Joi's Chinese Seafood Restaurant

I've been to Noble Court, Top Gun, and Kings just to name a few, but Joi's is the most consistent concerning freshness, in my opinion.
Sometimes, I feel sleepy and enter a heavy "food coma" after dim sums at other restaurants, but Joi's use of fresh ingredients (and the dishes seem to always be hot, not cool from being strolled around all those lunch hours) doesn't have that effect on me.
I go almost on a weekly basis, so you can trust me on this one!

Favorites: basically all of their dumplings (shrimp and chives, peanut and pork)

Came here for dim sum during lunch hour and it was great. The staff there are very nice and helpful. They always walk around with their dim sum carts so we can look around to see what we want. It's not the cheapest place but I think it's pretty good in the Bellevue area.

I like thee egg tart, red bean coconut jelly, shrimp dumplings, shu Mai and a lot of dim sums. They have a parking lot

I have been eyeing Koi's opening for the past month and paid a visit with my boo last night. I was told by the hostess that they are currently in a "soft opening" and that their official grand opening is on Monday, July 11. I ordered the following:

Ong choy: Water spinach, not exactly watercress or spinach but a mix of both qualities: straw-like, crunchy hollow stems and soft, leafy ends. I asked them to cooked it with extra garlic instead of the fermented soy tofu option. Tasted just fine; how can you mess up this "easy" dish? Approx $11.

Barbecue duck - The method they used to cook the duck seem to be flawless with the crispy thin skin and tender meat, however, it lacked the juicy flavors that you often connect with Chinatown butchers. Good but not outstanding. The plum sauce helps a bit with flavor but the missing ingredient is blatantly obvious; it's all in the juices of the meat itself. Approx $11.

Pan fried fish with house special sauce- I was informed that they were out of live fish but the frozen one still tastes great so gave it a shot. It took a while longer to cook and by the time I was mostly done with the BBQ duck, the fish finally arrives. Presentation of the fish is beautiful with a brown gravy special sauce and bell peppers. The special sauce is similar to a diluted black bean sauce that is sweetened. Don't get me wrong, the fish tasted fine but two things really disturbed me on this one: 1) it is not a fresh fish out of the tank and I tasted that difference and 2) the fish size isn't that large for $28.95? Not sure what to think about this one.

Dessert: not many Chinese restaurants do this anymore. A small bowl of complimentary red bean dessert soup was served. Not bad and not too sweet.

My take here: 3.5 stars. Total bill of the above with two small bowls of white rice plus tip = $67, with only water as the beverage. The price performance for what you get is low and not satisfying. I will be back to taste their dim sum menu and their lobster ($13.99 per lb for a small sized 2 lb or $9.99/lb for a large 5 lb). Will post an update once I make that second round. Crossing my fingers on this one to replace Top Gun for dim sum. Bamboo Garden next door better watch out too as it will potentially lose many of its customers!

Update 7/23/2011- Went back for the dim sum and was pretty tasty and reasonable prices. I consider this location 4 stars for dim sum so upgrading .5 to 4 stars. Average price for two people and 5-6 menu items ... $22.

Yelp needs a way for me to filter out reviews by ethnicity. Why is that you ask? Because I came here on a Sunday night and it was over 75% full with all Asians in there. If this restaurant is just average, then why was it so full? This is probably the best Asian restaurant for dinner or dimsum on the East side. If those old Asian people knew what Yelp even was, the restaurant would at least be 4 stars.

Stop taking 1 star away because you're confused by the name. You're there already. Eat the food. Rate the food and the service. Not the name. And if you do that, you'll know that the food is above average (better than Top Gun, nearby Bamboo Garden, and most mom-and-pop shop Chinese restaurants in Seattle. The only negative thing about the restaurant is that the service is poor, and I will agree with that. I was going to give the restaurant 5 stars to offset all the fake 1 star reviews, but that would not be honest. This is a solid 4 star restaurant. Besides Jade Garden, Sea Garden, and maybe New HK, what other nice, clean, and good Chinese restaurants are there in Seattle? Exactly. 4 strong solid stars.

I came back for its official opening - had both lunch and dinner. Lunch was okay - had standard Dim Sum fare but every cart was the same and the cart pushers were very pushy. I come from Toronto and Vancouver where the dim sum culture has already evolved beyond carts. Turns out they have an album of dim sum selections so next time I'm ordering directly from the kitchen to ensure that my items are fresh and hot. Bonus points for being MSG free for lunch.

Dinner was great - they had a steamed sea bass which made me very excited since they ran out during their soft open. Free Range chicken, sizzling plate short ribs all at the level that I expected. We also had the tobiko-topped vermicelli noodles and pea vines with ham in a chicken soup. Turns out we ordered more than we could fit in our group of 4 but we were all quite impressed. It's good enough to become a regular place.

Really good dim sum! This is the first dim sum place I've been to which doesn't have any dishes that I've had to avoid and is much better than the spot we used to go to in Portland when living there (King Wong's) and the place in Seattle we used to frequent which I heard went down hill (Purple Dot Cafe).

Beyond the food, the carts come frequently and the service is great...such friendly servers and staff that it really helps you get your weekend started off right!

