JAAN
JAAN
Swissotel – The Howard
Temple Place
WC2R 2PR
020 7836 3555
Average price per head: £60
Hotel restaurants are notoriously soulless and even a great like Chez nico never overcame its hotel dining room alter ego. However, Jaan seems to have pulled it off with no little style. The restaurant, with its modern French and Eastern menu, is innovative yet traditional and most worthy of congratulation.
It is a mouth watering mix of ingredients, with the familiar being paired with some unusual flavours. Oxtail, for example, is flavoured with chive flowers and Asian basil. Skate wing comes with a green mango salad and tamarind-palm sugar sauce. Sautéed Foie Gras comes atop pineapple brulee. You get the picture.
As all of them sounded pretty good to our palates, we went for the easy route: the six-course Taste of Jaan menu. This comes in at a pretty reasonable £50 a head or a bargain £80 if you want the recommended wine with each course. My companion was driving later so we figured it was fairer to go for a single bottle of wine. Much to the sommelier’s chagrin, we went for the cheaper of his recommended options, the Condrieu Coteau de Chery, Domaine Robert Niero (a still indulgent £60) rather than the vintage Krug at £220. It was a fine pairing nonetheless, with an almost Sauternes quality and intense apricot and peach flavours.
The meal – a perhaps too relaxed affair, speed wise - began with Venison Carpaccio. The wafer thin meat covered the plate with remarkable evenness and melted on the tongue. The unusual flavourings of roasted cashews and pomegranate-lime dressing provided an exquisite counterpoint: a very fine starter indeed.
Seared Blue Fin Tuna was next, a quite wonderful slice of tuna, pinky grey on the outside and warmed but nigh raw on the inside. It comes accompanied by a very fat, luscious pan fired scallop and Gai Lan (an Asian leaf). Again, exquisite stuff.
Perhaps the most successful dish of the lot came next: Roasted Cod cheek. A pile of said pieces of fish balanced on sautéed okra and Christophene Jabugo Ham, Truffle Jus and an amazing combination of flavours. The cod had an intensely fishy taste, with a slightly bitter tang of aniseed. Whether that’s a marinade or the fish itself, I have no idea but it worked. Boy, how it worked. And the okra! I’ve never been a fan of the stuff – its lack of taste always struck me as a waste of a vegetable – but here, cut into delicate slices and barely cooked, it was exceptional.
And that wasn’t even the main course. That duty fell to Grilled Squab, with water spinach, artichoke salad and citrus-ginger chutney. Squab, in case you’re puzzling is baby pigeon. Modern observational comic thinking often enquires why you never see a baby pigeon. I now have two answers to that. First, having once seen one, I can advise that a squab is perhaps the ugliest creature in the world. Secondly, having now eaten one, I can advise that they’re bloody good eating.
To finish, there’s a final two courses. Cheese and then dessert. The Cheese comes in two forms, either from the trolley or something called “Creative Cheese”. Go for the second option: every day, the chef does something creative with, err, cheese. The day of our visit, it was a terrific Goats cheese Tempura, three cubes of lightly battered, melting cheese with a salad of Chinese greenery and flowers.
It was a little touch and go whether we’d see it through to the final dessert course as my companion had a train to catch and the meal had thus far taken some two-and-a-half hours. However, one spoonful of Marinated pineapple with coconut ice cream and she decided to get the later, slower service. The pineapple was caramelised and carpaccio thin. It was a little sweet for my tastes but devoured with speed and obvious relish across the table.
Impressive, innovative – and, for the most part, not far from greatness.
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