Location : Cotham Road South, Bristol
The tasting menu, small portions of several dishes as a single meal. Generally these are designed as a way of showcasing both local produce, seasonality and the skills of the chefs. Some restaurants and chefs specialise in these types of menus, most famously perhaps The Fat Duck in Bray under the wing of the incredible Heston Blumenthal. Traditionally these menus will provide something of a challenge to perceptions of food and ingredients and delight you with surprises and delicious combinations.
Juniper clearly does not specialise in the taster menu. Although, to their credit the menu was certainly "challenging" although possibly not in the way intended. Allow me, dear friends, to guide you through the importunate demands of this gastronomic minefield ...
Course #1
Fresh Crab bonbons, smokey red pepper relish, crushed fennel & peas, dill emulsion
This looks OK, doesn't it? And it sort of was ... with some provisos. Two little soft balls of white crab meat, over fried to a blackended crisp and frigteningly under seasoned. If you look VERY closely you might just see the smokey red pepper relish. It wasn't smokey, or very reminiscent of peppers ... just a sweet red goo used to hold the balls in place whilst in transit from the kitchen. The fennel and peas were very nice but were completely destroyed by an emulsion that was far too strong for anything else on the plate. That was literally all you could taste if you put everything in your mouth at once Greg Wallace style. 5/10 : all too bland except those rank dill drops, but edible if you avoided those.
Course #2
Beetroot & Ricotta Tortelloni, pesto cream, beetroot pickle
I had high hopes for this, we both did, we love beetroot. Love it's earthy sweetness and richness. Add that with some good pasta and a reasonably restrained pesto and this was going to be an absolute winner.
Well, they got the "sweet" part in there but managed to remove and awful lot of the "beetroot" and every last drop of "earthy" and "rich". Quite simply a sweet purple paste in over thick, cold pasta; over powered by a pesto which was below the quality of any basic jar you could pick up from the supermarket. They tried to lift the pesto with a little cream but this just added to the sickliness of the whole affair. The beetroot pickle was, in fairness, quite reasonable but the little tomato on top actually made me laugh. Look at it, go on ... that my friends is what D&Ls cafe in Yate calls garnish, not what you'd expect fro somewhere "posh". 5/10 nice try, edible but utterly forgettable, far too sweet and too strong with the pesto.
Course #3
Chilled potato & goats cheese soup, truffle oil, croutons
No photo here, sorry, but you can picture white soup in a white cup I'm sure.
Immediately we noticed a problem here. See that last word in the description, "croutons"? Well, drop the S, one sad little bready square, heavily garlic sat in the middle of an anemic looking soup drizzled with oil quite lacking the truffle flavour.
I will stop being mean about this course now though, it was clearly the standout dish. Simple but beautifully made, thick and well textured, strong with a very good goats cheese. Ignore the garnish and it was lovelly. 8/10 delicious but let down but the finishing touches.
Course #4
Confit of English lamb, spice aubergine, mint jelly, tomato fondant
Let me start by say that lamb and aubergine are two of my favourite, if not my favourite two, ingredients available. If I was on Saturday Kitchen they'd be in the heaven category. How can this possibly go wrong? How? ... let's have a look at the delights awaiting us ...
Excuse me waiter! Someone appears to have **** on my plate!
For the love of Christmas, some one please have a word with the chef. This is where it all started to go wrong. The first three courses were pretty average on a whole but edible. This was the point where that stopped. The lamb was horrific. Stringy, pungent in the wrong way. And yet, miraculously, it was actually over powered by the even worse, sickly sweet, truely foul mint jelly. Maybe the aubergine can save us! You can't go wrong with aubergine! Unless that is you serve it cold, under cooked, spiced like you dropped the spice rack on it and made do and then mashed into quenelle in order to make it look like you knew what you were doing.
I honestly thought at this point Karolina was going to be sick in public. 1/10 utterly horrific in every way.
Course #5
Champagne sorbet
Frozen sugar with Tesco Value Prosecco poured over it. Vile. 2/10. Next ...
Course #6
Fillet of Salmon, sticky coconut rice, black bean & sweet soy
Some asian treats for this course. Another of my absolute favourite cuisines, light and flavoursome with the perfect balance of sweet and sour, salt and spice. Well, that's what it should be. Yet again Juniper found "sweet" but very little else. The sauce itself was quite nice, if over sweet, and on something more robust then it may have worked well; unfortunately the salmon was cooked until it was completely bereft of flavour and had the texture of stacked cardboard. Everything I hate about badly cooked salmon exemplified here in a masterclass of poor fish cookery. 3/10 Only the sauce tasted of anything.
Course #7
Free range chicken, jersey royal potatoes, creamed mushrooms, jus
No picture again I'm afraid but if you imagine a tiny sunday roast you'll be close. I don't know what it is with Juniper but they like to cook all the moisture from their meat. The only saving grace of the lamb was that, being confit, some had remained in sheer defiance of clearly a most determined chef. The "jus" was clearly attempting to be a refined chicken stock reduction but it was like licking the burnt remnants from a three day old pan. Jersey royals should be a delight in the potato world but these were so salted as to taste of nothing else, and frankly the lest said about the mushrooms the better. This course nearly DID cause me to regurgetate all previous courses as well as lunch and breakfast right there into the, now empty thanks to salt overload, water jug. 1/10 I've had better in Nandos.
Course #8
Pineapple pudding, hot rum butterscotch, pineapple & coconut relish.
This is exactly what it looks like. A dry sponge (see previous comments about the chef's disliking of moisture ... I wonder if (s)he has rabies ...) with a sugared drizzle of loose bottom water. The "relish" seemed to consist of frozen pineapple mixed with dried coconut leaving an odd taste and a weird sensation of all moisture being drawn from your mouth while sucking an ice cube. 2/10 just dire.
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I don't really know what to say about Juniper. This was booked by Karolina as my birthday treat as our Casamia booking was pushed back, and back ... so we were really looking forward to it, quite excited by the idea of a selection of interesting and tasty morsels. We'd heard good things about the place and so hopes were high. It was a most depressing state of affairs, then, when course after course of terrible food was delivered following long, long waits between courses and luke warm white wine.
Chef clearly thinks he's a creative genius but, in reality, (s)he just likes quenelles. If you're reading this QUENELLES DO NOT MAKE FINE DINING! I know presentation is important but taste has to come first and I honestly thing nothing here was tasted. Everything was as sweet as a dessert. Ironically, the exception to that was the dessert.
I think it's safe to say we won't be visiting again. Hopefully our next dining experience will be better and I will doubtless ramble about it here again. Apologies for the length of the post today ... but some traumas need to be shared.
Bon Appetit ...
