Handsome: the dining room at Jeru
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures L)“How was your experience at Jeru?” came the email, with a request to rate the restaurant from one star to five. “Oh dear,” I thought, “they’ve already overestimated things.”
I should have known better. Berkeley Square attracts money hoicked from God knows where and best not to ask; if nightingales still sing here, they’ll have fillers in their beaks and Brazilian wing lifts. Hit restaurants in these parts are marked by an insistence on glitz, pulsing club beats sans melody, names that don’t make sense and what can only be a deliberate disinterest in the food.
But Jeru had promise. The chef behind it, Roy Ner, is a name in Australia and apparently an award-winning one, though I can’t dig up exactly which prize he’s picked up, so for all I know it could have been third place in a soapbox derby. Still, the Israeli-born chef has an astonishing stack of good press, and Jeru was offering a far-reaching take on Middle Eastern cooking, which happens to be a favourite.
Met by a barked “Which one’s Ellis?” on our arrival — the line managing cunningly to both inflate and deflate my ego simultaneously — I think it’s fair to flag that they likely realised a review was on. Hints included a minder hovering beside our table for the entire evening, and another man, whom my friend insists was called Typhoon, extravangantly complimenting our every choice. “You picked the best dish!” he said to both of us, separately. Being within earshot of each other — sharing a table will do that — his sincerity was in doubt. Besides, we made one bad choice very early on as my pal Kieran, who works in drinks, asked for a martini. “How is it?” I asked, and he said: “Here, you try,” which sounded an awful lot like a threat.
Anyway, onwards. The room is undoubtedly a looker, all artfully scrubbed stone walls and crockery that costs a month’s mortgage, that sort of thing. It’s true this briefly threatened to disappear from sight when the open kitchen began to cough smoke from fire-breathing ovens, but eventually the fog lifted. A menu appeared. “Bread is the core of the meal and sharing a meal is the start of an everlasting friendship,” it read, quoting chef Ner. Sage advice. Unfortunately — and I have checked and rechecked the photos — our menu proffered no bread. Neither did the staff. And so I suppose now Kieran and I won’t see each other ever again.
But this weird inconsistency — for a menu to recommend something it doesn’t have — seemed representative of a restaurant that as a whole needs a good talking-to. Because Jeru could actually be rather good. A small-for-£12 bowl of burnt mejadra rice was delicious: lentils, rice and onions so boldly scented, the smell leapt out of the bowl and jitterbugged across the table. Duck bites came with tart kumquat, the citrus smartly brightening the smoked meat.
‘How’s the martini?’ I asked and my friend said: ‘Here, you try,’ which sounded an awful lot like a threat
But monkfish was dried-out, presumably left too long under the heat-lamp, and with such an absence of flavour I briefly wondered if I had Covid all over again. Its sauce, meant to be a peppercorn béarnaise, tasted of coronation chicken. Maybe they have a fish issue as samke harra, where a spicy tahini sauce blankets a baked fillet, contained trout that could have been just about anything at all, maybe a sock. Lamb was no better — all sinew — while a courgette salad was pretty, but pretty dreadful too, mostly because they’d used vegan feta. I thought about calling the police.
But the word isn’t “hated”, it’s “frustrated”. This was a night of squandered potential, a menu of possibility corrupted by yawning execution. And while much of the mediocrity may get a pass from the monied set who come to these places, at £281.25 for two with one of the cheaper bottles of wine (£60) from the unsparingly pricey list, it was a disgrace.
I felt for our waiter, interested, attentive and rather good, who kept asking how it was. “Delightful,” we grimaced, “delicious.” We didn’t have the heart to say otherwise. And somehow I think he knew it.
