M Joy – Modern Lamb Kitchen

We get genuinely excited any time a new restaurant opens at Irvine’s Jamboree Promenade plaza – recently a hotbed of new-to-OC concepts, especially ones from China – even though each addition means something else has closed. The latest example is M Joy – Modern Lamb Kitchen, which replaced XiXi Fried Skewer and ghost kitchen Ai Yu Fish in the food court-ish area between YGF MaLaTang and Momo’s Grill in July 2026. Founded in Hangzhou, China, M Joy is part of a small chain of lamb/rice pilaf restaurants that launched U.S. operations in Anaheim and San Gabriel before adding an outpost in Irvine. As of publication time, the brand doesn’t appear to have a formal website in China, and though its U.S. site claims it’s at least regionally famous overseas, the details are hard to verify.

The story is somewhat nuanced. M Joy apparently started in eastern China as Da Mei Le Zhuafan, one of a growing number of regionally focused restaurants now catering to growing interest in northwestern Chinese (Xinjiang Uyghur / Muslim Chinese) recipes, without actually originating there. Rice pilaf and New Zealand-sourced halal lamb are the chain’s only focuses, the latter offered here in five preparations: two ribs (grilled or tender, $17), one shank (grilled or tender, $17), or three grilled skewers ($16), each meat-only or paired with all-you-can-eat rice, soup, and side dishes (+$6). There’s nothing else on the menu besides drinks ($6 to $9), coleslaw ($7), and a single dessert – homemade yogurt ($8) – but you can order more ribs at a higher price, and choose between non-spicy or mild seasoning for no additional charge.

One key difference between the Anaheim and Irvine locations is seating. M Joy’s original Anaheim restaurant has its own dining room, but the Irvine shop does not: Having boxed off most of the old XiXi Fried Skewer’s counter and display area, it shares communal tables and chairs with Momo’s and YGF MaLaTang. On our visit, YGF was blasting loud music from a boom box directly into M Joy’s dining space, making the overall dining experience less than ideal. Thankfully, orders placed at the restaurant’s tablet were quickly and kindly fulfilled, so we were able to get in and out in around 30 minutes.

To get as much of the full M Joy culinary picture as possible, we tried each of the lamb cuts, spread across both of the cooking options – grilled or tender – as well as the rice, soup, sides, and key drinks. Because the meat to fat ratio was heavily balanced on the meat side, our favorite item in the bunch was the set of lamb skewers, three roughly 1.5-foot wooden skewers with around a foot of grilled yet still moist meat, mildly but deliciously spiced with red pepper and cumin. For roughly the same price, two large grilled ribs were at least half bone and fat underneath a similar layer of spices and a crispy exterior; we found them tasty but didn’t want to eat huge chunks of fat.