I dont' believe in the saying "eat like a king for brakfast, a prince for lunch and a pauper for dinner"; it doesn't suit me. I believe in eating like a king throughtout the day because food is a treat, gives pleasure rather than only satisfying a basic need. So then, I'm thinking, I want to feel pleasure three times a day, not only one, right? 

For me, dinner is the most pleasant meal of the day, when I want to eat like a queen. When I can relax and sink in my chair or sofa, not rush, take time to really see, taste and smell the food, catch up with my loved ones and just recharge. I want to eat like a friendly, funny queen, surrounded by friends, in a relaxed atmosphere, buzzing with chatter and laughter.

 

Mondays are usually the days when new culinary discoveries happen or cravings are satisfied. Mondays are the days when I attempt to eat in a restaurant I haven't been before or sample a cuisine that is yet unknown. How do I make my choices and based on what, you ask. Food preferences, recommendations, proximity to home (sometimes when I feel very lazy), but mostly curiosity and a constant need for new and different. The menu needs to excite me, wake up my taste buds, inspire me, satisfy a craving and my inquiring mind.

 

Last Monday, my friend and I have been trying the whole day to find a restaurant we would both be happy with. We wanted something new and close by. Research on Zomato, Round Menu, Time Out, even Two for One Go (P.S.: download this app, is genius! discounts for restaurants - good ones - , Spas - wink, wink to the girls and btw, very brilliant ones - and various entertainment activities. It is a bit confusing, but once you get the hang of it, you'll love it - wink wink).  The rescue came around 4pm, in the form of a unheard-of Asian restaurant, in Business Bay, praising itself on serving the finest Oriental cuisine, an ecletic mix of flavours and colours representing the dynamic region." With a dinner booking made for 6.30pm (I know, it's early. Very early, according to Dubai standards. But I recently went on a diet - not the "seafood diet; I sea food, I eat it" kind, a serious one - and am trying to avoid late dinners and snacks), I meet my friend at the metro station and this is how a journey through Business Bay begins.

 

Finding the restaurant can be quite challenging, but fear not, I have with me "that" friend good with maps and directions, so I rest assured that finding Jinja will be an easy task for him. He seems to be a fan of these adventures, these quests to unfamiliar parts of Dubai so, in the end, we're both happy: he enjoys the ride, I enjoy finding the destination.

 

Jinja is located in Business Bay, inside the Executive Tower, on the ground floor, taking up quite a bit of room. Although the building features wide spaces for F&B outlets, a small number are taken. Bob's fish and chips is there, Umi Sushi, Slice and a few others are already open; the pioneers. I am sure more will follow and I am dying to see some local brands and neighborhood cafes opening up around there because the area has great potential.

 

Walking in at 6.20pm can only guarantee you will have the whole restaurant to yourself. A very exclusive private dinner. Like my friend joked: "see, when I take you out for dinner, I book the whole restaurant for you. You have the chef cooking only for you. How exclusive is that?" Given that the restaurant was empty, we were proptly welcomed and given the freedom to choose out table. We could choose between wall benches, stand alone tables or these funky rounded couches with round tables, set up for 4. We chose the round table because of its comfort as well as privacy. The backrest is high and the couch is a bit longer than a half circle, given the feeling of a booth.

 

Jinja is spacious, boosting a capacity of at least 100 seats. In the open kitchen, the expediter is separated from the cooking station through a glass partition with a small opening through which the plates are passed. The final touches are made right in front of your eyes before the plates reach your table. There are also some odd decorations - plastic grapes, apples and oranges - and a hideous green coloured wall close to the entrance. I am not particulary fond of the color palette chosen to bring the place to life - tones of dark red (or purple), frog green as well as other greens, beige and black - but I do like the furniture and the fact that it is very comfortable and of a reasonable quality.

Being in a closed environment, there is little to no natural light. No problem; the amount of long chandeliers should make up for that, as well as the glass wall between the public space of the building and the dining area.

 

Once seated, I notice the table set up: chopsticks, a black napkin on a white plate and cutlery, on a black stone board. Elegant, maybe a bit too elegant, and simple, just how I like it. And then the menus came and, let me tell you, there is nothing simple about it. It took me roughly 1 minutes just to open it, not because I was busy with something else, simply because I didn't know how. It's foldable and long and the cover is round. It's very confusing. It was very entertaining for my friend, but very annoying (then it became funny) for me. 

 

The menu follows the concept - Asian kitchen, with dishes from all over the Orient. China and Japan are represented, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and even Vietnam (through the very uninspiring Vietnamese roll - a spring roll wrapped in rice pastry - , but still). The menu is large, but user-friendly. In brackets, next to each dish, the country of origin is written, so if you fancy a certain cuisine, your choice is a lot more facile. For some items, such as Thai curries or soups, one can choose between vegetables, chicken and beef/prawns. There is something for absolutely every Oriental food lover.

