First a quick snack review.
I've wanted to try the doh bar (fried snickers) at Cookes of Dublin forever. Finally I managed it! GF laughed at me and acted as if I might spoil my dinner (what am I, a 5 year old?). Of course, once I had the doh bar in my hands she ended up eating half of it!
It was extremely yummy. I know some people have reviewed it and said it was gross, but I thought it was essentially a chocolately melted mess inside some fried dough. How can you go wrong with that!?
Dinner—Jiko
BBQ Chicken Flatbread--10
Ostrich---13
Peppers—24
Shrimp—28
Iced Tea—2.19
Iced Tea—2.19
Crème Brulee—8
Tanzanian Chocolate Cheesecake—8
Tax—6.20
Total—101.58 2 M
Tip—19.68
We arrived about 40 minutes early at Jiko and were told that they were running on schedule, so they weren't going to give us a pager. They told us to just come back around our ADR time.
We decided to sit at the bar overlooking Boma. GF got a pear martini and I just had some water.
We went back to Jiko at the time of our ADR and were seated right away. At the table next to us, was a family with two small children--one about 3 years old and one an infant. This was 8pm so it was a bit earlier than some of other meals where we'd seen a lot of children. Within about five minutes of our sitting down, the baby began to scream. I saw that they were only just being served their appetizers, so we figured we were in for quite a long evening of crying. For the rest of the meal the parents took turns holding the baby and taking him/her over to the bathrooms outside of the restaurant. They seemed to be trying at least, but they still had the screaming child at the table for a good portion of our meal.
It took us a little time to warm up to our server. At first it seemed that she was always looking elsewhere when talking to us. It felt like she wanted to get away from us ASAP. But when she took our orders she joked a bit and then she seemed a lot nicer for the rest of the meal.
The bread was fococcia bread with Tandori butter. I'm not sure what tandori flavoring is, but there seemed to be cinnamon or maybe ginger in the butter, and the bread was just slightly sweet. It was yummy.
GF decided on the ostrich for an appetizer because it was something different. I asked about the cheeseplate, but it was mostly goat and sheep's milk cheeses, so I decided to pass. I thought about the tamales or the taste of Africa, but finally decided on a flatbread. I asked for the BBQ chicken one without the chicken, but with the bbq sauce.
GF said that the ostrich was good but not special. She did say it was nice to try a different animal though. My flatbread was really, really, really good. Yum—I could eat another right now. GF loved it too--she liked it better than her own appetizer even though it was vegetarian.
GF went with the shrimp for her entree. I really thought that she'd get the filet mignon, which I've heard is really good at Jiko. But she had had beef the night before at The Wave, and hadn't loved it, so she decided against it. She liked the shrimp, but again she didn't think it was that special. She actually really loved the sweet and sour shrimp at Ohana (the non-grilled kind) and would have liked that better.
My entree was better than hers. I like it and thought it was well done, and she kept eating forkfuls off of my plate. I don’t know what the peppers were stuffed with—maybe some cheese and corn meal mixture? I just know it was good. And the dish had a really good sauce with rice and maybe lentils around the peppers. I didn't really know what was in it and I couldn't identify flavors, but I know it was good!
GF's dessert choice was the pistachio crème brulee. Other than panna cotta, creme brulee is her favorite dessert. She tends to prefer it plain though, not with a lot of extra flavors. (We're so opposite when it comes to desserts!
) She said it was good but she found it too sweet. I thought it was a good sweetness, but then I love sweet things. I can't say I tasted the pistachio very strongly, but I did only have a tiny bite.
I went with the chocolate cheesecake. It didn’t taste that cheesecakey, but was more like a very rich chocolate cake with ganache on outside. Whatever--rich, chocolately goodness--can't go wrong there! The lavender ice cream which came with it was sort of strange. I can't really describe how it tasted. Just sweet and flowery. But it was good too. I ate it all and then regretted it when my tummy hurt about 5 minutes later.
Overall the meal was very good. This seems like a good place for vegetarians. There were numerous appetizers that had no meat/seafood, and the ones I had were still extremely tasty (enough to tempt GF away from her meat/seafood dishes even.)
I think if we were going to go to only two signature restaurants on a trip, I think California Grill would be our top choice, and Jiko would probably be our second choice.
