JOK Barcelona
At JOK, we savored the spring menu's highlights: read on about our experience!
It's a Wednesday night, and your authors are were in the mood for a dinner date and also to continue our journey through Barcelona's culinary scene. Upon the recommendation of our friends, we decided to try Jok, a Catalan restaurant in Barcelona — this was our experience.
Passeig de Grácia is a street with some of Barcelona's best restaurants, and JOK is certainly in the running to be one of them. We had the opportunity to try their newly refreshed spring menu.
JOK makes it a point to base their menu on locally and fairly sourced ingredients, a fact that becomes quickly evident upon perusing their menu. For starters, we decided to order their grilled Galician razor clams and San Marzano tomato tartar.
The razor clams were nothing out of the ordinary, but the tomato tartar was an absolute delight. We are big fans of steak tartar, but to swap the beef for tomatoes is a daring yet brilliant innovation. Sour yet full of texture, it set the stage for the main course.
One of the main courses that we tried were the sautéed peas and sea urchins, a delightfully unexpected and delicious combination. It combines two distinct worlds, and has a good depth of flavour, even with a salad-like quality to it. It still left a lot to be desired when it came to contrasting its two flavours.
Our other main course was the veal fillet with Café Paris sauce and asparagus on the side. The restaurant recommends it along with sautéed turnips, but one of your authors believes good meat is best enjoyed with fries, and chose to order them instead. The meat was excellently cooked and rather tasty, but the sauce was the highlight of this course.
For dinner, we ordered both the strawberry ice cream and another one which features Bailey's liqueur. There isn't much to add on the former, but the latter was the highlight of the dinner - it was creamy and held its own favour, but also brought out the best of Bailey's.
JOK also features a bar, however, our cocktails lacked soul and were unimaginative at best. The bartender seemed extremely unenthusiastic and we cannot frankly recommend any of their house drinks.
Overall, JOK is a wonderful place to visit for a casual dinner or date night. The setting is extremely cozy and romantic, and the waitstaff are excellent and welcoming. Both the food and the drinks have a lot of room to improve, and we believe that the restaurant has a lot of untapped potential.
