Taste of Joy, Oakland, CA
3227A Lakeshore Ave
Oakland, CA 94610
(510) 627-0067 (was disconnected when we tried it, but hopefully it’s fixed now…)
Hours: Tue-Sat. 12:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.
The Nutshell
Taste of Joy is good, especially for the price. The brisket and especially the were tender and smoky, and fit well with the middle-of-the-road sauce. The sides were extremely good and clearly homemade. The only real knock on Taste of Joy is that we had to wait almost 30 minutes for our to-go meal, and when it came out our orders were mixed up and they had run out of corn-bread. We’re hoping it’s a fluke, and I suspect we’ll go back.
The Place
Taste of Joy is in a little cave of a storefront along Lakeshore where a crepe shop used to be. It’s dark but nice inside, although a little strangely decorated for a BBQ joint. They don’t sell alcohol and they don’t take credit cards. We rolled in at about 6:45 on a Saturday, and it wasn’t particularly crowded when we got there. But after we ordered, it took them almost 30 minutes to produce our order to-go. That’s long for any take-out place, but particularly bad for BBQ, considering there wasn’t a single thing on any of our plates that wouldn’t have been made in advance. Let’s hope it was a fluke.
The Sauce
The sauce was good, though it was a somewhat nondescript, sweet Kansas City style. Especially with the brisket, some thought it needed a bit more spice, and the addition of some hot sauce really improved the meat-sauce match. I thought it was good for ribs, but I tend to prefer that style.
The Meat
Between us we ordered both the ribs and the brisket. The ribs were quite good, not dry at all, firm, with a nice pink smoke ring. Not the best ribs around, but far from the worst. The brisket was not quite as tender as the ribs, but had a great beefy flavor and plenty of smoke.
The Sides
We were pretty impressed with the choice of sides, and they were all good. Excellent, creamy home-made mac & cheese, potato salad with a mustardy kick were the two biggest hits. Collard greens were good but maybe a little over-salted, and the black eyed peas were a little bland. Yams were sickly sweet. It’s too bad we couldn’t try the cornbread!
In the End
Taste of Joy has a bunch of things going for it. It’s decent to good BBQ in a very cool neighborhood near Lake Meritt. More than that, it’s a great value. We came away with plenty of dinner for about $40. We’ve certainly had better BBQ elsewhere in the Bay Area, but walking from Andrew’s place over there and ending up with a really nice BBQ meal was a treat.