To some, Saturday night is date night. To others, it’s fight night. I’m definitely not in the latter camp, so by default I’m happy to call it date night. One recent Saturday night, I went on a date. With M, of course, but it was a proper date – we got dressed up and ventured to Prahran for dinner at Jacques Reymond. This was our 2nd date to Jacques – the 1st was a few years back when we felt incredibly grown up and a little out of place going to such an elegant and expensive restaurant. There were a couple of memorable moments from that visit… Firstly, the dessert, though gorgeous and delicious, was absolutely itsy bitsy and stung at $24. Secondly, the lovely maitre d’ murmurred a very sincere ‘thank you, see you again soon!’ as we were leaving the restaurant – not that there was anything wrong with that, but… well, at those prices, ‘soon’ wasn’t going to happen anytime soon…
So we finally returned after a long hiatus. The dining room was just as elegant as I remembered – beautiful high ceilings, soft colours and plush furnishings. We were seated in one of the smaller rooms and, after ordering a couple of pre-dinner drinks, were treated to a complimentary appetiser of a cheesy choux pastry.
Choux pastry with gruyere cheese.
Neither M nor I were tempted by much on the a la carte menu, but thought the degustation would be too much food. In the end, we picked a few courses off the a la carte menu that we thought ‘would be okay’. To our delight, the descriptions didn’t do the dishes justice…
Roasted snapper, espelette pimento and mustard seed butter - a white onion tart, fluffy parsnip and yabbies, textures of enoki and Australian pure virgin olive oil, a green lettuce emulsion.
The ocean - warm flounder ‘sashimi’ with fresh grated horseradish and togarashi, a natural oyster and sea water, a warm oyster with wasabi dressing, crispy tempura of white anchovy
What sounded a little strange and unappetising on paper translated into delicious combinations of flavours and textures. The produce was fresh and the dishes were perfectly executed. You could see the painstaking detail that went into creating each element of these dishes. And as someone who is a stickler for details, I was mighty impressed.
The rocks – seared rouget and pak choi sesame, ginger and kaffir lime, abalone and turmeric kohlrabi, seaweed wakame, a clear citrus and cucumber vinaigrette.
Poached and roasted partridge, light oriental juices a delicate custard of livers and tarragon, fresh water crustacean and aromatic infusion, dry mild curry of young carrots and cauliflower.
Sweet and sour pekin duck like tucupi a spiced nougatine of flaked salt and ginger, a lemon sauce, sourness of wilted sorrel and crispy duck skin salad, four pepper squid and yoghurt.
Ohhh, it was all too pretty to eat. I loved the tender, juicy abalone of ‘The rocks’ (it’s hiding behind the bed of salad in the photo) and the rouget (= red mullet) was lightly seared and delicately sweet. M had the partridge dish which he thoroughly enjoyed and we both ordered the duck dish – the duck meat was a lovely pink and came with a subtle, Asian inspired sweet and sour sauce.
Our wine for the night was a Burgundy from 1995 – structured, slightly tannic and different to the pinot noirs we usually drink, which tend to be more fruity. The sommelier made the comment that he could smell truffles and we agreed! It had huge, unmissable truffles on the nose.
Volnay 1er Cru 'Les Ronceret' Jean Marc Boillot
With no room left for dessert, we finished off with a coffee and petit fours.
It was a great way to end the evening – I love petit fours! I love the fact that I can taste a few different bite-sized desserts without overindulging my sweet tooth and how they’re cute little miniatures of larger desserts.
There was a tiny hiccup with the service when the bill came and we discovered that they had overcharged us for the food. But once it was brought to their attention, the bill was quickly corrected and the coffees and petit fours were on the house.
And so, date night was a success! But really, how can you go wrong with beautiful food and beautiful wine, all consumed in beautiful surrounds? Oh, and the company wasn’t too bad either…!
