I recently visited West Palm Beach and headed out on a night on the town with my family. Just south of Cityplace in downtown West Palm Beach, Joy Noodles sits off of S. Dixie Highway in a older part of town where most buildings have shuttered up, having seen better days.
Joy Noodles is a popular place though, serving up various noodle bowls and stir fried noodles based mostly from the family owner’s background from Thailand, but also dishes stemming from Japan, Vietnam, and China.
For appetizers, we chose the crispy calamari $5.95 which were quite decent calamari though a bit on the fried side, it had that fresh squid taste still in tact and wasn’t too tough to chew.
For entree, my mom ordered the mee goreng, a stir fried noodle dish stemming from Indonesia. I ordered the Chiangmai noodle soup (A northern Thai dish with a definite Burmese influence, with egg noodles in light curry coconut broth) and my sister ordered the Japanese udon noodle soup.
Their bowls are huge and shaped like toilet bowls. I think my bowl alone would have fed an entire village in the mother land. I could hardly finish a third of the bowl before throwing in the white napkin to signal defeat. The noodles themselves were okay, nothing outstanding but also not particularly offensive.
I thought this place has potential and could be better if they kicked up their spices some and added more flavor profile to their dishes rather than being one dimensional.
