Raw Appeal
Delicious and dogma-free Jade Café needs only a more seasoned staff
The first great thing about Jade Café - a raw, organic, vegan fusion restaurant near Sunset Junction in Silver Lake - is its relaxed, nonconfrontational atmosphere. The small dining room beckons with dark wood furniture and warm red lighting; the staff is calm; and the menu offers no self-righteous mission statement.
For the uninitiated, raw food is purportedly outrageously nutritionally superior to its cooked counterpart. The theory (some say scientific fact) is that heating a food above 118 degrees substantially diminishes proteins and vitamins, concentrates pesticides, and, most critically, destroys enzymes that facilitate digestion and absorption. As partial proof, hardcore enthusiasts submit that humans are the only creatures on earth who cook their food, and they suffer the most diseases.
Happily, Jade Café celebrates "living food" but doesn't shame you for every hamburger or even steamed veggie that's passed your lips. Instead, renowned raw chef Lesa Carlson and operations manager Natally Raisin emphasize simply serving delicious meals.
And delicious, by and large, they are. On a recent visit, we began with the explosively flavorful garlic jicama bruschetta ($6) - crispy, cracker-like rounds of dehydrated jicama piled high with minced red pepper, then generously doused with garlic oil and lemon juice. Less successful were the spring rolls ($7) - paper-thin dehydrated coconut meat (indeed reminiscent of rice pasta) wrapped around a slimy julienne of carrots, mung beans, celery, and red pepper. Although punched up with cilantro and plum sauce, the tiny rolls were too bland.
Next came lemon fennel soup ($7), graced with sliced fennel and served in an elegant boat-shaped bowl. The rich broth was so bright with citrus, I honestly don't know if it arrived slightly warmed or just went down that way. It was a gorgeous dish, one I'm still dreaming about.
We shared three main courses. The Squash Hash Brown Stacks ($16) also employed the dehydration technique, which gave the shredded squash a fried texture. Moist and meaty portobello pieces, a bed of salad greens, a spicy chili sauce, and nut-based "cream cheese" made for a perfect balance of textures and spiciness. The Cheese and Spinach Pastries ($15) were also lovely - here, dehydrated jicama became a toothsome ravioli (three silver-dollar-sized ones per plate), stuffed with a mix of spinach, shiitake mushrooms, and ground almond cheese. Our favorite was a holiday special: a portobello cap, marinated and dehydrated in herbs and spices, then reconstituted for a moist, "cooked" texture. On top was soaked-until-tender wild rice, accompanied by "sautéed" (dehydrated and reconstituted) greens. We also tried a selection of sides: chunky cranberry sauce (exactly as you might have it at home); stuffing (a pasty and not very tasty kamut-based dish); and mashed root vegetables (displeasingly gelatinous).
Starches seem to suffer in raw translation, but it was dessert I approached with the most trepidation - raw cuisine's dependence on dates typically yields sweets far more cloying than most sugar-based ones. The seasonal pecan pie, which relied on the dried fruit to glue the pecans together, fell into this category, although my guests enjoyed it. The pumpkin pie, made with puréed sweet potatoes and then chilled until "set," was more palatable; I prefer more spice, but one companion declared this version virtually indistinguishable from the "real" thing.
The Chocolate Lava Cake ($8), however, made up for any previous disappointments. The traditional type - a small chocolate cake reheated before serving to affect a molten chocolate interior - is difficult to cook properly, and I've had many a bummer bite of burnt chocolate as a result. But leave it to a raw chef to create perfection - no oven means no risk of singeing this cake-like mound (almond meal mixed with coconut oil and raw chocolate), which oozed a sublime sauce of raw chocolate blended with coconut milk and agave. A vivid raspberry sauce came alongside. I was delirious.
The only true misstep was the service. If the absence of proselytizing is one of Jade's pluses, its undereducated waitstaff is its major minus. The food emerged speedily enough, but two visits and a phone call failed to produce a staffer capable of describing ingredients or preparation methods. This could prove problematic for a restaurant that will undoubtedly attract patrons with questions, not to mention food allergies. (We were misinformed, for example, about which dishes included coconut.) Once Carlson and Raisin spend more time teaching their team, Jade should have it made.
Published: 01/12/2006
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