JOYA Restaurant and Lounge

Karume Richards

Came to dinner with the wife since we were in the area looking for a place to have dinner. The place looked nice inside and our server was good and knowledgeable about the menu, since more often than not I have 2 dishes in mind to choose from. For drinks I ordered the Diablo upon suggestion from our server and it was pretty good. For appetizers we ordered the Dungeness Crab Cakes and Croquetas. The crab cakes were better than the Croquetas, which were just ok. For the mains the wife ordered chicken empenadas, which she said was just ok and I ordered the Argentinian style Hanger Steak. The steak and cilantro-chimichurri was good. I didn't care much for the Yuca fries. Overall our experience was ok. Maybe there are better dishes than what we ordered.

Jake Sargent

The food and drinks were great but the service was awful. The waiter seemed to have forgotten about us most of the night. First round of drinks took at least 20 minutes to come to our table and during that time we had no water and nobody came to take our food order. After the drinks arrived, the server left so quickly I didn’t even get to say we were ready to order nor did he even ask. When he finally took our food order our drinks were done. We ordered food and more drinks. The second round of drinks never came at all. We ate, settled the tab long after and still never got those drinks. We went elsewhere for drinks after just so we’d actually get served.

Mike Lee

Met with a friend at his suggestion at this restaurant which is right on the main drag of University Ave in Palo Alto. It was a Tuesday night and at 5:30p no wait for a table, in fact we got seated right up front. The food was Spanish and we had the octopus and empendas tapas and our main was paella. It was good, not great, but typical Silicon Valley pricing which means dinner will run you about $100/person with drinks. The wait staff was good but seemed a little slow hence the reduction of a star.