Joel's Asian Grill — Restaurant in Mooresville

Ugh I want to like Joel's. But I just can't. After taking a 3 year hiatus after getting food poisoning from undercooked tilapia in the nirvana roll from their sister restaurant, I decided to give Joel's a try tonight. First, it was a Friday night so I assumed it would be busy and there would be a wait. However, the hostess told me it would only be a 15 min wait. Mind you, there were about 5 people ahead of us on the wait list, which is fine. The space for waiting patrons is quite small so you are packed together - which is not a big deal. However, the hostess stand and to go counter are side by side with the "waiting area". A gentlemen who came in after us was waiting on his to go food (and had been waiting for some time). Well one of the waiters (short white male dark brown hair with earrings and emo type look) apparently did not like this and came by and yelled at this man to get out of the way. He didn't politely ask or even attempt to be courteous, he YELLED at this guy, so loud that I looked over like am I really hearing this right now? If I was that man, I would have told that waiter off and left and taken my business elsewhere. He was so rude I can't believe that guy still has a job there. Well time goes on and we finally get a table, and low and behold, that same guy is now our waiter. I'm thinking great just what I wanted. The guy takes another 10 minutes to even come over to our table and says "I'll be right back". Well guess what? He never came back. A sweet petite brunette girl however did come to our table and asked for our drink order. I should've asked her to be our waitress for the remainder of the night but hindsight is 20/20. After the guy waiter goes to all the other tables, he finally comes back over and takes our order. I ordered crab rangoons for an app and hibachi for entree. Some time goes by, our waiter never checked on us but just dropped by to drop off soup and our grilled vegetables that came with our entree. Another 10-15 minutes goes by and our entrees come out. My boyfriend says just cancel the crab rangoons and the waiter LAUGHED at us, smirked and then tried to take my plate of grilled vegetables away that was COMPLETELY FULL. I said UH I'm still eating that. He laughed again and walked away. Never saw him again and the nice young lady who got our drinks brought our check and to go box. Never got a drink refill or anything. I don't know if this dude is just a jerk or was high or what but he definitely does not belong in the restaurant business. I will never ever come back to Joel's or JJ's ever again....

Last night we decided to eat here with almost an entire hour left until closing. Yeah it's kinda late, but before pulling up and proceeding to walk in, we made sure other people were inside so we don't seem like jerks. From the moment we sat down, we were rushed. I didn't even have my jacket off before the waiter came running over with somewhat of an attitude asking what we'd like to drink. He brought the drinks over quickly & we were forced to ordered quickly as well..He seemed VERY annoyed with us, but did a decent job covering that up. However, I'm sure those who spoke chinese or whatever were having a lovely conversation about us cuz they were chatting up a storm nearby. By the time we got our drinks, the other people in the building had left, leaving just me and my boyfriend to be the only ones there..talk about awkward! Our food was brought over quickly & when it was, the server asked "you're not going to be ordering any dessert are you?" almost like if we were to say yes, we'd be denied. While we were eating our food (QUICKLY due to feeling uncomfortable), people were sweeping around us right by the table, wiping tables down, etc. Basically doing everything possible to make it extremely obvious that we were intruding on their cleaning up time when they have an hour left to be open. After we shoved our food in a togo box, this boy came up and took our plates away & we thanked him and he said nothing. I looked over & he has this blank face so I said "he doesn't look too happy." Like seriously? Can you possibly make someone feel ANY more uncomfortable? It was so uncalled for because we weren't taking forever or anything! When we decided to leave, there was still 30mins left of the place being open. How about restaurants do their closing duties AFTER all guests leave once you're CLOSED? I work in retail & people come in literally ONE minute before we close & there's nothing we can do about it so we just get over it & let them buy their crap they came in for. It's just so rude to make a guest feel like they don't have the right to be there, even though the place is OPEN. We realized we arrived on the later side, but all our intentions were was to eat a quick dinner. The hostess wasn't rude at all on our way in & out, so I don't know why the server had to act the way he did. It's all part of the job & we could have been MUCH worse. The sushi was great, but I probably won't be giving Joel's my business anymore due to this whole thing happening. I don't even know why my boyfriend left the kid a tip! He didn't...

Well, I ended up choosing the NY Steak and Shrimp hibachi with fried rice last night December 14th Just so you know who the chef was. extremely BLAND ZERO flavor. Steak was tough as nails. Tasted like shoe leather and shrimp was a tick undercooked. Fried rice tasted like steamed rice with veggies. Also no flavor at all. When I say no flavor I mean it, like no salt or season or typically what you'd taste with Hibachi. Very disappointing meal, I had to drench in yum yum sauce just to choke it down. Let's move to the sushi, I grew up in the seafood industry and I'm seeing reviews here that say THIS is the place to go for sushi. I got the trout rolls and well about half way in I realized it really wasn't going good. 😬 Couple pieces were not so fresh and another almost had like a bleachy flavor. That's when I gave up on the sushi.. for some reason the chicken fried rice my partner had was GREAT. 100% different then my fried rice for Hibachi. Not sure what happened there. Basically paid 70 bucks for some chicken fried rice because that's the only thing that was worth paying for. I have eaten here in the past. Stir fried chicken was great once for lunch. Your Lumpia by the way is far from traditional, it's more like your typical Chinese spring rolls with some hints of chopped pork inside, I have a fillipino family, I have had real lumpia a million times and that they would call an abomination. Service has always been great, so that's a bonus. I'm not sure of this was one of those off nights for me or what, I'll likely not go back here unfortunately. The prices these days I value where I spend my money. Thanks for the...