San Antonio-based restaurant Hot Joy is popping up in Uptown this summer. According to the release:
“You have to experience it firsthand to get it, and Uptown diners and late-night revelers will get their chance this summer – hopefully by mid-July – when Hot Joy opens a pop-up restaurant at 3130 Lemmon Ave., in the now vacant Texas Land & Cattle. The plan is to stay in the space for two years, then move to a permanent location. Carey is partnering in the venture with Dallas-based Front Burner Restaurants, creators of such distinctive, trend-setting concepts as Velvet Taco, Sixty Vines, Whiskey Cake, Ida Claire, Mexican Sugar and the new Legacy Hall coming to Plano.
Chef John Philpot, who served as sous chef when Hot Joy opened, now runs the kitchen. He will be bringing the restaurant’s signature dishes to the Dallas pop-up, including shrimp dumplings “Chengdu Style,” Spam fried rice, and twice-fried chicken wings with crab fat caramel, as well as its extensive cocktail, sake, beer and Riesling list. Philpot is also creating several new dishes specifically for the Uptown location, and Hot Joy loves putting dishes on and off the menu with frenetic, ahem, joy.”
Owner Chad Carey describes the menu as “a wild mash-up of China, Texas, Vietnam, Japan, Louisiana, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia and anything else that lights up our brain…It’s meant to be spontaneous, insanely fun, bursting with life and just a bit too loud,” Carey says. “We like our food and drink to be big, spicy and funky. We’re not understated, nuanced or predictable. And don’t even get me started on ‘fusion.'”
