Restaurant Week: JoJo.

I had my first restaurant week meal today at JoJo, one of Jean-Georges Vongeritchen's many New York restaurants. Here is what his website has to say:

"At Jo Jo, he introduced us to his 'vibrant and spare cuisine' whose intense flavors and satisfying textures he created by eschewing traditional meat stocks for vegetables juices and fruit essences, light broths and herbal vinaigrettes. Jo Jo was named Best New Restaurant of the Year by John Mariani in Esquire and earned three-stars from The New York Times, which summed up his contemporary French cuisine in the sentence "His food took my breath away.""

Disclaimer: In reality, I am in no way qualified to be a professional food critic; I do, however, operate under the illusion that I am. So, please, take any and all of my opinions on these restaurants with a grain of salt, as my comments are as likely to be legitimate as they are to be off the mark. My tongue deserves the blame for claims that are wildly inaccurate.

Now for the pictures.

Shrimp brushed with orange something-er-other and artichoke on a salad of arugula.

Unless I missed something, the orange rub on the shrimp was barely noticeable. Another problem: the vinagrette was puddled at the bottom to one side of the plate, so at first I thought the salad had just been very sparingly dressed. Once I mixed the arugula, though -- halfway through eating the dish -- the flavors came together nicely. Not overly impressive, but satisfactory.


Prime Sirloin with mushroom and white asparagus in a soy and something else reduction. Not pictured: very crispy french fries.

Given the frugal nature of most restaurants with their $24 prixe fix lunches, I was expecting just a few bites, and not much more. To my surprise, the piece of sirloin was surprisingly filling. It was cooked just the way I like, and the reduction did not take away from the mushrooms or asparagus in the slightest. For carnivores, this is a fantastic dish.

And finally for the sugarphiles out there, espresso chocolate mousse with hazelnuts.

This could accurately be described as marshmellow-like in texture, but replace the white marshammellow material, whatever the hell it is, with light, soft chocolate with hints of espresso. I don't even like deserts much, mainly because they tend to overwhelm the preceeding parts of the meal, but this mousse was airy and mild enough to provide a great compliment to the meal as a whole.