Jöro, Sheffield

Before it comes to the stage of trying the food at Jöro, you'd be forgiven for assuming that a certain Place In Copenhagen features as a significant influence on the way they go about things here in Sheffield. There's the name, of course - Old Norse for 'earth' and pronounced 'yoro' which as a nice ring to it and looks suitably Nordic written down with its umlaut. And then there's the building itself - is there anything more thrustingly modern than a converted shipping container? It's beautifully done, too, without a bad table in the house, each well-spaced and sensitively lit, bringing to mind the industrial aesthetic of another Copenhagen institution Amass. So far, so familiar.

And yet to dismiss Jöro as a Yorkshire Noma is to do it a great disservice. And not only because I thought Noma was far too pleased with its mastery of odd techniques to remember to actually give people a good time (I had a far more enjoyable lunch at Jöro), but because really, superficialities aside, Jöro is very much its own animal, taking just as many cues from Asian, and even traditional Yorkshire, cuisine than anything Scandi.

There's also the question of cost. Our evening began with an apology from front of house - one of the courses out of the tasting menu wasn't available, so instead of the usual 8 for £45, they could offer us 7 for £40. By anyone's standards, a 7-course tasting menu for £40, with a matching wine/cocktail option for an extra £35, is still an utter bargain, and would have been worth the trip up to Sheffield even if the kitchen had been less than competent and the advertised 7 courses been the sum total of the food offered.

Of course, this being Yorkshire where the compulsion to overfeed runs deep in genetic makeup of its people (I should know, my grandmother's family owned a fish and chip shop in Wombwell), Jöro aren't about to let you get away with just eating seven courses. Fully three sets of nibbles preceded the "first" course, a lovely linseed cracker dotted with blobs of cream cheese and beetroot...

...a mouthful of warm black pudding topped with apple sauce, rich and comforting...

...and a completely stunning duck croquette, managing to pack more flavour into this tiny cube of breaded, fried meat than almost any similar nibble I've had the good fortune to try for as long as I can remember. With a deep, almost sour game flavour and perhaps a touch of something alcoholic, it was a seriously impressive bit of work.

First course proper was a pretty 'tomato tartare' showcasing powerful San Marzano tomatoes and fresh summer herbs to great effect. Matched with this was Jöro's take on a Bloody Mary, a tomato consommé and vodka mixture that had an even more overwhelmingly "tomatoey" hit than the food. I don't care how jaded or cynical you try to be, there is no way a glass of clear liquid tasting like the world's finest Bloody Mary isn't going to make you gasp. It certainly did me.

Given that everything else from the kitchens at Jöro was so accomplished, it was very odd - not to mention a bit of a surprise - that the bread was so disappointing. Pappy and dry, it wasn't stale as such - at least I don't think that was the issue - it was just nowhere near as good as it should have been. There must be better bakeries out there - I've heard good things about Forge on Abbeydale Rd - so let's hope the house bread offering gets a makeover some time soon.

Anyway we were soon back on track with the scallops. With neat discs of seafood dressed speckled with vibrant parsley oil, and sprinkled with horseradish and samphire, it was as pretty as it was deceptively complex, all the various summer herbs and dressings combining in such a way as to not have any one stand out but allowing the scallop - cured in elderflower vinegar, which just removed the 'flabbiness' of raw scallop without destroying the freshness - to still be the main flavour.

Similarly barbecued pork neck glazed in some kind of sweet/sour, umami-rich Japanese dressing, its intense flavours cooled by pressed cucumber and texture added with toasted cashews. Japanese flavours featured in several of the courses at Jöro, and although jumping around global cuisines runs the risk of being confusing or disjointed, the sensitive and only occasional use of things like yuzu or dashi at Jöro makes perfect sense. It's also worth pointing out that the wine that this course came matched with, a Riesling I think, very cleverly matched the sugar levels in the pork with just the right amount of sweetness, producing a clean, crisp effect that was quite something.

In this broccoli dish, the vegetable blackened and smokey from the grill, paired with a blob of irresistibly addictive black garlic paste and topped with a generous dusting of very good Vacche Rosse Parmesan. By this point, you'll probably guess, we were having a blast. Inventive, exciting cooking like this, presented with flair and skill by an extremely competent front of house team, doesn't along very often, but the knowledge we were going to be sent home stuffed, drunk and happy for around £70 a head made the whole atmosphere even more giddy. As I scooped up the last of the black garlic I began making plans to rent a flat in Kelham Island and spend long, lazy days in the Fat Cat pub drinking pints of £3.40 local ales.

Next a huge, plump duck breast glazed with local heather honey, with a brilliantly sharp and complex wild blackcurrant sauce, beetroot and al-dente hispi cabbage. If I'm going to be brutal, perhaps not the most flavoursome bird I've ever been asked to eat, but cooked absolutely beautifully and so made up for a little depth of flavour with an utterly charming texture. After the dish was finished, the sauces and oils left on the plate - deep vermilion reds of fruits and meat juices, and emerald green cabbage oils, made the plate resemble a work of modern art.

Pre-dessert (yes, that's the fourth additional 'course' so far for our £40) was a smooth sour cream ice cream topped with summer berries, like a kind of fancy Müller fruit corner. Lovely tableware it came in too, a kind of rough stone bowl softened with frost.

First dessert proper was a brown butter and muscovado parfait on top of what they coyly referred to as 'parkin', a Yorkshire cake that's a kind of soft flapjack. The parfait itself, and the neat spheres of sake-soaked apple on top, were hugely enjoyable and worth the price of admission, but unfortunately the 'parkin' beneath, perhaps because they'd decided to tone down the strong ginger element usually present in parkin, was a bit bland, and the soft texture didn't really sit well. Still, full marks for invention and local colour.

"Yorkshire strawberries and raspberries" turned out to be an incredibly light yoghurt mousse of some kind, studded with dried and frozen fruit and spiked with yuzu. Light, refreshing and summery, it dissolved in the mouth like dairy candy floss, and was another great example of Jöro's mastery of technique. Also, being so insubstantial it was, despite our almost completely sated appetites, incredibly easy to eat, a very welcome thing indeed at this point in the meal.

Incredibly, Jöro decided to gift us with yet one more final flourish - petits fours of summer fruit marshmallows, and very lovely things they were too.

But that, eventually, sadly, was it. The bill, as I keep banging on about, came to £143 total, which included more than enough booze - but the Yorkshire generosity didn't even end at the glasses of Picpoul which our sommellier filled up to about the level of a half pint with a cheeky grin. No, Jöro had one final flourish of northern hospitality up its sleeve - no service charge. So we worked out the usual London % and left it in cash, because they'd earned every last bloody penny.

I don't want to focus too much on the bill though, because I don't want to give the impression that my enjoyment of lunch at Jöro was largely due to the fact I knew I was getting a bargain in contrast to what similar meals would have cost down in Shoreditch or Marylebone. Yes, Jöro is insanely good value - a good 30% less than what they could still charge with a straight face and far less you'd spend at far lesser restaurants, even in Sheffield. But the most important thing about Jöro, in fact the only important thing all said and done, is that they serve some of the finest food in the country, in one of the finest cities in the country, and there's absolutely no way you could eat here and not have the time of your life. So let's just leave it at that.

9/10