To a visitor from lands afar (me) who sees this part of the world in little two-week periods twice a year, Jeune & Jolie feels like it did all the work of establishing itself as one of the best restaurants in California in a metaphorical blink of an eye, a few short months between opening, winning its Michelin star and becoming the last word in sophisticated Cali-French dining.
Of course, it didn't happen quite that easily. They opened all the way back in 2018, and won their star three years later right in the middle of the Covid pandemic, which must have felt like quite the reward for making it through lockdowns and the whole home delivery rigmarole. It's probably fair to say they were always trying to get a star - French fine dining, even Californian-French fine dining, needs Michelin recognition more than most other types of cuisine for validation of their efforts - but let's not forget it's never inevitable, and never easy, and always welcome. Even if, occasionally, the choices made by the tire company can be bizarre bordering on insane.
Anyway, in this case, as anyone who's ever eaten at Jeune & Jolie will tell you, Michelin got it exactly right. While most of the mid-to-big budget restaurants in the San Diego area do their best to project an air of laid-back California cool even as the prices they charge creep ever upwards, Jeune & Jolie give you smart surroundings, sparkling (and - crucially for this part of the world - not over-familiar) service and, yes, some of if not the best food (certainly that I've been lucky enough to try) on the West Coast for less than you'd pay at many less impressive places.
Alongside a round of cocktails - a perfect gin Martini my own choice, a lovely little thing indeed - we had cheekily ordered a plate of truffled gougères from the bar menu because, well, if gougères are available you have to order gougères. That's the rule. And even though they would have been perhaps even a little bit nicer warmed, they were still excellent, delicate little puffs of cheese and truffle, top pastry work.
The raw bar at Jeune & Julie has its own menu, so you can either skip this course entirely (as if) or order as many little extras as you think you might be able to fit in before the four courses of the main event. Here are 3 different types of oyster and an extra dressed version, a local bay scallop, a huge blue prawn and a dressed mussel, all of it impressive but the dressed oyster being the particular standout with its balanced pan-Asian dressing.
Amuse of duck liver and peanuts were next, with a scattering of edible flowers to add a bit of colour. But as with the gougères it was the pastry that was the most impressive element - impossibly thin and light and dissolving in the mouth to brilliant effect.
I have the capacity to enjoy even a fairly ordinary steak tartare (I'm good like that), but when it's done well it has the potential to be a highlight of the meal. This was definitely in the second camp - lovely loose, richly flavoured veal chunks shot through with just enough wasabi to season and provide a bit of heat but not too much that it overwhelms the meat. On top, crunchy sliced radish sprinkled with seaweed, and underneath, a subtle layer of white soy providing more seasoning and Japanese-leaning flavours. This really was very good.
Amberjack crudo, I hope you can tell even through my terrible photo, was a beautiful plate of food and tasted it too, the fresh fish nicely matching the sharp ceviche-style dressing and topped with bits of pickled pear, celery and passionfruit. One of the best things about eating out in a part of the world so far away from your own is the chance to sample a completely alien range of fish and seafood - some vaguely familiar but some genuinely new. Amberjack is a Pacific game fish which I'm going to suggest tastes a bit like wild sea bass, although until I try them side by side I won't know if that description is useful or completely off the mark...
Last of the pre-starters (sorry, course "Un") was this bowl of some kind of melon soup with (real) caviar, crème fraîche and cucumber and though I didn't get to try it myself (there's only so much passing around of dishes you want to do to keep the front of house spending most of their time mopping up spilled food) I heard only good things.
The bread course was marvellous - a big, fluffy, glossy brioche served with soft lemon butter, it was as dangerously addictive as the house bread at the Devonshire, and anyone who's had that will tell you how difficult it is to have just the one portion.
"Deux" - for want of a better word, starters - continued being supremely enjoyable. A mushroom tart had yet more impeccable pastry work encasing a deliriously rich and complex autumnal mixture of chanterelle, chestnuts, almonds and black truffle. "Saint Jacques" was a giant scallop roasted to a beautiful golden brown served with grapes, tarragon and various foraged sea vegetables, and my own dish of pork (sorry again about the godawful photo) was a generous chunk of just-cooked fillet, served alongside some slow-cooked belly (with superb attached crackling), quince and chicory and all bound with one of those brilliant glossy French sauces that you want to take home and eat spoonfuls of in front of the TV. Well, that might just be me - but it was a very good sauce, honestly.
For "Trois", a single mousse-like ricotta gnudi came next to an artfully arranged series of braised and fried seasonal vegetables, the crunchy/creamy artichoke hearts and enoki mushrooms being particularly noteworthy. The food at Jeune & Jolie, as you may have noticed - is neither austere nor rustic, but a perfectly fine balance between the two, ending up impressing with technique and presentation but also never being anything less than accessible and easy. It's an irresistible formula.
This was my main of guinea hen (about as close to game birds as you'll get in this part of the world), cutely ballotined and sliced into medallions, drenched in another gloriously rich and glossy sauce and served with sliced mushroom and sticks of "garleek" (a cross between garlic and leek - who knew?) that had been charred up nicely on the grill. Again - again and again - it all worked perfectly.
And we needn't have worried that the Jeune & Jolie kitchens were putting all their efforts into the savoury courses and leaving desserts as an afterthought. Not a bit of it - an apple-treacle tart served with soft ginger ice cream (I think it was anyway) had a bewildering number of techniques on display all producing a ridiculously moreish result, a dish that would not have been out of place on the menu at l'Enclume or Moor Hall. And I won't inflict the distressing photos of the other desserts on you, but suffice it to say they were equally enjoyable, an autumnal berries dish having some lovely floral notes of orange and violet mixed with toasted nuts for texture.
Petit fours consisted of some weeny tartlets of some kind of citrus mousse, and sticks of Ecuadorian chocolate. I've become slightly obsessed with Ecuadorian chocolate after stumbling across it in a specialist shop in Girona (Spain) recently - and these were just as good as I remember, coffee and citrus notes released with every bite with a lovely snap.
You will have gathered by now that I had a great time at Jeune & Jolie. As I said earlier, it's almost certainly one of the best restaurants in California, never mind just San Diego, a city that has traditionally been left behind by Los Angeles and San Francisco when it comes to this kind of thing. It's smart and serious enough, with an experienced enough kitchen, to serve sophisticated and intelligent food without coming across as pretentious or needy, but does so with such love and flair (aided by a front of house team who didn't put a single toe on any foot wrong) and at such eminently reasonable prices (relatively) that it's virtually impossible not to fall in love with the place. And so I'm afraid I did - hook, line and sinker. And chances are, you will too.
10/10
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