Jiraffe Bistro Menu
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 13:33
Like SoCalorie, I too took advantage of a Monday special at the last minute.
Last night around 6:30 we called Jiraffe to see a) what their bistro menu was and b) could we come eat in a half hour. It turned out that the bistro menu was appealing and they could seat four of us at 7:00.
We found street parking around the corner, on 6th Street and walked into the very small foyer where we were greeted by the Maitre d’ Jiraffe. A hostess seated us upstairs immediately and we were presented with Bistro Menu, as well as the normal menu.
The story with the Bistro Menu is that, on Mondays, Jiraffe serves a three course prix fixe menu for $29 which includes a starter, main and dessert course. They also serve a red and a wine wine in carafes for $14.
Last night there were two choices for the starter, an Asian Chicken Salad and a Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi. The main course was a choice between New Zealand Snapper and Beef Short Ribs. For dessert, we were to have a peach melba. The red wine option was a Bordeaux (from France, naturally) and a South African Sauvignon Blanc. We decided to have a taste of everything, except for the red wine.
The server brought out an Amuse Bouche of a small spinach quiche with a tomato bruschetta, as well as some tasty bread and butter. The Amuse Bouche was nice, but not too remarkable and a bit greasy actually.
The starters came out and it was a battle of aromas. The small serving of the gnocchi was topped with a light cream and basil sauce, as well as a some shaved parmesan. The chicken salad had a strong sesame oil smell, which combined with ginger and some vinegar for a wonderful flavor punch. The salad was packed with small slices of roasted chicken, along with cabbage and other finely chopped veggies. I had a couple bites of the gnocchi as well, the small pillows of spinach and ricotta melted in my mouth with the delicious sauce as a perfect compliment.
After I finished cleaning the sauces off the plate and bowl with our bread (manners, me? afraid not), we had our main dishes.
The fish came out on a plate that could only be described as a serving platter. A large bed of bok choy supported a nice sized piece of snapper. A light lemon cream sauce rimmed the plate. The fish was served skin up and the skin was cooked until crispy, and had a very mild flavor. Snapper is a fish that can have a bit of a, well, fishy taste, but this piece was extremely mild. The sauce, veggies and snapper were delightful together, and I loaded up fork after fork of the combo.
After digging into the fish, I passed the plate to my left and sampled the short ribs. The large piece of meat was served bone-in, on top of rigatoni pasta. The meat was stewed and soft, it could be pulled off the bone with only a fork. The flavorful sauce worked its way into the ribs and, by nature, the meat was moist. The rigatoni was good, but unremarkable.
Thoroughly stuffed, dessert was still to come. We weren’t quite sure what a peach melba was. We were in for a treat, the melba is a peeled peach, topped with vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with sliced almonds and then doused in a delicious rasberry syrup. Tasty? Yes.
The meal was delicious and for a cheap somewhat reasonable price, we left feeling stuffed. Service, however, was a bit spotty. I’m not sure if it was because we were the riff raff going for the Bistro Menu, but I didn’t feel like the server really wanted to be there. She was not very forthcoming about the details of dinner and the only reason we were able to order the carafes of wine was because my finacee knew about them before we came to dinner. We also wanted to order an additional dessert off of the normal menu and I had to flag down the waitress from the wait station where she was having an animated conversation with another server, hopefully not about us!
The setting is very pleasant, however, and I would go back without hesitation, although there are a lot of specials to try out and there is only so much time to eat!
Jiraffe
502 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 917-6671
By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.