Finally made the effort to try Joi's after hearing from people that they don't like waiting at Top Gun. After my first time at Joi's, I'll gladly wait in line at Top Gun, not because the food is fantastic, but because it's better and at least I get something to eat for my $$. I basically didn't eat anything that I ordered at Joi's - it went into the garbage can after a few bites.

I ordered 5 dim sum dishes to go: har gao, siu mai, egg tarts, black bean steamed spare ribs, and fried sesame balls. Each of these are dim sum staples and a good way to gauge a restaurant's ability. We didn't and haven't tried their dinner.

The har gao use smaller shrimp, which isn't terrible. The size of each dumpling was much smaller than what other places serve. The worst part for me was that they used too much cornstarch filler.

The siu mai were passable. This was the only thing that I ate.

The egg tarts. Where do I begin....need to be COOKED. Please refer to my picture. The custard had not set and needed to be cooked much longer. Even if it had set, they use way too much food coloring. I don't need or want orange-colored egg custard.

The black bean steamed spare ribs were VERY fatty, almost 60% fat. I love fatty pork, but don't rip me off by serving more fat/bones than meat.

The fried sesame balls were bad. When you order fried sesame balls, you're supposed to get something that's golden color because it's been fried perfectly. The sesame seeds on mine were still white, the same color of the rice flour. There was no crunch and they were almost gloopy, like barely fried. I tried putting them in my toaster oven to crisp up (sometimes this works), but that was only a waste of time/effort.

This might sound like an attack on people who like Joi's, but it's not. It's more of a request to everyone to spend your money on better dim sum - you deserve better. It's not easy to find good dim sum in Seattle, compared to Vancouver/SF/LA, but it's possible.

I did order later in the afternoon, so it might have affected the quality of food. However, if the food is not up to snuff, don't serve it. They could have easily told me that they have run out. I looked at the pictures posted by other reviewers and mine looked similar, so at least they're consistent.

Came for Dim Sum on a Saturday. Place was about 2/3 full. Nice, large dining room.

Parking: Lot is cramped and hard to maneuver.

Atmosphere: Place is new and pretty. Probably the cleanest, nicest Dim Sum restaurant currently in Seattle area.

Service: Pretty good, attentive, friendly.

Weird Smell: Okay, I was the only one apparently bothered- but there was a very strong smell of Sterno or alcohol cooking liquid.... made me want to gag. Had to hold my nose the whole time I was there. Realy dampened the experience.

Weird Tastes: Everyone at my table agreed on this one (all 4 of us)... the Shui Mai and Ha Gow both had an off(putting) chemical taste, like bleach or kitchen cleaner. Yuck! Could not eat them, they were revolting with the horrible taste. My youngest son said he also tasted a weird taste in the water. That really spoiled it for me!

Other dim sums we ordered were decent.. but with the smell bothering the *#$&* out of me, and the horrible taste in two of our orders, I cannot give this a very good review.

Won't be back, sorry!

If this place were in LA, or Vancouver BC, I'd give it two stars and be done with it. It really can't compete with a top-tier Cantonese style restaurant.

However, since this is Seattle - or worse yet, Bellevue - I give it a solid 4 stars. Beggars can't be choosers when the pickin's are slim.

We came for dinner with 8 people and had a variety of dishes including the chicken with garlic and ginger puree, the seafood clay pot, and the stir-fried morning glory with garlic. Scoring is below.

FOOD:
3/5 stars - Not the best, but not bad. Each dish had adequate flavor, even though nothing was noteworthy or creative.

AMBIANCE:
5/5 stars - For the Seattle area, this is as good as it gets for a Chinese restaurant. You better hurry up and git yo a$$ in here before all the furniture develops a thin layer of oil over it as all furniture in Chinese restaurants inevitably do.

SERVICE:
4/5 stars - Good solid service. 5/5 is reserved for El Gaucho style service.

BONUS POINTS:
Nice sized parking lot in downtown Bellevue.

OVERALL:
I wouldn't hesitate to go here again for dinner with a few friends or my family. I'm also looking forward to coming back for dim sum lunch, and see what they can do with that stuff.

Wow, great Dim Sum :D...... One thing to make a mental note, for those of you that expect high expectations of customer service in restaurants, it will be limited, so to speak. The waiters are to provide you only food the you choice base on what they have available on the food cart that will be strolling around the restaurant. They have their own routine in just to provide you that don't expect more. Instead try to enjoy the quality of their dim sum which is where their true value lies in this place. I look forward in coming back here soon :)

The first time there my friends and I ordered regular dishes, which was just okay. I'd say Bamboo Garden (which is like right next to it) is better imo.

The second time there we got dim sum. It was GOOD! I don't know if anywhere else in Downtown Bellevue serves dim sum (other than Dim Tai Fung?), but this place is good in terms of dim sum! It was packed as well. It's as good as some of the dim sum places that I ate in Vancouver, BC. I gotta say if you come here, get the dim sum instead of regular dishes. If you wanna eat that, go to Bamboo Garden.

However, they have fresh fish there. Maybe it's good? I am not sure if I've had fresh fish in Bamboo garden, but I guess the variety of fish at Joi's is definitely a plus as well.