There are some restaurants you book the same week you want to go. You check availability, pick a time, confirm. Easy. Then there are restaurants where securing a table is the event itself; where you mark the first of the month on your calendar like a concert ticket drop, and refresh the booking page at exactly the right moment hoping something is still there. 

The wait, if you land one, is four months.

We had been meaning to get to Joy since returning to Brisbane. We were, frankly, too lazy to try in 2025. The Girl was more organised than me (as usual), and eventually timed the monthly release just right. Four months later, at five to six on a Tuesday evening, we found ourselves milling about in Bakery Lane, Fortitude Valley, waiting for a door that was still physically locked.

That’s when I heard a familiar voice. An old colleague from my pre Hong Kong years; her partner, two friends, one of whom I also knew from my old workplace! All four of them standing in the same laneway, waiting for the same door. Ten seats. A four-month waiting list.  Try to work out the odds on that particular coincidence (If you’re a math whiz, let me know in the comments.)

Joy opened in March 2019 in a Bakery Lane space in Fortitude Valley; a 10-seat counter restaurant conceived by chefs Tim Scott and Sarah Baldwin. Between them, their resumes covered Sixpenny in Sydney and the sharper end of Brisbane’s dining scene at the time, through Urbane. The format was counter only; no printed menu, just the two of them cooking in front of you, and whatever was best that evening.

Then COVID arrived. Tim stepped away in 2020; he eventually channelled everything into Exhibition, which I’ve written about here and still consider the best restaurant in Queensland (see post here). Sarah stayed. She kept the ten seats, the counter, the no-menu concept; and quietly grew Joy into a 2-hat restaurant that now takes four months to get into.

Sarah came to cooking relatively late; she started as a dishwasher in high school, became an apprentice chef at 20, trained at TAFE Queensland, and worked her way through some of the best restaurants in the country. Sixpenny in Sydney, then Urbane back home in Brisbane. I can’t think of too many better ways to learn a trade to be honest..

The door doesn’t open until six pm sharp. Not metaphorically; the restaurant is physically locked until the reservation time, which means everyone mills about in the laneway and waits. Six on the dot and our waitress for the evening came out and walked each group in personally; and once inside (the girl and I first), with Sarah herself moving from party to party to say hello. Every single person that night was greeted by name before they’d so much as sat down.

I’ve been welcomed into a lot of restaurants. I genuinely can’t remember one that felt this warm.

The room is exactly what you’ve heard it is; a long counter in pale stone, ten wooden stools on one side, the kitchen directly opposite. Behind the diners, a vivid graffiti mural in yellows and purples covers the wall. The front window carries the delicate botanical Joy illustration in white on black. Lighting bright and airy; no moody dimming, no atmospheric theatre. Just a well-lit counter where you can see everything being prepared from the kitchen; which, at Joy, is the entire point.

We were seated first, but the room didn’t take long to fill.

The menu is a secret until the night is over. You won’t see it until the end; it arrives with a polaroid of your table, a wax-sealed envelope containing the evening’s courses, and a bag of house-baked cookies. Until then, the food simply appears.

The snacks came first; all four together, arranged in front of us along the counter.

Kingfish / zucchini / snow pea: clean and bright, a light ceviche dressing keeping the fish fresh and front-forward, the snow peas adding a pleasant green note. There was a lot to love about this bowl of food, the texture perfect and the kingfish diced in to cubes that were easy to scoop up and devour; the vibrancy and simplicity doing all the talking.

Beef tartare / plum / pine nuts: finely diced beef with chives and pine nuts, served alongside the honey butter crumpet; the intention being that you use the crumpet as a base and eat them together. A clever idea that worked better than I’d have expected; the buttery sweetness of the crumpet against the raw, clean beef was a genuinely interesting contrast, the pine nuts adding just enough texture to keep things interesting. There was an earthiness that also complemented the natural beefy sweetness enhanced by the honey in the crumpet.

Then we turned our attention to the tuna / rhubarb / smoked soy; which actually stopped both of us mid-sentence. There was a depth to the flavour that felt almost meaty, an intensity that seemed far too powerful for something sitting on such an unassuming plate in the middle of a quartet of bites. The smoked soy landed a wallop of umami that sat on the palate long after the dish was gone. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the standout of the evening before the evening had properly started.

The problem with the snacks was purely logistical.

All were shared; which meant the two of us spent fifteen minutes conducting a silent, highly strategic negotiation over who was getting a larger portion of that tuna. I’m fairly certain the Girl won. (She will dispute this, but she is wrong.)

It wasn’t long before the chawanmushi / corn / quinoa arrived in a small white bowl with a golden quinoa crust, a scatter of green herb, a jewel of salmon roe at the centre. Joy’s chawanmushi is the restaurant’s most talked-about dish; it changes its components over time but remains a constant, and there is a great deal written about it. The custard base was warm and silky, the corn lending a gentle sweetness, the toasted quinoa a little crunch, the roe a salty burst. It was a careful, considered dish. And yet, after everything I’d read about it, I found myself wanting more. More intensity, more punch. The flavours were pleasant without ever being compelling, and the textural range was narrower than I’d hoped for from something carrying this much expectation.

