Jean
27 December 2019
JÉAN
Klein Roosboom Boutique Winery, Tygerberg Valley Road, Durbanville
It was a long drive for an equivocal lunch experience.
The wife and I took her parents, her uncle and the uncle’s squeeze for lunch at Jéan in the winelands of Durbanville because of favourable mentions in this group but the experience and expense didn’t quite reward the effort.
Klein Roosboom is close to Durbanville Hills (one can gaze at the latter’s hilltop perch from the parking lot of the former) and the restaurant is set amidst the green vineyards of the lower slopes of the valley. There is also a separate wine tasting venue.
The building that houses Jéan reminded me a bit of Skotnes restaurant, in that it’s also a modern, grey concrete and steel structure with huge windows on two sides to let in plenty natural light and with panoramic views of the landscape, and there’s also an extensive outside seating area, but otherwise the look and style are very different and Jéan is considerably smaller.
I’d say the decorating concept is sophisticated rustic, with polished cement floors and farmhouse style light wood tables and chairs, and banquette seating against the windows on the side of the room that doesn’t open to the patio. Very beautiful. If you don’t want to eat, or sit at a table, there’s lounge style seating outside.
There were a couple of bottles of the splendid Klein Roosboom Rosé (R125 a bottle) for the table and, in honour of the occasion, I drank a glassful of the Klein Roosboom Lager (R45), which was pleasant enough but, as a craft beer, still fell short of the crispness I prefer.
The menu: Four of the dishes can be ordered either as starters or as mains, there are five straightforward main courses (pasta, pork, lamb, burger or beef) and four desserts.
The bread course was slices of “farm bread” with honey butter. The bread wasn’t as yeasty and the slices not as large as the farm bread I knew as kid, but it was okay. There was not a hint of honey in the butter.
One member of the party ordered the small sesame chicken salad (R105),
and my choice, no surprises, was the char sui pork belly (R185.)
I believe that the salad and squid dishes were satisfactory.
On the burgers, there was one request for “dead as disco” and one for medium rare on the respective patties. The waiter assured us that medium rare was the chef’s default setting.
Either there was a miscommunication with the kitchen or the person who cooked the burgers can’t cook. Both patties arrived devoid of any life. Not only that, there was no sauce with the burger and as one ate, the patty, though flavourful, became drier and drier. The generous portion of fries was good.
The wife’s mini tower of fillet, with potato rösti and tarragon velouté, was very tender, juicy and flavoursome but the accompanying vegetables (mange tout, green beans and petit pans) rank among her least favourite greens (not the restaurant’s fault) and some of the wild mushrooms were a bit rubbery. I ate her vegetables with gusto and preferred them to the greens on my plate.
My char sui pork belly dish was a curate’s egg. The positives were that the potion was generous (two substantive hunks) and that the meat was mostly beautifully cooked and succulent, and was almost an excellent belly until I got to the gristly, tough, over cooked parts of the second piece, of which I could then only eat about 80%. The deeply rich jus was life enhancing and the wasabi and roasted sesame mash was creamy and smooth. The wilted bak choi and coriander salad was less successful, being either too hard or too stringy for my liking. There was no crackling.
In my view, one piece of fully tender belly with the mash only would have made this a perfect dish.
The black sesame & lime cheesecake, with raspberry and aniseed sorbet, polarised opinions. I ordered one and the wife and her mother shared one. They were quite put off by the colour, texture and taste of the cheesecake and quickly abandoned it (the wife took one bite and made it clear that if this was the last dessert on earth, she’d happily die without ingesting a sweet morsel ever again) and gave the rest to me, only disposing of the sorbet.
Lucky me. I had one and half desserts and loved every smooth, creamy mouthful of cheesecake, and my only criticism would be that the cheesiness was far too subtle. For me this twist on a classic was superb and well worth trying. Apparently, for the adventurous only.
The service was a bit iffy, in that, once the mains were served, nobody returned to ask us whether we wanted anything more or else. Our empty plates sat waiting on the table for a very long time and were only removed once we managed to attract a waiter’s attention to ask for the dessert menu. We also waited rather a long time for our main courses (more than an hour) and when we ordered, the restaurant was far from full, as we booked for 12h00 and when we arrived, only two other tables were occupied. When we left, the restaurant was not even a quarter full, so the very slow and absent service cannot be contributed to this. Our dining experience was by no means a bad one yet no more than average either and at their prices (R1700,00, including tip) one expects excellence.
Jéan is lovely, has a wonderful setting and has ok food but it’s hardly worth driving a long way for and my guess is that we won’t return, simply because there’s no compelling reason to do so. The box has been ticked.
Comments
Post a Comment