with only 10 bar stools.

(I’m not sure why restaurants don’t open the whole place for HH pricing for that special hour. Instead of clients trying to fight for seats at the bar or to sit outside in the street.)

Service is great. Rob was good but Diego was phenomenal. Diego was on top of his game and did most of the heavy lifting.

Drinks:

Premium price but well crafted and delicious. Good mixologist; crafting and blending these fine drinks. My wife’s Voodoo lime came on fire and it was a nice trick for the table.

Food: Great presentation overall…

Hush puppies: best tasting dish we had at Joyce. Great flavoring and chunks of seafood in the mix of dough and it was cooked to perfection.

Mac n cheese: solid, more creamy than wet. This wasn’t my type of Mac n cheese. Because of the types of flavor and texture, plus the noodle variety. Mac n cheese is very subjective dish. I would skip on this dish.

Catfish: meaty, and light with a nice soft breading but could be crunchier. For those folks who want it a bit more well done ask for it. There was also a side of fried citrus or pickle and it was waaaay too salty. For a salt guy I couldn’t event eat it.

Shrimp n grits: a good choice but it was missing that extra ingredient to give it that wow factor. Shrimp could be larger. Give us the jumbo!

Parking is availability across the street in the lot. Affordable for downtown...

I saw Joyce on a random list of restaurants in LA, then I made a reservation on Open Table for less than an hour's time ahead. Google said it had soul food, but I did not expect it to be so fancy.

I found street parking nearby. It's $0.50/hour for max of two hours between 4-8 PM, but free after 8 PM. The meters have slots for inserting a credit card as payment. Joyce is right next to Whole Foods and across the street from a CVS.

I was greeted by the hostess and seated right away. It was dimly lit, and the interior was very pretty. I was offered water right away, but it legit took 20 minutes for someone to come take my order. I thought that was odd.

Cornbread $11- ngl I wasn't going to order this because a Yelp review said it was just ok. The server convinced me saying it was really popular, so I ended up getting it. It was way better than I expected because it looked really ugly, like a flan almost, and the butter was just spread out on half the plate. The bottom of the cornbread was sweet while the top of the cornbread had some salt. I think I would get this again.

Catfish $29- This dish was surprisingly good to me. The cornmeal was so crunchy outside, and the catfish was so delicate inside. The fried pickles weren't that sour but still tasty with the sauce. The server offered their house hot sauce (that I thought was similar to Tobasco), and I think they made the catfish taste better. I'm drooling just thinking back to it.

Pork chop $74- This was the star of the meal. The meat was so tender and so flavorful. I could smell the char from the grill as soon as the dish was brought out to the table. Highly recommend getting this dish.

I'm sure their dessert would have been very tasty too, so I would want to leave room for dessert next time! Dinner ended up being like $80 per person (without drinks). Overall I had a pleasant meal. I wouldn't be opposed to...