Patrice Cleary built her reputation with Mount Pleasant’s pioneering Filipino restaurant Purple Patch. In early March, the chef-restaurateur debuted Joia Burger on the next block, a slender smash burger spot enlivened with fun Filipino flourishes.
Her hamburger haven has roots in the pandemic. During the early days of the lockdown, Cleary opened The Butcher’s Market, which offered meats, seafood, and freshly made pastas, in the basement of Purple Patch with chef Bill Williamson. Sometimes they would salvage trimmings from wagyu beef, dry aged steaks, and tomahawk cuts, creating smash burgers rich with funk and fat.
Since the butchery is no longer operating, burgers at Joia are made with Wagyu from Braveheart Black Angus Beef. Shaped into 2.5-ounce balls, they are thrown on the flattop, smashed down into lattice-edged patties, seared for 45 seconds, and flipped. If there’s cheese involved, a square of American goes on and the burger is covered with a small dome, creating a little steam room to accelerate melting. Diners can choose to have up to three patties on their burger. To me, one wasn’t enough, and three was too intense; a double patty was the right balance between satiation and satisfaction.
Finished patties are shoehorned onto a griddled Martin’s Potato Roll and topped with a slaw-like mixture of chopped pickles, onions, tomatoes, and lettuce bound together with special sauce. Rather than putting these elements on individually, this approach “means you get the perfect bite every time,” says Cleary, who calls her burgers “utterly crushable” (and she’s right!).
Those looking for a plant-based option can order the patty made with black, red, and pink beans, along with wild rice, oats, carrots, and onions. Dusted with cornstarch, the discs are flash fried, creating a crispy coating that holds the vegetable components together. In a nod to Purple Patch, these burgers are topped with Filipino atchara, a sweetly pickled matchstick salad of green papaya, onions, and carrots.
Fries are in flux. Right now, they’re slender style, but Cleary may switch to crinkle cuts or something else. To go beyond simple ketchup, you can dunk them in garlic aioli or Sriracha mayo.
For dessert, there’s regally purple ube soft serve, which can be sassed up with toasted coconut flakes or rainbow sprinkles. Cleary hopes to get a double dispenser in the future, so she can also offer calamansi, a Filipino citrus that tastes like a cross between lime and orange. Drinks include calamansi soda and juice, as well as other sodas, beer, and wine.
To make the eatery more family-friendly, Cleary offers the Liam’s Lunchbox special to kids under 12. Named for her 5-year-old son, it includes a single patty cheeseburger, half order of fries, and ube soft serve.
It’s important to Cleary that Joia becomes part of the foundational fabric of Mount Pleasant, where she has worked since 2003, when she was employed at Tonic (where she also had a minor ownership stake). After the neighborhood mainstay closed in 2014, she took over the space to open Purple Patch the following year. Now she lives near her two restaurants, relishing the area’s peaceful balance. “You’re close enough to the city to enjoy city life, but at the same time you feel like you’re not in the middle of the city anymore,” she says.
The only way to experience Joia is to stop by, since Cleary hasn’t decided to do delivery, worried about how her food would be handled in transit and the inevitable fees. For those dining in, there are 10 stools at the counter running along the front window and one wall, as well as another 21 seats outside.