 

For starters, we chose the tom yum soup (my ultimate and forever favourite soup, the one I could eat every day for the rest of my life and be truly happy) and the Malaysian style chicken satay (my diet doesn't allow me to eat red meat. It doesn't allow me to eat chicken either, but what the hell, it's white meat, so it doesn't count as meat anyway). Before the starters arrived, prawn crackers with sweet chili sauce were served. Not oily at all and reasonably tasty, they pared well with the dip and made for a great start (even though we were inimaginably hungry, we can still judge the quality of the crackers. They were good. Hopefully, they will keep serving them free of charge but even if not, i'll have them).

 

The starters did not arrive in the same time which under any under circumstances would've have been totally unpleasant and upsetting, but not this time. This way, I had enough time to eat a reasonable "half" of my friend's 6 chicken skewers, before moving to my soup. The chicken was very soft and moist, nicely grilled and with a good color. I would've have liked a bit more salt and pepper in the marination, but my friend was happy to add more salt and pepper on it on his plate. But the warm peanut sauce served alongside the skewers was the highlight. I am not a big fan of peanuts in food (or peanut sauce, for that matter), I don't know why. Not in gado gado, not in a curry, not over noodles. But my friend is and, apparently, this is one of the best he had. What I can comment on is the great balance of flavours - I could distinguish peanut butter, chopped peanuts, coconut milk, maybe some sugar - and the texture - creamy and smooth, with the chopped peanuts giving it a bit more of a consistency-. I personally preffered the meat on its own, it was that tasty. 

 

My tom yum arrived soon after. I normally opt to have prawns in my tom yum, but this time (because of my diet.......) I chose to have vegetables only. My soup bowl was abundant in vegetables (some edible some not, which made the experience a bit complicated) - baby asparagus, brocolli, tomatoes, mushrooms, lemongrass, keffir leaves. And tofu. I never had brocolli in a tom yum before, it felt rather odd but with brocolli not having much flavor on its own, it didn't bother much. The broth was tasty, sour enough, not as hot as I wanted. "Tom yum" stands for " hot" (tom) and "sour" (yam), so bring it own. I also would've have loved its temperature to be higher, to really let the flavors come through the steam as well, instead of lukewarm. I think it was a good tom yum, but it's missing something. It's missing that " je ne sais quoi".

 

Note:If you wonder why I love tom yum so much, let me tell you: it feels like a kick in the ass, like a wake-up call. It is what we need after comfort food - you know, we spend days in bed eating ourselves fat, consuming pies and sweets and burgers and fries and whatnot, only to be more sad at the end. That's when tom yum comes in. It will kick you out of bed in a nanosecond and make you feel "ashamed" of all the eating you've done before. 

 

As main courses, I came face to face with Malaysian cuisine without even realizing, while my companion stayed true to one of his all-time favourites - Thai. I chose curry laksa. Laksa, a popular spicy noodle soup born at the crossroad of Chinese and Malay cultures, widely available on the streets of Singapore and Malaysia, can either be coconut based (the curry version) or fish based (asam). My main course / soup arrived in a black, hot clay bowl, ingeniously placed on what I initially thought was a small chafing dish. But no. It was only the bottom of a bamboo basket, wrapped in aluminium foil. Innovative and affordable solution. The true magic happened when I lifted the lid: mussels, shrimps, egg, bean sprouts, strips of curd puff, yellow mee noodles (wheat noodles), a fantastic orange broth and the most amazing aroma I felt in a long time. I was in a world of my own, making new discoveries. Before digging into it, I started playing with the chopsticks, trying to identify more ingredients, to assess my "prey".

 

The broth of the curry laksa is a mix of coconut milk, curry spice, lemongrass, ginger and many more, that packs heat (mild though) and creaminess. It tasted, more than anything, like a thinner yellow curry. The broth hosts the shrimps - perfectly cooked, carrying through the flavour of the broth beautifully - , the noodles  - well cooked, but just a bit too many for the size of the bowl that the dish was served in, making scopping all the ingredients at once challenging - and the mussels. For me, the mussels shined. Their "taste of the sea" balanced and cut through the creaminess and heartiness of the dish, adding a new layer to it and leaving a pleasant after taste.  The portion is generous, but that's ok, because once served, everyone around the table will want to share.

 

My friend was mesmerized with his dish - Khao Soi. Thai yellow curry, with noodles, bean sprouts, chicken, tofu and baby asparagus (probably many more other we didn't manage to identify). The curry was thick, creamy and full of flavour. He loved it, I thought it was too salty and a bit bitter. We both would have loved for it to have more heat, more of a kick to it. The ingredients was fresh and the dish, as a whole, had a vibrant colour palette: dark yellow, green and white.

 

Unfortunately, we couldn't fit dessert anymore. I even took half of my curry laksa to go, this is how generous the portions are (I can eat a lot, but this was too much). At 7.45 when we left, the restaurant started to get busy. Some of the customers seemed regulars (they knew their way around the menu, unlike others....), which is also a good sign and makes me confident that the restaurant is not only a "one hit wonder" but can perform constantly and consistently.

 

I'm glad I tried Jinja. It was a pleasant experience, with very good food, good service (not very smiling waiters, but what to do, you can;t have it all), in a relaxed ambiance. I will be back for more. But this time, with more friends. We need to bring some life into this place and spread the word.