Seattle's Joyale, Chinatown ID dim sum classic, ends weekday service

Joyale Seafood Restaurant, one of the largest and most popular dim sum banquet halls in Seattle, announced Thursday that it will shutter all weekday and dinner service for the foreseeable future.

The Cantonese restaurant will only open for weekend brunch, effective immediately.

The news shocked the Chinatown International District this week, but the community got a reprieve with the news of continued weekend dim sum. Owner Vince Zhao said Thursday he told staff and community leaders earlier this week that the restaurant would close after 10 years, blaming flagging sales and persistent crime near the CID restaurant.

But Zhao struck a deal with his landlord to keep signature dim sum service running from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends, starting this Saturday. The restaurant will also be available for private parties.

Zhao said he is shutting down dinner service because his dining room "is entirely empty at night. There's no point to staff it."

Zhao realizes running weekend brunch exclusively isn't a tenable business strategy. But he believes customers don't feel safe walking around the Chinatown ID at night, particularly near the corner of 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street, a block east of Joyale.

"The crime and drugs are imprinted into customers' heads that this is no longer a safe place to come and dine," he said of the hotbed for drugs and stolen goods, where the city recently said it would increase police presence. "We tried to keep it as long as we could, even through FIFA."

Zhao said he was optimistic before tourists came to town for the World Cup. A cleaning crew came out to power-wash the streets and police broke up people congregating around the corner of 12th and Jackson.

But it's like Groundhog Day," Zhao said.

"They just come back the next day and trash the area again. And the city would clean it again."

Located in the Pacific Rim Center, Joyale remains one of the last dim sum parlors in the area that uses push-carts to hawk har gow and shumai dumplings around the dining room.

With 600 seats, it's also one of the largest restaurants in Seattle. Joyale did brisk business as a banquet hall before the pandemic, hosting countless weddings that ended with boisterous karaoke singalongs after the cake was cut.

But that ended after COVID, Zhao said, as buyouts became infrequent. In recent years, he has gotten precious few weddings on the books. In total, Zhao said he's laid off about 70% of his staff at Joyale.

By comparison, his other dim sum banquet hall, Seattle Harbor (formerly China Harbor) on Lake Union, "is booked every weekend until October with weddings, private parties and fundraisers."

In addition to Joyale and Seattle Harbor, Zhao partly owns two Chinese restaurants in Bellevue: Top Gun Seafood and Dim Sum Factory.

"I know it's not my product," Zhao said. "It's the location."

Former Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo reacted to the news in an Instagram post published Thursday afternoon, writing that Joyale isn't merely a restaurant, but "one of the few places large enough" to bring the CID together.

It is a place where the neighborhood celebrates "weddings, birthdays, Lunar New Year, graduations, anniversaries and family reunions ... where nonprofits held banquets, community organizations gathered, and generations shared meals, stories and traditions."

She implored diners to support CID businesses in the post, lamenting how "business owners have been sounding the alarm about the conditions in and around 12th and Jackson" for years.

"When legacy businesses continue to disappear, we have to ask ourselves whether we're doing enough to protect the neighborhoods that have shaped Seattle for generations, Woo wrote.

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