Austen Groff
Google
I went here for my birthday and we had a great time. My girlfriend and I have no connection to Armenian food but we were interested in trying something new and I don't know if we did it the right way. To start off we don't eat beef so there were limited options for us because a lot of the menu has beef in it. We have no issues with that, but there were a few things that looked really appealing to us if beef was not included. We started our meal with Armenian tea, baba ganoush, and megruli khachapuri. The Armenian tea was floral and rich and a great way to start the meal. The baba ganoush is a familiar dish that we devoured and really enjoyed whereas the megruli khachapuri was a little one dimensional. It's just cheese and bread (lots of cheese.) I think the Ajarian khachapuri might have been a little more interesting, and we may try that next time. We ended up saving this for later which was a good move because I ordered (by the recommendation of our server) a spicy ajika sauce which helped bring life to the megruli khachapuri as well as my meal which was the Armenian style pork shoulder. This meal was nice, it's cubes of seasoned pork with some onions and pickles and cilantro over pita bread. At first I ate one item at a time like I tried the pork, I ate some onions, a pickle. Then I realized the best way to do it was to eat them all together in the pita. This seemed to be the proper way to eat it because none of the items alone were particularly flavorful. The addition of the spicy ajika sauce was also nice but I felt the dish might have been better if I had put some of the baba ganoush in it to give some smokiness to the meal. It needed something, though I enjoyed it nonetheless. Also as a side I got the potatoes with creamy mushrooms, that may have been the highlight of the meal, they were so cheesy, the mushrooms was a great addition, it was flavorful, I really enjoyed it. My girlfriend ordered the chicken losh kebab. She normally thinks chicken is pretty boring, but she loved this, thought the flavor was interesting and said it was one of the best kebabs she's ever had. Then we had dessert, we really wanted the Napoleon, but the last one was sold to the table next to us. So we ended up getting the pavlova (per recommendation of our server), and they made it masterfully. The meringue was crunchy but fluffy at the same time. There was lots of cream and fruit, it was my first time trying it, and though I would have really liked to try the Napoleon, this was a great second choice. The meal overall was enjoyable but I think we could have gotten different food and been more pleased. They had a lot of stuff we were interested in trying and I hope we do get to try it some time. To speak on the atmosphere, I thought it was such a beautiful restaurant, there were spots for big families, the art brought you into the world of Armenian food, the place was super clean and the noise level was perfect for an intimate meal. There were a few times when we needed something and we were unable to find our server, I'm not sure if this was to give us privacy or from being busy, or because of different customs. It wasn't really a big deal and when present, our server was very helpful by guiding us through the menu, informing us which meals had beef them, giving recommendations, and being easy to talk to. Overall I think we will return to Jana Grill, but we will most likely try mostly new stuff and order in a different way. If I were to recommend some tips for this restaurant it would be to rearrange the menu, so new customers know they have the option to pair things like the spicy ajika with the megruli khachapuri, or the hummus or baba ganoush with the Losh Kebab or pork shoulder. Even if that's not how they are traditionally enjoyed, I think even a recommendation from the server could really help people new to Armenian food enjoy their meals and relate them to other food they like.