JS Restaurant

THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2009.

Food when it moves out of its ethnic origins morphs. To adapt itself for sale to new markets it leavens off, rids itself of the sharper edges. If it comes from a working class tradition it irons out unsophisticated rawness. Red Chilli in Chinatown might feel totally authentic with its stir-fried pigs intestines and Chinese black pudding but it isn’t what peasants eat in isolated villages.

I’ve never eaten a mouse-mat before. And if I did I probably wouldn’t want to scorch it first. Occasionally hideous presentation can disguise good flavours but not here. For once in my life I would have loved to sell my sole.

Most food we believe is a bona fide genuine expression of ethnic cooking is nothing of the sort. If it’s not been changed to make it more acceptable to a greater range of tastebuds then it’s moved on to keep up with changes in food fashion. Even high French cuisine, which unlike most is top down food, created by chefs rather than in family kitchens, is subject to this and very different today from what it was in the court of Louis XIV.

Some cuisines don’t seem to have made that leap especially when it comes to eating out. Halal food in the form of Indian subcontinent food in restaurants is now everywhere and adapted to the modern market. Kosher food in the Sephardic (Mediterranean) and Ashkenazy (Eastern European) tradition has nothing like it when it comes to restaurants.

There are some superb Jewish owned bakers and delis in Manchester - Hyman’s on Waterloo Road for example - but in a city with a community that dates back more than two hundred years there are very few places to properly sit down and eat.

Which brings us to JS Restaurant on Kings Road, Prestwich.

It’s hard to blame either tradition or the failure to adapt for what I received here. The menu is vast but the quality low, the presentation basic, and the flavours drab. Sometimes you take a while to understand unfamiliar cuisines (although the JS menu has little that is unusual) and sometimes the food is plain bad. It was a case of the latter at JS.

The mains summed this up. The lemon sole (£14.50) in particular, was horrific, with the consistency and appearance of a yellowing mouse-mat. Now I’ve never eaten a mouse-mat before. And if I did I probably wouldn’t want to scorch it. Occasionally hideous presentation can disguise good flavours but not here. For once in my life I would have loved to sell my sole. If dust has a flavour then this embodied it. The lettuce on the side of the plate looked scared and curled quivering away.

The plate of salt beef (£14.50) was better by a fraction but overwhelming. By the fifteenth slice it was beginning to feel like someone was inserting more salt beef through a hole under the plate. The stuff wouldn’t go away and instead of having a good kicking hard robust taste was a flaccid and dreary thing. The menu had promised a ‘garnish’ of pickled cucumbers and homemade coleslaw. Check our picture for the elaborate nature of this garnish. The dessert of apple strudel (£3.50) was acceptable for cafe.

In truth JS Restaurant should drop the word restaurant. It’s a run-of-mill cafe and nothing more, with an old-fashioned attitude and decor

The only dish I sort of enjoyed, out of several, was the Isreali platter, sorry the Ultimate Israeli Platter (£10.95 for two). This had hummous, falafel, tehini, shawarma, pickles, chopped salad and pitta bread. There was a good range of foods and flavours to pick over and the dish at least looked edible. Later I wished, given the subsequent courses that the Ultimate Platter had been my last. It also proved that the big problems occur in this place when actual cooking is involved.

In truth JS Restaurant should drop the word restaurant. It’s a run-of-mill cafe and nothing more, with an old-fashioned attitude and decor that looks pure 1985. The service is hesitant and awkward. Maybe it doesn’t think it needs to improve, when we bowled in it was busy, but if it wants to attract custom other than hard-core regulars, it needs a massive re-think. But that might be part of the problem: while it isn’t pleasant to give independent places a kicking, you get the feeling that JS doesn’t care one bit.

This is shame and in the meantime Manchester is still waiting for a decent kosher restaurant that delivers and re-interprets Jewish food for an intrigued audience. We’re still waiting for that leap in the city that other cuisines have been making for decades.