I think it makes sense this week, paradoxical as it may sound, to start at the end. Late on at Joia in Battersea — quite a while after we had ascended to the sprawled grandeur of its 15th-floor space and squinted in the murk at a parade of Portuguese and Spanish dishes — a pão de lo dessert was brought to the table. Essentially an eggy, soft-baked sponge cake, it was served, in traditional pastelaria style, in a tall, crumpled toque of greaseproof paper.
There were appreciative oohs and aahs as it arrived. But then, as the three of us dug in, towards a sort of bubbled, yellow wetness edged in chewy meringue crust, things became a little more mixed. “I don’t really know if I like whatever it is we’re eating here,” said one friend, with brow heavily furrowed. “But I seem to keep going back to make sure.”
Vertiginous. Visually impressive. Confounding in a strange but occasionally compelling way. Many of the words you could use to describe this pudding in isolation are also, I think, broadly applicable to this thrusting new venture from acclaimed Portuguese chef Henrique Sá Pessoa. Joia is attractive and, with one possible exception, never actively bad.
But even so, I found that as the night wore on, as serviceable tapas dishes arrived with disconcerting speed, I had the familiar sense of a restaurant that I had inadvertently experienced multiple versions of in the last few months. Which is to say, here is another bullishly priced, handsomely appointed and instantly mobbed opening that just doesn’t withstand much close scrutiny.
Still, let me say this: if nothing else, Joia (which is Portuguese for jewel) at least gives the revamped Battersea Power Station a wisp of purpose and genuine glamour. Set within the new art’otel, Sá Pessoa’s creation sits beyond an art-filled, empty lobby that has been perfumed with the crazed enthusiasm of a Lynx-wielding 14-year-old boy. The dining room is a sweeping, mid-century observation deck of dusty pink accents, dipped lighting, Miro-style hanging sculptures and floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panorama of the power station’s chimneys and people sitting in their luxury apartments.
Sá Pessoa’s credentials are impressive; Alma, his Lisbon flagship, holds two Michelin stars. But Joia’s relatively lean, one-page menu of shareable dishes is a conscious evocation of a more humble, firmly trans-Iberian sensibility. La Bomba De Lisboa was outstanding: two orbs of crumbed, golden-fried potato, spilling a rich, warming payload of slow-bubbled beef and spiced alheira sausage stew. Scallops were nicely cooked but swamped a little by a tar-like vantablack alioli. Iberico croquettes and tempura green beans were, to be frank, both average renditions.
And this is the wider issue, really. Joia’s Iberian conceit — apparently a product of Sá Pessoa’s heritage but also quite a canny way for the concept to have its tarta and eat it — lands it in an unfortunate middle ground and also invites unfavourable comparison with other restaurants. Yes, there was an appealing, oozy wild mushroom rice dish, strewn with black truffle and melting strips of nutty Azores island cheese. But other more perplexing moments — a timidly seasoned, ho-hum Spanish tortilla, say — prompted prolonged reveries about superior versions at Barrafina and Pizarro. And if we had done a shot each time I wistfully invoked Nuno Mendes’s Lisboeta then, well, we’d have all had to be carried out of there.
A puck of dark chocolate mousse with sherry caramel and a chorizo ice cream genuinely felt like a lightly traumatising prank
We finished, of course, with that sponge cake and another almost impressively befuddling dessert: a puck of dark chocolate mousse with sherry caramel and a chorizo ice cream (!) that genuinely felt like a lightly traumatising prank. It was a fittingly odd end to a meal that lurched, haphazardly, from forgettably luxe to clumsily experimental.The denizens of New Battersea, the ones who think £3.5 million for a power station two-bed is reasonable, have clearly already taken to Joia. But looking in the darkness, at the eager crowd gathered around this big, glossy nothing, I couldn’t help but think that even they deserved much better than this.
