Dinner at Me & Mrs. Jones, Kingston

After being unable to get a booking at eightysix in Braddon for yesterday, ‘A’ suggested that we give Me & Mrs. Jones a try. I’d never been and had only heard of it as a breakfast/lunch place, but he said he’s been there several times for dinner and that it was excellent. Giving the online menu a lookover, I decided I was actually pretty excited by the dishes. The boyfriend is always excited when I say we’re going to some place that isn’t Asian cuisine, so he agreed immediately.

The restaurant has that industrial warehouse look, which has been very popular in many of the newer, trendy restaurants. It has an open kitchen, which I always enjoy seeing. I also liked that they had a lot of space and didn’t need to put the tables right on top of each other.

Looking at the menu, we knew right away that we wanted the sliders (anything with the word ‘american’ in the description always grabs the boy’s attention). None of us being fond of mustard, we ordered them sans dijon, and out came three perfect tiny little cheeseburgers. We were a little over-eager when the dish came out so I forgot to snap a picture until ‘A’ reminded me right after we all took our first bite!

Sliders ($15.00) – american style cheeseburger with dijon mustard, house pickles, and tomato relish [ordered without mustard]

The burgers were cooked a little bit too well for my taste (not overdone but I generally order mine medium rare). Despite that, we all really enjoyed them. The tomato relish was more of a ketchup with chopped onions, but I think I actually prefer that to what I was expecting of tomato relish.

We also ordered one of the entree specials that night, which was a bruschetta with prosciutto, served up on their house-baked sourdough. This was a visually impressive dish with a nice large pieces of prosciutto. The sourdough was awesome, and though prosciutto is not a traditional part of the dish, I thought it went really well. The balsamic was more of a reduction than a glaze and I thought that made it a bit too sweet, preferring the tangy taste of the vinegar. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this dish.

Bruschetta ($14.00) – Served on sourdough with prosciutto

For our mains, ‘A’ ordered the fish of the day (more details below), I ordered the duck confit, and the boyfriend ordered the vodka-cured salmon. ‘J’ had ordered that dish from memory after looking at the menu before we went. The waitress informed us that was actually a small dish and he might want to order another. Surprised, I looked back at the menu and saw that it was indeed listed as an Entree. As it turns out, the dishes and pricing are the same on both the online menu and the in-house menu; however, the classifications of entrees vs. mains are slightly shuffled around. Slightly flustered, the boyfriend returned to the menu looking for something else to order. The waitress suggested the duck wings, and he agreed.

I don’t like cooked or cured fish (shellfish and sushi are a different story), so the following opinions are based off of what ‘A’ and ‘J’ told me. The Fish of the Day was a Silver Dory served with a buttersquash medallion and some sort of puree. ‘A’ must have enjoyed it because he inhaled the entire dish within minutes. I consider myself a fast eater but wow. He said that he really like the butternut medallion, which had a smoky flavour to it.

Fish of the Day ($34) – Silver Dory with Butternut Medallion

I thought my dish, the duck confit, was surprisingly large for this type of trendy restaurant.

Duck confit ($34) – with nori coated sticky rice,
chilli soy caramel, sesame greens
and coriander mint relish

It came with two meaty pieces of duck, sesame-fried bok choy, and what I can only describe as a yaki-onigiri (fried rice ball), though the menu describes it as nori coated sticky rice. I really enjoyed the sesame flavour on the bok choy, but I think my favourite part of the dish was the fried rice patty, which I dipped in the chili-soy caramel/relish sauce. I can’t say that I really noticed the relish in the sauce, but it had that sweet soy flavour that went really well with the rice. The duck was a bit dry and unremarkable, but I was impressed with the amount of it. I didn’t finish the second piece, instead deciding to save room for dessert.

Both of the boyfriend’s dishes ended up being kind of disappointing. First, the duck wing dish we didn’t understand at all.

Duck wings ($14) – twice cooked with garlic crostini’s
and spiced fruit chutney

The dish was a pile of deep-fried bones with almost no meat on them, served with two small pieces of garlic bread (to eat the bones on?) and a dip (?) of sweet chutney that didn’t seem to pair well with either the duck bones or crostini. This dish went almost untouched and I don’t understand how it could be a recommended dish.
Then, maybe we didn’t read the menu properly, but we sort of expected a salmon filet when he ordered the vodka-cured salmon (maybe we thought ‘infused’ instead of ‘cured’). What came out was a lox salad.

Vodka-cured salmon ($22) – with bavarian rye crisps, lemon
fennel jam, baby capers, shaved
tuscan onion, fresh ricotta, and
watercress

‘J’ said the salmon wasn’t bad, but he didn’t taste any vodka. He actually thought the tastiest part of the dish was the crumbled ricotta. The salad came with ‘bavarian rye crisps’, which we concluded were supposed to be bagel chips to eat the lox on. The boyfriend thought these were overbaked and didn’t add anything to the dish. Ultimately, he actually used the crostini from the duck wing dish to eat with the salmon, which is the only reason the duck wing dish wasn’t a complete waste.
His final opinion on the dinner part of the meal was that he really wished he had two more orders of sliders instead of either of the dishes he ordered.

On to dessert, ‘A’ already knew that the Mars Bar Fondant was the the dish to get, but I was intrigued by the Winter Crumble, being a huge fan of sour cherries. The boyfriend decided on the profiteroles.

My winter crumble was served warm with a side of pomegranate ice cream. Unfortunately, the ice cream was topped with pistachios and the crumble topping had nuts in it as well. And unfortunately, I don’t like nuts (my greatest weakness as a food critic revealed – dislike of nuts and cooked fish).

Winter Crumble ($14) – with stewed rhubarb, sour cherries
and pomegranate ice cream

The crumble itself was like an apple crumble with dried sour cherries. Not what I was expecting but I actually enjoyed it. I ate some of the topping, despite the nuts. Even if it didn’t have nuts in it, I think there was too much crumble to filling ratio.

‘J’ really enjoyed his profiteroles, which redeemed the meal in his opinion. Too much nut flavour in this dish for me again, but ‘J’ had nothing bad to say.

Profiteroles ($18) – custard filled with hazelnut
icecream, hot chocolate ganache and
praline

Still, the clear winner was the Mars Bar Fondant, essentially a chocolate lava cake with nougat ice cream and salted caramel filling, which all came together to make it the most decadent ‘Mars Bar’ ever.

Mars Bar Fondant ($15) – warm chocolate pudding with liquid
salted caramel centre and nougat
icecream

Mars Bar Fondant with the gooey salted caramel centre spilling out

Overall, I would have to say that the dishes here were very hit or miss, and even with all the descriptions in the menu, it was very hard to tell what would actually be on the plate when it came out. I’ve heard good things about the breakfast/lunch and might try that out, but I would have to conclude that I won’t be returning again for the dinner.

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http://www.mmjones.com.au/