However, what followed brought exactly the intensity the chawanmushi had been missing. The spanner crab / tomato / chilli / almond arrived in a wide white bowl; sweet crab sitting in a deeply roasted tomato base, a warming chilli thread running through it. For me personally, the danger with this dish is obvious; too much chilli and the sweetness of the crab disappears entirely. Sarah threaded that needle with precision. It was warming rather than hot (an important distinction for a chilliphobe like me) and the tomato had that concentrated, slow-roasted depth that builds into a proper umami hit. It was delicious but definitely not enough of it though..

The onion and mustard seed focaccia arrived alongside; pleasant and perfectly serviceable as a vehicle for mopping up whatever remained in the bowl, and we mopped up every last drop of that beautiful and delicious sauce!

The final ‘main’ of the night was Lamb / eggplant / hazelnut: a relatively thin slice of pink lamb resting on a dark round of roasted eggplant on a pale ridged plate, jus pooled around made a real statement. The lamb was well prepared; nicely charred on the outside, a proper medium-rare in the centre. The eggplant surprised me; I’m not usually a fan of the texture, but charred eggplant seems to be a different beast and I found it genuinely enjoyable here. The hazelnut sauce needed more; a stickier, more reduced version would have given the lamb the counterweight it was asking for. Good dish; but just shy of being a great one.

Pre-dessert came next, Yoghurt / mint / melon / finger lime: a yoghurt base with translucent cubes of sweet melon and amber finger lime pearls for sharpness. Tangy and clean; the melon flavour sitting pleasantly on the palate long after the bowl was clear. I’d have gladly had twice as much of it.

The mandarin / goats cheese / olive oil was the most precisely balanced dish of the night; sweet and savoury held on a knife’s edge, neither pulling ahead of the other. The mandarin, properly in season, was exactly right. The goats cheese was present without overwhelming anything. A faint peppery note from the olive oil at the finish. The only issue: texturally soft throughout, and in my opinion, a little more textural contrast would have lifted the whole thing.

And then another Joy classic; the joy mont blanc; which arrives on a spectacular frosted glass plate with gold speckles, chestnut cream piped in the classic worm-nest formation, gold leaf at the crown. This is the restaurant’s signature dessert; it seemingly appears in every photograph, every review, every Instagram story Joy has ever produced (haha). I wanted to love it. It was sweet; perhaps a touch too sweet; and the chestnut, which for me carries a slight earthiness that tips toward something almost sickly, that didn’t fully satisfy. The amaretti biscuit at the base was present but didn’t deliver the textural contrast I was looking for (again with the texture comment). 

I’ll be honest here; part of this might simply be that I’m not a chestnut person. (The rest of the room seemingly had no issues at all with the dish)

There was s recurring thread across the evening: a gentle textural softness ran through several dishes, from the chawanmushi through to both desserts. There’s enough mise en place going on behind that counter to explain it; Sarah is essentially running the kitchen alone, and some advance preparation is unavoidable at this scale. The moments that really landed were the ones with contrast and intensity; the meaty tuna, the warming crab. Where softness dominated, I kept wanting something to disrupt it.

The tunes on the playlist were outstanding, really hitting the right vibe. Heavily dance-influenced, and totally appropriate for the Valley. We Shazammed several tracks throughout the night. Sarah tried to locate the playlist to share with us at the end of the evening and couldn’t find it. (We’d still like to find the playlist if you read this Sarah)

My former colleague and her dining companions were effusive by the end of the night. Every dish a revelation; the secrecy of the menu adding to the sense of occasion; the intimacy of the room making the whole evening feel personal in a way a larger restaurant simply can’t replicate. I understood it completely.

My own response was a little more measured; not disappointed, but not blown away. There were some real highlights; the tuna and the spanner crab were as good as anything I’ve eaten in a while. The service was extraordinary; warm in a way that fine dining rarely manages, personal in a way that the format makes possible and Sarah clearly makes the most of. Everything, from the locked door in the laneway to the wax-sealed menu and the polaroid at the end, is genuinely unlike anything else in Brisbane.

But against the backdrop of the four-month wait, I left a little hungry. At $220 per head before drinks, with shared snacks I could have eaten three times over, and that adds up to something. Would I go back? I’m not really sure at this point. Not because Joy doesn’t deserve its reputation; it does. But the effort of a four-month booking deserves a meal that genuinely blows you away; and this was very good without quite being that.

What Sarah Baldwin has built here is genuinely impressive; a 2-hat experience run essentially alone, with warmth and intention and a level of personal connection that larger dining room simply can’t manufacture. The concept works. The room works. The service is absolutely top tier.

While I’m not likely to rush back, the memory of the night persists.. The polaroid snap of the girl and I is on my desk, bringing a little bit of extra joy into my life.