Restaurant Review 360 Round Up: Jasmine Provincial Vietnamese Restaurant

 

Photo courtesy of Michael at www.herbivoracious.com

Thanks to everyone who particpated in the Restaurant Review 360, it sounds like everyone enjoyed their food–even the Surly Gourmand seemed to have to keep their profanity to a minimum (by SG standards, anyways). I’m hoping we’ll get a few late entries, but I wanted to get this up for everyone to read, eat and enjoy!

Over at Herbivoracious, Michael was a little worried at first that he wouldn’t get veg-friendly food, luckily by the time he reached the end of the novel like selection, he found a novel vegetarian selection: about 20 options. ”Even better,” he says, “they seem to understand what vegetarian means.” He declared the restaurant victorious in the end: “I really noticed that the kitchen doesn’t take shortcuts. The dishes are made with that extra bit of attention and hand work that makes all of the difference. Combined with the attractive, modern, atmosphere, and good service, and I think you’ve got a winner.”

Meanwhile, over at the Surly Gourmand, they described the pink elephant in the room: “When you walk in the door the first thing you see is a humidifier which spits a thin ribbon of steam into the room. I foolishly thought it was a rice cooker until I realized that a high volume restaurant could never get by with a rice cooker the size of a toaster oven.” The whole paragraph is really hilarious, if you are the type who appreciates that type of humor (I am). Eventually it gets to the food, and while they, like I, enjoyed the shrimp on sugarcane, in the end they say “Jasmine is a strange motherfucking place. It’s mostly good…” Which I think is about the most dead on statement about the place I’ve read yet.

I fought the urge to compare everything to the Tamarind Tree. This dish is better, this one is worse and managed to write a little something up. Like Michael, I found the heart that goes into the restaurant changed my opinion, “this is a delicious, cheap restaurant where you are served by heartfelt servers. The owner was walking around, inspecting details with the care in his eye that you can sense as a diner. It does make a difference.”

In addition to these three posts (hopefully with more to come? anyone? Bueller?) I recieved an email from a blogger who had disliked her experience so much that she was unwilling to write about it. While I am disappointed both because I like the restaurant, and because I want all opinions represented, I felt that it was important to inform readers that such an experience had occured. I have no further information about the incident.

Thanks to everyone who particpated, and if you join in late, feel free to post and link, I’ll get you up on here!