This is a tricky one. I only want to say good things about Jakob’s, a simple café on Gloucester Road we visited on a week day evening in October. The owner was incredibly charming, offering us free dessert, a discounted bottle of Armenian wine and generous servings. She played us Armenian music, gave me a gift of Armenian cherry juice (with whole cherries inside!) to drink at home, and then plied us with satsumas to eat on the train.
This “Armenian hospitality” certainly wowed us (Alf and I were joined by our mum on this outing). The owner informed us of her plans to cook more authentic cuisine next year, and she’d even invested in an oven which would let her cook more of the country’s dishes. Besides plans for food, she assured us she’d soon be getting more reasonably-priced Armenian wine in stock (the cheapest authentic Armenian red, at £34.99, was almost as steep as Mount Ararat).
But, I also owe it to you to be honest.
Jakob’s is a perfectly fine café, and a decent enough lunch spot if you happen to be in the area… but I’m not terribly sure about the genuine Armenian-ness of the food; a lot of it seemed to be general Mediterranean fare. Alf had meatballs in tomato sauce, Mum had a herb frittata with ratatouille, I had a dish that was a cross between lasagne and moussaka (it had pasta, white sauce and aubergines in with minced lamb).
The starters were perhaps more identifiably Armenian, with rice stuffed fine leaves and a yoghurt/beetroot dip which may or may not be especially Armenian, but did taste good.
Was it nice? Yes, Jakob’s provides decent home-cooked food. Did I feel like I’d got a genuine experience of the food of this Caucasian country? Probably not.
I think we only consumed two things that really gave us the feeling of travelling to Armenia. One was the wine, which was nice. The other was a very odd dessert comprising of grape molasses dried around a string of walnuts. Imagine the texture and shape of a garden hose, with a mildly sweet, fruity flavour.
As I say, the friendliness of the owner and the welcome we received meant I’d certainly pop in for lunch again if I were ever in the area. It’s not quite somewhere I’d recommend for an evening meal – though that might change with a new menu and oven next year.
Score: 6/10
Cost: £90 for starters, main and wine for three (we were given a reduced price for the wine, from £35 to £24, since they’d run out of the house bottles)
Location: 20 Gloucester Rd, South Kensington, London SW7 4RB
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