The Canadians have landed on Maple Avenue, and the menu is more interesting than the announcement was.
JOEY Maple occupies 2508 Maple Ave., next door to the Old Warsaw, and the opening date depends on which page of the company’s own site you read. The location page says September 6. The hiring listings say the restaurant opens to the public on September 10. Either way the doors are open now or open Thursday, so call before you drive over.
Running the room are general manager Celine Dumont, assistant general manager Audra Rowe and head chef Dylan Beneteau. JOEY Restaurants has been family-owned since 1992 and has grown into a multi-concept group across North America. This is its second Dallas location.
The menu is where it gets worth talking about, because it is trying to be four restaurants at once and mostly gets away with it.
The steak program is the anchor. Every prime cut arrives with what the kitchen calls fully loaded crispy mashed potatoes, which are mashed potatoes with garlic, cheese and green onion wrapped and fried, and are the single most JOEY thing on the page. Cuts run from an eight-ounce top sirloin up through a fourteen-ounce New York strip, a twenty-two-ounce bone-in ribeye, and a 35-day dry-aged tomahawk built to serve two to four and limited daily. There is a steak with lobster tail, a steak frites with rocket greens and preserved cherry tomatoes, and a steak and lobster spaghetti that puts grilled sirloin, Atlantic lobster and prawns in a lobster-lemon butter sauce.
Then the kitchen pivots to Japan. Sushi is rolled to order with sashimi-grade fish, and the seared salmon sushi is Osaka-pressed and fire-torched with umami sauce and shaved serrano. Crispy nigiri comes with yuzu wasabi mayo and a chili crunch caramel. There is an ahi tuna duo roll, seared and tartare style with mango and sesame crunch. The house splits the difference with steak and sushi on one plate, tataki-style beef with ponzu and a choice of roll, which is either the most sensible thing on the menu or the most Canadian.
Elsewhere: truffle udon carbonara with egg yolk, bacon and a dashi truffle cream. Sake-glazed Chilean sea bass in dashi broth with wok-fired vegetables. Ravioli bianco with shrimp, crispy onions and truffle beurre blanc. JOEY fajitas with peanut salsa macha and roasted corn guacamole. The starters worth knowing are the mini short rib French dips with gruyère and an au jus pour-over, the Korean fried cauliflower under a sweet and spicy chili glaze, the bang bang chicken in a Korean chili caramel, and a spicy crab dip with lump crab and shrimp on grilled sourdough. Dessert is a twelve-layer chocolate cake.
The bar reads like it was built by someone who has done this before. A woodsmoked old fashioned gets smoked tableside over applewood. The JOEY martini arrives with hand-stuffed blue cheese olives and a second pour on the side. There is a run of slushed cocktails, including a vodka soda and a gin and tonic built on lemon-lime slush, which sounds like a gimmick and will sell all summer. Happy hour is three to six Monday through Thursday, lounge, bar and patio only, with what the menu calls adult snack packs pairing truffle fries with an espresso martini or a sushi cone with a spritz. Bottles run up to half off on Tuesdays. Tupps out of McKinney and Deep Ellum are both on draft, which is a courtesy an out-of-state group did not have to extend.
Know before you go: there is a dress code and it is published. Smart casual, no athletic wear or beachwear, and management reserves the right to refuse anyone unsuitably dressed. They also ask that phones stay off speaker, and that you step outside rather than film through dinner.
The larger context is the street. Uchi opened at 2817 Maple in June 2015, back when that stretch was not a destination. On August 27 the New York Stock Exchange opened the headquarters of NYSE Texas about a mile up the road at Old Parkland, 3819 Maple Ave., taking 28,000 square feet on Harlan Crow’s campus. A trading floor generates a particular kind of dinner reservation, and restaurant groups plan years ahead of a lease like that. JOEY did not pick this address by accident.
JOEY Maple is at 2508 Maple Ave. Reservations are on the restaurant’s site.
