April 18, 2021
If you found that the dermatologist you were going to see also specialized in cardiology, psychiatry, obstetrics, and knee-replacement, it might give you pause. Could he really be competent in so many different areas? Isn’t a jack of all trades a master of none?
When you see that the online menu of The Jungle in Jordan includes Mexican food, Tibetan food, American bbq, pizzas, pastas (one of which is Cajun), and international snacks, you likewise pause. Restaurants regularly capsize under the weight of one cuisine. How can The Jungle, a small place at that, handle so many? You and your wife paddle upriver into the culinary heart of The Jungle to find out.
It’s not Heart of Darkness jungle. It’s not crocs-popping-out-of-the-river a la Disney Jungle Cruise. It’s Graceland’s Jungle Room, a spray of foliage here, a palm tree there, jungle wallpaper, strings of lights. This is really Tiki Lounge jungle, something like Trader Vic’s minus the maidens in coconut shell brassieres. It is an exotic chamber within life’s Imaginarium where you feel surprisingly at ease.
Tiki drinks ensue, the anti-malarial specialty of this outpost. Using tiki drinkware, flowers, herbs, and tiki ornamentation, The Jungle goes all in. Unlike the liquid jellybeans which are the sorry excuse for mixology at many HK bars, these drinks are uniformly good to great, not cloying, with distinct, faceted flavors. The bartender shakes them with style.
Low alcohol (which you prefer), they’re a superb deal at HK$90. Your favorite is a Welcome to the Jungle with rum, dark rum, absinthe, fresh lime, passionfruit, grapefruit. It has a smoldering cinnamon stick atop which looks like a lit cigar. It’s as though the Tiki god had been smoking it and placed it on his head for a moment. The gods, of course, are wont to stick their cigars wherever they like.
Your wife’s is an Elderflower Paloma, tequila, Campari, fresh lime, grapefruit, homemade honey agave syrup.
If anything, you think The Jungle should channel even more Tiki juju, jack it up to emergency thrust. In Tianjin, China you were served a libation in a glass skull with dry ice. The drink violently bubbled and copious smoke poured forth from the hole in top. Your life is flat until you drink from a smoking skull. You’d almost fly back to Tianjin just for this drink. Trader Vic’s had drinks in sharing bowls with very long straws, held up on pedestals of ceramic maidens flimsily attired. Go for it!
You want to sample lots, but can only eat so much. Insomuch as the three pals who started The Jungle are Nepalese, your battleplan is to focus mainly on Nepalese dishes which you think will enhance your chances of good stuff. Nepal borders India and China and the food bears strong influence from each.
Pana puri is a common snack in India where you’ve feasted on them, crisp, hollow balls of flour filled with potato mash, onion, paprika, green peas, and chaat masala (a classic Indian spice mix). You’ve had them topped with thick yogurt (which you would have liked to dulcify the spiciness). The Jungle provides instead a teapot with tamarind water (to be added at the last moment to prevent sogginess). They detonate with flavor. Why isn’t this snack ubiquitous? Addictive as Doritos, they’re open to infinite variations. Vegan. Perfect bar food. Das ist gut!
Jalapeno Cheese Rolls, really cheese filled spring rolls, are a cliché, but my are theirs tasty. Clichés are clichés for a reason, they work.
The Kirat Traditional Set comes on a platter of green leaves. In the center is a mound of cumin-turmeric rice capped with pork blood sausage. At intervals around it are little mounds of pork and mustard green, fermented soya bean, fermented leafy vegetable, Nepalese tamarillo chutney, dried buffalo jerky, and niger seed chutney. For all your foodie swagger, you don’t eat blood sausage and can’t comment on it. You love the pork and mustard green, likewise the fermented soya bean and leafy vegetable, both relatives of kimchi. The niger seed chutney seems almost flavorless. You’ve learned online that it’s the seed of the African Yellow Daisy and mainly used for birdseed. The dried buffalo jerky is neither salted nor marinated and tastes bland to you though your wife says she enjoyed it. You commend this set for authenticity. You prefer food that doesn’t dial down. Better it should hoist you up (or attempt to).
