The Jasmin Indian Restaurant
31 Hindmarsh Square
Adelaide South Australia 5000
e www.jasmin.com.au
e Not Available
t +61 8 8223 7837
f +61 8 8215 0365
open Lunch Thursday and Friday 12 noon till 2.00 pm, dinner Tuesday to Saturday 5.30 pm till 9.30 pm
gg top 20 — included since inaugural edition 2006
FOOD The Jasmin is the only restaurant in Adelaide where I can take high flying international guests, those lucky snotty types who frequent Michelin three stars on an almost daily basis and criticize everything in Adelaide from the greeting at the door, to the service, the wine list, the experience and most disappointingly (in my case) the food. To avoid dramas and disappointments we mainly eat at home except when faced with my instance that we visit my favourite Adelaide restaurant, whish to their amusement is an Indian restaurant the Jasmin. The question is always “what’s the dress?” and our teasing response “wear your jim jams if you like!” always draws a look of distrustful distain and throws them into complete confusion. If possible we orchestrate their entry into the restaurant so they go first to enjoy their surprise at that wonderful waft of exotic perfume that assails one when opening the door. They’re already confused but tantalized by their anal expectations of what Adelaide’s best restaurant, a restaurant of such fame might be.
You can’t really call the Jasmin a casual environment but there is no necessity for any insistence of silly dress code. True it doesn’t have tablecloths, but the immaculate environment has highly polished wooden tables, excellent glassware, linen serviettes, beautiful extravagant flowers and wonderful service that sets the standard but not the environment. The beauty of their subterranean environment is the paintings of their friend, artist Tom Cleghorn. Food and art and artists and restaurants seem to have a way of finding each other. Cleghorn’s wonderful use of colour and texture enlivens the room and his stolen serviettes are utterly marvelous. Tom is a man well into his eighties who will head to the Flinders which he loves to paint with his mate David Dryden with nothing but a boot full of best South Australian Shiraz and not a drop of water on board. Cleghorn, like the Jasmin’s executive chef Anant Singh is an iconic South Australian.
My love for the Singh family is unashamedly worn on my sleeve. They have been friends for more than 30 years. I love them for their generosity, consistency and am so glad they are rewarded in this life and not the next. For years they have fed the homeless on a Thursday night and whilst they could easily keep left overs and freeze them, an offering that would still be gratefully received they cook fresh each week and make a special effort at Christmas time.
So what do you need to know about the food? Nothing really! If you will eat anything the best option is to say feed me and if you’re a little more cautious explain what you like to eat and indicate the things that you don’t like or take one of their banquet options. The only problem we have with the Jasmin is their generosity and the fact that their food is so, so luscious we just keep eating. We always leave feeling a little like the balloon man in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian ready to explode because it is just so good we can’t stop eating.
We never order off the menu and love being given new dishes to go with our ’must have’ favourites like Cheese naans, Butter chicken, Chicken Tikka, Pecoras and Tandoori lamb chops, Tandoori mushrooms and Fish naans and, and! From the appetisers: Vegetable Pakoras, Alu, Chicken and Fish Tikkas and Samosas have accompanying sauces. They serve a wide range of really flavoursome vegetarian food that can be chosen, a la carte, from their sides dishes. Personal choices are the Palak Paneer, the cottage cheese cooked in spinach and Alu Ghobi, a mildly spiced cauliflower and potato dish. On our most recent visit the Chicken livers in were simply divine. Perfectly cooked, set but still pink, in a beautiful creamy mildly spiced coconut curry sauce mildly accented with garam masala, it was a sauce that did not overpower the flavour of the chicken livers, they were divine! We had a succession of all of our favourites and kept eating long after we should have stopped, but it was just so good.
The Singh family shares a love of sweets. Traditional dessert offerings are the Gulab Jamun, Kulfi (my choice), and Suji Halwa, the divine Indian semolina pudding not unlike the Greek halwa and Gulab Jamins that undersell their Western desserts by a very long way because all of their desserts are utterly desireable. Zeffiei’s Orange Cake, made by Anant’s friend Zeffie Kathreptis of the former Mezes Restaurant is truly sublime so we usually order one as well.
Anant Singh’s partner in business and life, husband Jaspir celebrates his 80th birthday this very weekend and whilst we might tease him when he whinges about life and marriage (like a man) that any devotee of Anant’s wonderful cooking would happily trade his place. Anant’s spoon remains ever ready, tasting and ensuring consistency, and most importantly listening to her customers. Anant does not just keep everyone’s favourites on her menu, but she is always adding dishes she knows they will adore. Their head chef Momrej Shaikh must live in terror of the loyalty of her first Australian apprentice, her white Australian son, George Bondanenko who understands Anant’s food better than anyone else and has worked with his Indian mother longer than any other person in the kitchen.
Owners Amrik Singh (Adelaide’s most handsome bachelor) and sister Shiela have formed a unique and unusually harmonious partnership that in combination with the longevity of restaurant manager Simon Lambert and long–term front of house Lee Skrabanich, who moonlights as a high rise window cleaner (you’ve got to love that) provide a consistency rare in the Australian restaurant world. Between them they know the names of at least 90% of the patrons who come through their doors and show a genuine welcome to those few they don’t. Their team is a great example of what a South Australian tourism experience should really be or for that matter what any restaurant should be.
2010 is the celebration of 30 years for the Jasmin Indian Restaurant. Their longevity is so deserved. Long live the Jasmin under the reign of the Singh family. Order anything you fancy with complete confidence.
We are planning cooking classes with Australia’s queen of Indian cooking Anant Singh 2010 and we hope from those classes will finally come the Jasmin Indian Restaurant cookbook and have some change after her classes of executing her dishes with some degree of success.
WINE John Duval’s 06 Plexus GSM, sorry SGM, Shiraz, Grenache, Mouvedre, by the glass! Now there’s a clever idea because it is such a gorgeous exquisite balanced wine that one glass slides by so easily there isn’t any option other than to have another. Mainly we maintained “just to make absolutely sure it was as good as the first glass”. What a lie pretending we’d never tasted the wine before because it is one of our favourites, but so rarely found by the glass! Like many restaurants with winemaker mates the wine list at the Jasmin is reflection of their loyalty to their friends and what a list of South Australia’s wine industry hoi polloi it is. They have five gorgeous French Champagnes and a smattering of interesting old world wines, and a price range that is as low as $22 per bottle for their house wine and entry point of name labels at $28 to much more expensive wines. Their price structure is something of an indication of their clientele that ranges from a devoted local clientele whose ages range from about nine to ninety that includes half starved and utterly broke students, an especially devoted following from Adelaide’s, Indian clientele or any other culture with and Indian influence, tourists and, I hate to add international cricket enthusiasts. It always comes as a surprise to find that Shiraz is the highest selling wine variety at the Jasmin and it is hard to wonder if this is an Australian palate preference or a real wine match but we have come to love refined Australian Shiraz or Shiraz blends with the Jasmin food.
OWNER — Amrik Singh, Simon Lambert, Julia, Andrew
EXECUTIVE CHEF — Anant Singh
RESTAURANT MANAGERS — Simon Lambert and Julia
Anant Singh — Galaxy Guide Inaugural Icon Chef 2006
