JOYA
There’s a new sizzle at this popular Italian, now reborn as an entertainingly interactive do-it-yourself steak house By Matt Bielby
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ack in the day, the space that is currently Joya – tucked between Framptons and Cappadocia (Marmaris as was) on Newmarket Row at the back of the Guildhall, and overlooking a frankly terrifying surge of brown water where the weir used to be – was a pub called The Rummer; I’d occasionally have a pint there after playing squash at the sports centre, doubtless undoing all my good work. More recently, it’s been an Italian restaurant, offering pasta and pizzas and other crowd-pleasing fare, which has just enjoyed a modest but significant mid-life refresh, like when they facelift an existing model of car. Though still obviously an ex-pub in shape – narrow and quite deep, with two additional dining rooms upstairs – Joya has changed its look and feel these past couple of months, now being a pleasing Georgian-style dark green-grey inside, offset by light brown leather chairs, handsome and impressively comfortable. There’s new lighting too, fresh pictures on the walls, and a roaring fire near the entrance, most welcome considering the occasionally icy gust when someone new wanders in. Which happens quite a lot, as it goes – for a chilly February Wednesday, most of the downstairs tables were full, and it’s clear that this place already has a loyal audience. Joya has subtly changed its name too. Now known as ‘Joya Italian Steakhouse’, it’s imported a New York tradition that’s been gaining some traction in London of late, booting pizzas off the menu entirely and
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replacing them with impressive slabs of meat. It’s not a radical change, but it is a clever one. Let me explain. What they’ve come up with here is a happy combination of the best of the old Joya and something entirely new. There’s certainly no shortage of pasta dishes still available – maybe a dozen of them as mains, running from simple linguine al pesto (£12.95) to the likes of spaghetti with homemade meatballs at £14.95, all generously proportioned by the look of things – but these days it’s hard to look away from the steak offer, given pride of place in the middle of the menu. They used to have a couple on before, but now there are four of them, running from a 8oz flat iron steak (£19.95) through £24.95 rib eyes and sirloins, to an 8oz prime centre cut fillet at £29.95; all are supplied by top local butcher Walter Rose & Son of Devizes. With each, there’s a choice of nine different flavours included in the price – red wine sea salt or truffle butter, say, or maybe a mushroom and brandy sauce – but you’ll have to add your sides from a selection of a dozen or so, running from onion rings to slow cooked chips, creamed spinach to garlic mushrooms, mostly at £3.50 a pop. (This range is one of the areas where the rest of the menu has been most obviously revised, now rotating around a simple question: ‘What goes well with steak?’) The most innovative and exciting of the steak choices you’re going to have to make, though, is this: do you want it cooked in the kitchen, or to enjoy the ‘Hotstone Steak Experience’, right there at your table?
“My dish was a tonne of fun, in the same way as eating a fondue can be”