The roasted pork belly is marinated in fresh ginger, garlic, salt, and soy sauce. It’s porky and fatty and crispy and luscious and ideally balanced by the vegetal crunch of shredded purple cabbage. There’s lemon to squeeze over, just the sharpness required.
Then – deserving kettle drums -- come Jungle Chilis Momo. Wow! Somehow, like walking through a rainstorm and by random chance avoiding all raindrops, you have gone through life and by random chance avoided all momos. But your momo has come. Stuffed with minced pork, garlic, and ginger, looking like pleated bon bons, they’re similar to steamed Chinese dumplings. And all things similar to steamed Chinese dumplings are good! The noodle casing, purchased from a nearby market, has nice chew. There’s chili sauce for dipping. In your view the Chinese trifecta of soy sauce, vinegar, and chili oil, maybe some shreds of ginger, would be equally fine.
Haku Chulu is a strong declarative statement: grilled white-meat chicken chunks loaded with chilis, garlic, and ginger. You wish rice came with it. It doesn’t pander to the timid. You eagerly gnaw leftovers the next day.
Your final savory dish is possibly unremarkable in Nepal, but remarkable to you, Chat-Pate. It’s puffed rice (for all the world just like Rice Krispies), with broken, dried ramen noodles and torn pieces of fried dough flavored with cumin seed, small chunks of cucumber, fresh peas, onion, and brown chickpeas, a fabulous textural-flavor mélange. It’s touched with lemon juice and mustard oil. The mustard oil is transformative. It tastes lightly of hot mustard. Its perfume is what snaps its fingers. It penetrates your sinuses and, breaching the blood-brain barrier, reaches to the very back of you brain withdrawing with all the accumulated lint, leaving everything cleansed behind it. There is possibly no dish that would go better with a light IPA.
You share two desserts. The first is chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream. Both of you think the cake needs less sugar and a good pinch of salt. And there’s got to be a better garnish than ice-cream sprinkles. How about gold or silver leaf? Also, why chocolate lava cake? That’s same old. You wish that restaurants would reach further with this dish. In an obscure tapas bar in Madrid you ate dulce de leche lava cake that frenzied you with pleasure, massively better than chocolate.
The second dessert is a rice pudding called Kheer with the comforting cardamom scent and taste of a Scandinavian Christmas cookie. It is only slightly sweet, just right. Your wife, of Danish extraction, likes it in particular.
The Jungle was created as a neighborhood joint. It was not created with the intention of scaling new culinary heights. Good food, not earth-shattering, and a fun setting were its goals. Judged by its intent, which really is the only way to judge a restaurant, it succeeds admirably. For all your best efforts, you only tried a fraction of the menu and can’t comment on its totality. But almost everything you ate, in the Nepalese realm, was good to excellent. If you didn’t like it, it’s probable the fault lay with your unaccustomed palate. All your fears of a restaurant overextended were unfounded. You liked the campy interior. The drinks were not only a hoot but quite good. There were nice little touches such as drinking water from a pitcher containing fruits and herbs. The value for dollar was superb. Were The Jungle in your neighborhood, you’d visit often.
Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5) Restaurants are rated intuitively and within their particular realms. So Michelin restaurants, pizza places, and stand-up sandwich joints are judged against other like restaurants, not against each other. A 5 for a high-end restaurant is not meant to be the same as a 5 for street food.
Food Overall: 4
Ambiance: 3 (you love the jungle vibe, and the owners have done all that can be done with the premises, but it’s somewhat dim and cramped)
Service: 4 (warm and affable)
Overall Greatness: 4
THIS MEAL WAS COMPED. Because you’re writing a review, you ordered more food than ordinarily. This meal, ample for six, would have cost HK$753, including service charge, a remarkable deal. Drinks were HK$90 each, also a remarkable deal.
The Jungle
Shop no.3, G/F, 273-275 Temple Street, Po Fat Building, Yau Ma Tei, Jordan, Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong